Chinatown has long been SF’s most densely populated neighborhoods—largely due to racist anti-immigrant policies that crammed as many people into a few blocks as possible.

The historic alleyways are crucial to making sure it remains navigable, although that’s not necessarily the reason they were all built, as many important routes already existed when they were absorbed into Chinatown’s growing borders.

Fortune cookies, of course, are an American rather than Chinese tradition. In fact, the Chinatown Merchants Association claims that in the ‘90s, fortune cookies were marketed in China as “genuine American” treats.

Japanese immigrant Makoto Hagiwara (designer of the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park) usually gets the credit for inventing the treats, and they proved a big hit at the 1915 Worlds Fair.

The Ross Alley Fortune Cookie Factory opened in 1962, and why it’s not the first place every Chinatown tourist goes we’ll never know.

The stalwart Golden Dragon operated on Washington Street for decades, but unfortunately it’s still probably best remembered for the Golden Dragon Massacre, a gang hit in 1977 that left five people dead—none of them the intended targets of the attack.

In this day and age you’d at least be obliged to change the name of the place after that, but the Golden Dragon moniker endured.

In July of 1877, anti-Chinese racism and resentment over labor issues boiled over into a riot that destroyed 20 Chinese laundries (one of the only businesses Chinese immigrants could legally own in the city) and broke the windows of the neighborhood Methodist Mission.

Kee Joon Lee, originally from China’s Canton district, sold the owners of the six-story Grant Street building finished in 1966 on the dream of rooftop fine dining with elegance and class overlooking Portsmouth Square.

Lee’s daughter Barbara Yee recalled in 2014, “"When it started, people couldn't even go up there to eat unless you wore a tie. If you didn't have a tie, they had a tie ready for you."

Empress of China’s 2015 closure still smarts, but the location and Empress name will not remain vacant.

In August of 1850, San Francisco Mayor John Geary invited Chinese immigrants to march in a funeral procession he’d organized in the memory of recently deceased US President Zachary Taylor, ending in Portsmouth Square.

During the oratory, a judge told the immigrants “You stand among us as equals.” The unexpected recognition so pleased community that it sent Geary a thank you note signed on behalf of all “China Boys.” It was the first time the city acknowledged Chinatown as a community.

Chinatown’s oldest Taoist temple has operated at this same address since 1852. Though closed several times over the years, it’s always reopened in the same spot. The 1906 earthquake destroyed the original building, but part of the altar survived, as did the temple bell (once it was dug from the ruins).

Mary’s was not the first church in Chinatown, however, as the Presbyterian congregation opened in 1853. Six years later it served an even more important function as the initial site for Chinatown’s first neighborhood school.

State law segregated primary schools, leaving Chinatown residents to petition the city for years before getting an educational space of their own. Later the “Chinese School” would change its name and open up the classroom to the children of immigrants from other Asian countries.

Incidentally, Portsmouth Square was home to the first public school in California, opened in 1847, one year before the first Chinese immigrants arrived in San Francisco.

Chinatown’s first YMCA opened in 1911 and remains an institution to this day, but the stunning YWCA building on Powell Street (now the Chinese Historical Society of America HQ) is by rights the bigger icon thanks to the design by Julia Morgan.

But note that the Morgan building didn’t come along until the 1930s. When the YWCA first opened in 1916, it operated out of a reformed saloon on Stockton Street.

The testimony of 19th-century San Francisco police chief James Cook explains that residents conferred names of their own on the side streets and byways of Chinatown.

St Louis Alley, for example, was better known as “Fo Sue Hong,”or “Fire Alley,” owing to a memorable fire that once broke out there. Sacramento Street was instead “Tong Yen Guy,” or China Street, and Spofford Alley better known as “Sun Louie Sun Hong,” or New Spanish Alley.

Asking for directions using the official street names was useless, Cook claimed. “But if you gave him the Chinese name [a local] would know immediately” where you wanted to go.

Not just the oldest cathedral in Chinatown but also in the entire state of California, Father Henry Ignatius Stark oversaw Old St Mary’s construction in 1854 as a mission to spread Catholicism in Chinatown. The bricks and granite were all imports from China.

After the 1906 earthquake City Hall smelled an opportunity to banish Chinatown to the fringes, planning to relocate the community to what is now Bayview. But the Chinese Family Associations and the Chinese Consulate refused to budge.

Chinatown merchant Look Tin Eli seized on the idea of hiring non-Chinese architects and contractors to rebuild the neighborhood in homage/pastiche styles of classical Chinese architecture, a bid to increase its appeal as a tourist destination and cultural redoubt.

The Sing Chong Building was one of the first of the “new Chinatown” structures to open, along with the Sing Fat building on the other side of the street.

Installed in 2017, Carmel artist Steven Whyte’s piece titled Women’s Column of Strength proved instantly controversial with some, as it prompted San Francisco’s sister city of Osaka to cut diplomatic ties with SF. But Whyte and the city stand by the figures, which represent the women who suffered sexual slavery in China during World War II.

The first of Chinatown’s famous Six Companies, the Kong Chow Company opened on Pine Street in a locale that it would stick with for over 100 years before eventually relocating to its present spot on Stockton Street. The 520 Pine address is now a parking garage.

The neighborhood’s Benevolent Associations served as a kind of safety net, helping immigrants who were suddenly divorced from the social structure of their homeland and who couldn’t rely on city government for much of anything.

The face of Chinatown to tourists and photographers from around the world, the gate has been in place only since 1970. Taiwan gifted the materials used, but the design comes by way of Chinese-American architect Clayton Lee. As is traditional, the gate faces south, deemed the most favorable direction for the entrance to a building or community.