Chinatown Los Angeles memories: my father loved the place once, and now I remember why as an exhibition brings its history to life

An exhibition celebrating LA Chinatown’s legacy as the first community in America planned and owned by Chinese people brings back memories for Alison Singh Gee

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Alison Singh Gee

Published: 8:15am, 1 Aug 2021Updated: 8:15am, 1 Aug 2021

My father grew up just a few steps from where I am now on this shop-lined section of Chung King Road in Los Angeles, two flights of worn wooden stairs above his father’s general store.

The family flat was a heavenly slice of the homeland, the living room lined with silk-tasselled lanterns, Chinese landscapes on the walls and a custom red rug holding the room together. The cool, dark hallways smelled of camphor wood and soy sauce. A sizeable turtle roamed the kitchen like a king (until one day he disappeared – only to reappear in a soup).

The flat had a bank of tall windows that overlooked all of Chinatown, with LA’s art deco City Hall looming in the middle distance. Throughout his childhood, my father gazed out onto this dreamy mid-20th century tableau, a sparkling panorama of newly built pagodas and temples with tiled roofs curled up at the eaves, some lined in neon.

Amid the constant bustle of tourists, Hollywood stars would often be seen pulling up in their Cadillac convertibles, while down on Hill Street lived any number of old Chinatown families who had known my father since he was born. Families like the Fongs, the Lees, the Moys and the Wongs, these were Cantonese who dared to immigrate to these shores when they were not at all embracing to arrivals from Asia.

Mabel Hong (second from right, standing) at a Chinese American Citizens Alliance picnic in the 1950s. Photo: The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens

In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act forbade most Chinese immigration to the United States, although the law did permit Chinese merchants like my grandfather, as well as diplomats and students and their families, into the country. For the Chinese already in the US, however, citizenship was disallowed, and the act would not be repealed until 1943.

Standing here again, after so many years since my last visit, I can understand why my father loved Chinatown and felt so deeply connected to its courtyards, banquet halls and backstreets. And yet, even though Chinatown seemed like a fantasy come alive for my grandparents’ generation, at some point in his time, the shine came off and my father wanted out. He was not the only one.