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| Neighborhoods: The Hidden Cities of San Francisco: Chinatown: Press Release |
A Portrait of a World-Renowned Neighborhood:
CHINATOWN
Installment of KQED's Award-winning Neighborhood Series Airs Thursday, March 27, 2003, 10:30 p.m. on PBS
(Check local listing)
San Francisco, California -- Thousands of tourists flock through its streets everyday; its curio shops, all-night restaurants and crowded alleys have been celebrated from Broadway to Hollywood. But few people know the human drama and history that are hidden in the streets and faces of San Francisco's Chinatown. KQED's Chinatown, a one-hour documentary in its encore national broadcast on PBS Thursday, March 27, 2003, 10:30 p.m. (check local listings), tells the neighborhood's story from the point of view of those who have lived their lives there. The program is narrated by folklorist Charlie Chin and features the poetry of performance artist and poet Genny Lim.
Chinatown, though focused on one neighborhood, is in many ways the story of all Chinese in America. For decades, San Francisco's Chinatown was the largest community of Chinese outside Asia, and yet was a neighborhood forced to be independent, even isolated, from the rest of society. Its residents were barred from even the basic rights of citizenship. Even so, over 150 years, Chinatown's residents have managed to create a thriving community that today is the second most popular destination for visitors to San Francisco (after the Golden Gate Bridge), and which still functions today as a gateway to immigrants from all across Asia.
Producer/Director Felicia Lowe says, "Chinatown is definitely a living neighborhood, one that reflects, almost block by block, the long struggle of people trying to gain a foothold here, often against overwhelming odds." The program uncovers a neighborhood full of paradoxes, using Chinatown's music, poetry and oral histories to weave its intriguing story. Some of the surprises that viewers will discover in Chinatown are:
• From almost the moment of the arrival of Asian fortune-seekers to gold Rush-era San Francisco, people were trying to get rid of the Chinese. It culminated in a Congressional law, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which barred Chinese laborers from entering the country, and created in Chinatown a world of men separated from their families overseas.
• It was a Chinese merchant, Look Tin Eli, who in the aftermath of the great earthquake of 1906 insisted that Chinatown be rebuilt exactly where it had stood. Look Tin Eli came up with the idea of building fancy -- looking pagodas with "Oriental" facades to create an attractive place for tourists -- and he hired Caucasian architects to do it!
KQED operates KQED Public Television 9, the nation's most-watched public television station (in prime time), and Digital Television 30, Northern California's only public television digital signal; KQED Public Radio 88.5 FM, one of the most-listened-to public radio stations in the nation; the KQED Education Network, which brings the impact of KQED to thousands of teachers, students, parents and media professionals through workshops, seminars and resources; and kqed.org, which harnesses the power of the Internet to bring KQED to communities across the Web.
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