|
 |

A Coming of Age for S.F. Chinese
The city's oldest and largest minority finally is gaining
political power. One observer likens the movement to the '70s 'sea change'
when gays asserted themselves.
By MARY CURTIUS, Times Staff Writer
SAN
FRANCISCO--These days, Mayor Willie Brown is nearly as common a
sight in this city's bustling Chinatown as tourists and chop suey.
Campaigning hard for reelection in
November, Brown is suddenly popping up at least three times a week at
weddings, luncheons and any other gathering likely to draw a crowd in the
hub of the city's burgeoning Chinese community. The mayor now has a
full-time staffer to handle relations with the city's seven daily
Chinese-language newspapers and three TV stations.
For years, put off by language barriers
and the community's low voter registration rate, San Francisco candidates
largely ignored the Chinese. But with Asians now 35% of the city's
population and Chinese accounting for more than 60% of those Asians, Brown
and his rivals are lavishing time, money and effort on them.
"Now you need a political strategy to
win votes in the Chinese community," says political consultant John
Whitehurst. "Before, it would be a walk down Grant Street to pay tribute.
Now, you need a multifaceted campaign--in Cantonese, Mandarin and
English." All the attention has started
a buzz here about the political coming of age of the nation's oldest
Chinese community, the city's largest and fastest-growing ethnic group.
Even as Latino immigration is reshaping
the rest of California, it is Asian immigration--and Chinese immigration
in particular--that is remaking San Francisco. Asians are expected to
outnumber whites here by 2017, and the Chinese are by far the most
influential members of the Asian community, their roots stretching back to
the Gold Rush. San Francisco's Chinese
community is a dynamic, diverse and sometimes fractious mix. There are new
immigrants from Hong Kong and the mainland; fifth-generation Chinese
Americans, many of whom no longer speak the language of their ancestors;
the elderly poor living in tiny Chinatown apartments; and Chinese yuppies
buying million-dollar homes in suburban areas on the city's western and
southern edges. The Chinese presence in
San Francisco is ubiquitous--from the Civic Center, where a new Asian Art
Museum showcasing the city's world-class collection of Asian art is being
built, to the schools, where Chinese children are the largest and
fastest-growing group. Chinese
restaurants, produce markets, herbal shops and acupuncturists are spread
across the city. Chinese are players in the city's corporate boardrooms
and in its philanthropic institutions.
But this acceptance into mainstream San
Francisco life, Chinese community leaders say, is not reflected in the
city's political power structure. "Right
now, every time there is an appointment, it's the first Chinese this, the
first Chinese that," says Rose Pak, with the Chinatown Chamber of
Commerce. "I would like to see it as the norm."
One of the community's most savvy
political power brokers, Pak's realm is Chinatown. She calls it the
"fragile soul" of the Chinese here.
Newcomers Find Crowded
Conditions The city's third most
visited tourist attraction, Chinatown is wedged between the financial
district and trendy North Beach, and it remains the entry point for
immigrants and a refuge for the elderly poor.
The real life of the neighborhood pulses
behind and above the curio shops where tourists browse among porcelain
figurines, plastic chopsticks and jade jewelry.
Behind the shops, the newcomers work in
cramped factories, stitching silk pants and making fortune cookies. Most
workers are women, and their children play at their feet as they bend over
sewing machines or mix dough. Families
crowd into upstairs apartments built by Chinese fraternal societies to
house single male workers in the first half of the century. Residents hang
laundry from balconies and call to each other in Cantonese or other
dialects. Chinatown boasts nearly a
half-dozen Chinese schools and the nation's only Chinese hospital. Many
residents are poor, and the community's myriad social services--from job
training to English tutoring to hot lunch programs for the elderly--are
based here. Affluent Chinese who now
live miles from Chinatown often return for weddings, dinners and to find
just the right herbs in the store where their grandmothers shopped, to
immerse themselves in the smells and sounds of the place.
Many of the merchants who are
Chinatown's economic lifeblood have moved to the newer Chinese
neighborhoods that have sprung up in the past two decades.
In the Sunset District south of Golden
Gate Park, more than 60% of the property is owned by Chinese. North of the
park in the more upscale Richmond District, where the row houses are
slightly more grand, the percentage is nearly that high.
Chinese Americans today are "what the
Irish used to be in San Francisco: the middle class," says David Lee,
director of the Chinese American Voter Education Committee, a nonprofit
organization that has registered thousands of Chinese voters.
As they have prospered, Chinese have
begun to voice concerns about schools and transportation, housing and
public safety, and activists say those concerns have fueled interest in
politics. Three years ago, activists in
the Richmond and Sunset areas launched the Chinese community's first city
ballot initiative, a bid to rebuild the damaged Central Freeway that links
heavily Chinese neighborhoods on the west side of town with downtown.
With just three weeks to raise 10,800
signatures, the San Francisco Neighbors' Assn. collected three times that
number, recalls Rose Tsai. An immigrant from Hong Kong who lives in the
Richmond area, Tsai founded the association with Julie Lee, now a city
Housing Authority commissioner. The two women were determined, Tsai says,
to get Chinese involved in grass-roots politics.
The initiative passed, only to be
overturned by voters in the next election. But Tsai and other Chinese
activists have put another initiative to rebuild the freeway on the
November ballot. "I tell people it was a lesson that we must never rest on
our laurels," says Tsai.
Looking
Forward to Electing a Mayor The
community has made other political gains. There are three Chinese
Americans on the 11-member Board of Supervisors, the most ever. Brown has
appointed more Chinese to head city departments and to key city
commissions than any previous mayor, including the nation's first Chinese
American police chief, Fred Lau, who was born in Chinatown.
And for the first time, Chinese are
talking about when, not if, a Chinese American will be elected mayor.
"This is a community looking at
empowerment; the more people taste power, the more they want it," says
political pollster David Binder, who believes San Francisco may have a
Chinese mayor as soon as four years from now.
But Chinese residents--many of whom
emigrated from countries with no democratic tradition--are still political
novices, says Supervisor Mabel Teng.
"Politically, we are in our infancy,"
she says. "It is taking awhile for this community to grow up and learn its
rights." Although Chinese first came to
San Francisco in the 1840s, it was only in 1995, Teng points out, that she
became the first Chinese American to be elected directly to the board
without first being appointed by a mayor.
It is only recently, Teng says, that the
community "is reaching that critical mass" needed to fully share in the
city's political life. "The last time
this sort of sea change happened in the city was in the 1970s," says Tom
Hsieh Jr., a political consultant. "The gay community changed San
Francisco forever then. The Chinese community will, too."
What remains unknown is how the Chinese
might try to shape the city, and how the city will respond.
"You must remember," says Gordon Chin,
executive director of the nonprofit Chinatown Community Development Corp.,
"we are not a monolithic bloc. One should not expect that we all walk in
lock step on anything." The agendas of
recent Chinese immigrants living in Chinatown often differ wildly from
those of second- or third-generation Chinese who own homes in other
neighborhoods. Tsai says Richmond and
Sunset Chinese homeowners, who tend to be more politically conservative,
pose the greatest threat to San Francisco's politically liberal
establishment. "It is the so-called
progressive left that are the most fearful of the coming of age of the
Chinese community," Tsai says. "That's because most of us believe in home
ownership, don't like this concept of welfare, have a strong work ethic,
are pro-development." In addition to
different political agendas, the community is riven by intense feuds.
On the Board of Supervisors, for
instance, Teng clashes frequently with the more conservative Leland Yee.
In the community, the blunt-spoken Pak has waged fierce political battles
against Tsai and the powerful Fang family, owners of Asian Week and the
Independent newspapers. Tsai maintains
that her brand of neighborhood politics threatens Pak, whom she calls a
"gatekeeper," managing relations between the community and City Hall.
"There is a real fear among some of the
Chinese leaders that an unknown entity is coming into power," says Tsai.
"They don't want this political awakening in our community."
These rivalries, Chinese leaders say,
are perhaps the greatest obstacle to the community's exerting political
influence. "There is a question of what
kind of vision Chinese Americans can bring to the arena," says lawyer
Edward Liu. "That is one of the things we are debating within the
community all the time. You can see very different ideological, political
and philosophical views among the leaders we have now."
The Chinese are finding that their
growing clout and numbers are causing some friction, even in this most
tolerant of cities. "You put two oceans
together, you are going to make waves," says Teng, who wants to become the
first Chinese American mayor one day. "We're at the heart of that right
now." It is crucial, Teng says, that Chinese find ways to build bridges to
gays, blacks and other interest groups.
Teng and others expressed concern over
hate crimes aimed at the community. Two
years ago, Chinese merchants in the Sunset District, a formerly Irish
Italian enclave that has become solidly Chinese in the past decade, were
targets of a racist attack. Someone painted swastikas on storefronts of
Chinese-owned businesses along a four-block stretch of Irving Street,
dubbed "the New Chinatown" by local newspapers. In July, Irving Street
merchants found anti-Chinese fliers stuffed into their mail slots.
Both times, local politicians flocked to
the neighborhood to denounce bigotry and express solidarity with the
Chinese. "Frankly, I'm surprised that
there haven't been more incidents," says Chin, stirring coffee on a recent
morning in his favorite Italian cafe on the border between Chinatown and
North Beach, a traditionally Italian neighborhood.
Chin says he hopes Chinatown's
relationship with North Beach can serve as a model for the rest of the
city as more and more neighborhoods gain Chinese majorities.
"The history of Chinatown and North
Beach is one of coexistence--not always a pretty history, but generally,
people have gotten along," Chin says. Despite some early clashes, Chin
says, the two communities have found that "they had a commonality of
interests, that they were both immigrant communities who believed in
strong families." In her Chinatown
office, Pak says she worries that middle class, politically conservative
Chinese will alienate other San Francisco groups.
She frets that when Chinese landlords
fight tougher rent control laws, they alienate powerful tenants groups.
When Chinese homeowners push to have illegal, basement units legalized,
they anger preservationists. And when Chinese families sued to overturn
the city's race-based school admissions process, claiming it discriminated
against Chinese youths, they alienated blacks.
"Middle class Chinese are very selfish,"
Pak says. "They don't understand that it was African Americans, Jewish
Americans who paved the way. We're so short-sighted. We don't form
coalitions. We have to be worried about the rest of the city and not just
about ourselves."
Making
Gains San Francisco's population of
Chinese Americans has moved beyond Chinatown and become the predominant
homeowner group in the Sunset and Richmond districts.
Search the archives of the Los Angeles Times for similar stories
about: Chinese
Americans - San Francisco, Ethnic
Groups - San Francisco, San
Francisco - Politics, Community
Relations. You will not be charged to look for stories, only to
retrieve one.
|