Growing Up in San Francisco's Chinatown by Edmund S Wong

Author:Edmund S Wong
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Published: 2018-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Popular tourist items. Ceramic Kuan Yin (Goddess of Mercy) and Buddha figurines sold very well. Ken Cathcart Collection. Courtesy of Schein and Schein.

RESPONSIBILITY AT THIRTEEN YEARS OF AGE

“They Left Me Behind to Look After the Bakery”

Nelson Wong was born at the Chinese Hospital in October 1948. Like so many other Chinatown baby boomers, he was delivered by Dr. Helen Chinn. Nelson’s father had come to San Francisco in 1939 as an eighteen-year-old paper son. Nelson lived with his parents and three siblings in a mixed-use building on the 1100 block of Stockton Street. He recalls that the ground floor of the building was occupied by a noodle factory; the upper floors contained small residential apartments.

According to Nelson, his family occupied a small two-room unit that lacked hot water. Bathroom needs were taken down the hall to a communal toilet. Nelson remembers washing in the family apartment by means of sponge baths in a basin with the hot water being heated on the stove. Nelson did not find such conditions particularly unusual, as all of his neighbors lived in the same fashion. The Stockton Street apartments were occupied by families who spoke a variety of dialects of Chinese. These were often mutually understandable enough for people to communicate, help each other out and grow close to one another.

Nelson’s family eventually moved to an alley just off of upper Grant Avenue in North Beach. By the time he was a student at Francisco Junior High School, he was helping out in the family business. Nelson remembers:

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