Washington Street
The Heart and Soul of Stockton Chinatown
The Heart of Chinatown
East Washington Street, between Hunter and El Dorado Streets, was the symbolic heart of Stockton Chinatown. Well-known businesses such as Foo Lung, Canton Low, Quong Wah Yuen, and Fook Chong were on the south side of the street, while businesses such as Lee Yuen, On Lock Sam, and Kwong Tuck Wo were on the north side. The two city blocks, extending south and north, were known as the Chinatown blocks. The area was bordered by Market Street on the north, Lafayette Street on the south, El Dorado Street on the west, and Hunter Street on the east. As the population increased, the businesses spread out to occupy the other six sides of the two city blocks.
Long-time Stockton resident, Glenn Kennedy, paints a picture of Washington Street, as it might have looked to someone strolling down the street between 1900 and 1925:
“On the sidewalk in front of the markets were open cases of steel gray squid, and alongside was usually a butcher in a bloodied apron, haggling over the price of dried fish or some other imported item. In the windows of Chinese delicatessen and grocery stores were other items foreign to the visitor. Herb shops had bottled preserved chickens, preserved snakes and dried sea horses.
There were platters of crooked ginger root, green mongo beans, candied melon rinds, lichee nuts, pressed smoked duck, and duck eggs packed in charcoal in other windows. Here too were shredded shark fins for soup, and live rabbits, quacking ducks, and squawking chickens, all in wire pens, giving forth a vile odor, all doomed for the ax and table.”
Glenn Kennedy, It Happened in Stockton
Time is running out to record the first-hand stories of those who lived and worked in the businesses described by Mr. Kennedy. The restaurants, grocery stores, meat markets, bakeries, hardware stores, laundries, shoe stores, soda fountains, hotels, barbershops, herb shops, gambling halls, and brothels that once populated Chinatown are now only a memory. In developing this exhibit, a call out to the community brought some of these people, now in their 80s and 90s, who could tell personal stories about the businesses, people, and everyday life of Stockton’s Chinatown.
Courtesy of the Chinese Benevolent Association (Bob Hong Collection)
In the 1950s, Chinatown families moved from South Stockton to the northern areas of Stockton as home-buying restrictions changed. Chinese-owned businesses established outside of Chinatown, included The Chopstick and Gong Lee’s on Harding Way and Tommy Lee’s Islander on Pacific Avenue. Chinatown business declined in the 1960s. Chinatown’s death came with redevelopment and construction of the Crosstown Freeway. Today, there are a few surviving Chinatown businesses, such as On Lock Sam, Gan Chy, and Stockton Poultry Market. Even fewer are those still run by their original families. Louie’s Market and Yet Bun Heong Bakery are two notable examples.
Take a walking tour of Washington Street and southward, best done if you can grab an old-timer to show you around and reminisce about days gone by.