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Community efforts preserve, memorialize Chinese history of the Monterey Bay area

Black and white photos depicting Salinas Chinatown residents sit on a wall adjacent to a red and yellow banner hung over the door with lanterns, Chinese characters, a dragon sitting above clouds and the words (shown backwards) Happy Chinese New Year 2021. A table has three chairs around it. Other memorabilia fill the room, and two lanterns — one blue fish and one white and red circular paper lantern with gilded components — hang from the ceiling.
Janelle Salanga
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KAZU News
Asian Cultural Experience of Salinas has turned its office into what, aspirationally, they hope Republic Café can become — a museum dedicated to the different communities that once called Salinas's Chinatown their home.

Reverberating bell chimes are part of the soundscape of Salinas’s Chinatown.

Larry Hirahara, who leads walking tours of the former Chinese enclave in the city, called it one of the “sounds of Chinatown.”

“You can hear it across Chinatown,” he said of the bell, adding, “Incense burning would have been the smell of Chinatown.”

Hirahara starts the tours at the Buddhist Temple of Salinas, where the bell rests in a tower in front of the building.

A large, muted jade green bell sits underneath a wood and stone pagoda bell tower.
Janelle Salanga
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KAZU News
The bell in front of the Buddhist Temple of Salinas was brought from Japan, with its bell tower erected in 1936.

He sits on the board of the nonprofit Asian Cultural Experience of Salinas, which works to educate people about the area’s history — much less visible today, with the former Chinatown district populated largely by unhoused people and services that support them. The nonprofit hopes to revitalize the Republic Café, formerly a community hub, by turning it into a museum and cultural center showing the overlapping racial and ethnic stories of the area.

The nonprofit’s work is among several local efforts exploring the physical locations that once homed robust Chinese ethnic enclaves, from Chinatowns to fishing villages, to remember how those histories shaped the Monterey Bay area’s economy and cultural ecosystem.

In the early and mid-1800s, these enclaves thrived. But anti-Chinese sentiment mounted as the century went on, and city renewal efforts, racism and natural disaster displaced many in the 1900s.

Now, according to the 2022 American Community Survey, Chinese people make up just 2% of the population in both Monterey and Santa Cruz counties. Yet those demographics understate the role Chinese enclaves have played in making spaces at city margins that also became homes for multiple racial and ethnic communities.

Reflecting on overlapping ethnic histories 

Despite its moniker, Salinas Chinatown also became home to Filipino, Japanese and Mexican people in Salinas. Established on Soledad Street in 1893 after the first iteration of Chinatown in the city burned down, it welcomed waves of immigrant laborers: Chinese in the 1860s, Japanese in the 1890s, Filipinos in the 1920s and Mexican “braceros” in the 1940s.

The bell at the Buddhist Temple — and the temple itself — is just one institution that reflects that cultural mingling. The temple’s past and current congregation has been largely Japanese, and the bell itself was shipped from Japan.

Larry Hirahara, an elderly Asian man, points to a long framed sepia photo depicting rows and rows of people lined up in front of the Buddhist Temple of Salinas.
Janelle Salanga
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KAZU News
Hirahara points to a photo hung on the walls of the temple taken in 1936. The temple formerly offered Japanese language classes in addition to services.

The physical area also overlapped with Japantown and Filipinotown, with many of the Chinatown businesses being run by Japanese entrepreneurs. Just a few blocks down the street from the Salinas Confucian Church is the Filipino Community Center and Church.

A black and white photo of nine Filipinos on the steps of the Filipino Community Church and Center in Salinas. Most are men in suits, though there is one child in a suit and two women in dresses.
Asian Cultural Experience of Salinas
Filipinos on the steps of the Filipino Community Church and Center in Salinas during the heyday of Salinas Chinatown.

“Chinatowns were usually ‘on the wrong side of the tracks,’” Hirahara said. “They [Filipino, Japanese and Mexican people] felt welcomed because, you know, they probably couldn't live anywhere else.”

He pointed to anti-miscegenation laws — which forbade interracial marriage and specifically targeted Filipino communities — and Japanese incarceration during World War II, especially locally at what is now the Salinas Rodeo Grounds, as two historical phenomena that pushed those Asian groups to the margins.

Suspicion toward the Japanese community even extended toward the Buddhist temple bell, Hirahara said.

“During World War II, after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the mayor of Salinas said that he wanted to make sure that this bell was sequestered because [it] might be used as a signaling device for the Japanese navy,” he said. “They put it into this small building that was underneath it, and so it survived the war that way.”

Chinatowns generally emerged as a function of growing anti-Chinese sentiment, or Sinophobia, that emerged in the mid-1800s. Immigrants who came for the gold rush and stayed in the country faced increased scrutiny from emigrating Americans and Europeans, and were pushed to less desirable areas of cities.

Ultimately, urban renewal eventually displaced the Salinas Chinatown working-class residents in the 1950s.

The area around Republic Café, which has a grey stone facade and is boarded up, is fenced off. The café has a blue and white sign that reads Chop Suey Republic in the shape of a backwards L.
Janelle Salanga
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KAZU News
The site of the former Republic Café in Salinas on May 17, 2024. It was once a bustling restaurant and communal hub where Chinatown residents lived and mingled.

Though those parts of history are unfortunate, Hirahara said, any historical account — from a walking tour to a museum exhibit — wouldn’t be complete without them.

“In teaching [the] history of culture, cultural preservation, those stories have to be told,” he said.

Remembering the Chinese origins of the industry that grew Cannery Row 

To the west, in Pacific Grove, the Walk for Remembrance Committee leads hundreds of visitors on an annual one-mile trek to resurface the city’s Chinese history.

Visitors walk from the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History, which hosts permanent exhibits on those stories, to the site of a formerly thriving Chinese fishing village: Hopkins Marine Station, formerly called Point Alones or Point Almejas.

A stream of people follows four Chinese lion dancers, two in a red lion costume and two in a yellow lion costume, on the road beside Lovers Point.
Susan Lambert
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Walk of Remembrance Committee
The Walk of Remembrance passes by Lovers Point in Pacific Grove on May 11, 2024.

The late Gerri Low-Sabado, who grew up in Monterey, started the walk in 2009. Her great-grandmother Quock Mui was the first recorded Chinese woman in the Monterey Bay area.

Now, her husband Randy Sabado, who grew up in Salinas, continues her work. As part of the committee, he’s pushing for more ethnic studies classes in Pacific Grove schools to ensure the next generation knows the area’s history.

“Even though people live in Pacific Grove, Carmel and Monterey, they still don't know that the Chinese were there in the 1800s, in the 1850s [and] that they essentially established the fishing industry,” Sabado said.

A mural showing a Chinese laborer wearing overalls rolls Carmel Canning Co. crates on dollies next to other Chinese laborers, also wearing overalls, who are stacking crates with the logo of a different fish canning company onto a Southern Pacific Lines train.
Janelle Salanga
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KAZU News
A mural on the walking path to Cannery Row depicts Chinese laborers at work near the Monterey Canning Company.

When emigrating European fishermen came to the peninsula, competition for resources grew steep. The fishing village’s success overlapped with the growth of anti-Chinese sentiment across the United States, including the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882.

The village burned in 1906. An official origin was never found, but Sabado and others suspect it was the result of racism.

When Low-Sabado first began sharing the history of the fishing village at local city council and community group meetings, Sabado, her husband, said he remembers her saying she was shaking.

“I asked her, ‘What are you afraid of?’” he recalled. “And she said, ‘Well, I don’t know who’s in the audience. These people could be descendants of the folks that burned out my [great-grandmother’s] village. What if they don’t want to hear these things?’”

The plaque that commemorates the site of the Chinese fishing village at Pacific Grove sits on a rock. It reads "Early Chinese fishermen settled, struggled, and persevered while raising their families here." Underneath that header is a photo of the village in its prime, showing wooden structures perched on rocky cliffs facing outward and fishing boats.  Information below reads: You are in the center of what used to be one of the largest Chinese fishing villages on the West Coast. From 1853 to 1906, this was the region's Chinese cultural capital. The village was unique among Chinese settlements of the time, because it housed not just single men but whole families with children. Pioneering women had sailed with men in seagoing junks directly from southern China. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 continued to prevent Chinese immigrants from becoming American citizens. But the villagers' children were born citizens. They became some of the nation's first Chinese Americans. The villagers created Monterey Bay's first commercial fishing industry. They dried fish products and shipped them to San Francisco and China. When competition for daytime fisheries threatened them, residents of this village began night-time fishing in what is now one of California's largest fisheries: market squid. Quock Tuck Lee's photo is shown. He collected rare marine specimens for Stanford scientists. Quock was also the last man to leave the village after a fire of suspicious origin raced through it in 1906. For a year afterward, he argued for villagers' rights to stay on the land. Negotiations led to a site nearby on McAbee Beach. Despite injustices, the Chinese families persevered. Their descendants continue to live in the region and make ongoing contributions to our communities.
Janelle Salanga
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KAZU News
The plaque commemorating the site of the former Chinese fishing village. Quock Tuck Lee, mentioned here, was Low-Sabado's great-grandfather.

In 2019, Pacific Grove issued a proclamation recognizing the village and the role of Chinese communities in shaping the city. A plaque now commemorates the site of the village a few steps away from Hopkins Marine Station.

But the damage from the fire was done: It scattered the community. Some residents moved to McAbee Beach and made a home there. Others moved up the coast to San Francisco or inland toward Salinas.

A crowd of walkers follows three people holding pictures of Chinese fishermen who once lived in the fishing village in Point Alones in Pacific Grove.
Susan Lambert
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Walk for Remembrance Committee
Walkers carry photos of Chinese fishermen who were once villagers at Point Alones in Pacific Grove at the 13th Annual Walk for Remembrance on May 13, 2024.

“Some of her relatives, they don't want to speak about it,” Sabado said. “It's just so bad [of an] experience to get your house burned down, and to be kicked out. Even though it was well over a hundred years ago, this trauma kind of continues from generation to generation.”

During the 2022 Walk for Remembrance, Pacific Grove issued an apology to the local Chinese community for acts of violence, racism and discrimination dating back to the 1800s.

To humanize their stories, during the walk, the committee provides pictures of the original village residents to carry.

Sabado hopes they can connect with more village descendants to have an annual reunion, to more fully realize and understand the villagers’ stories — from where they went to how they continued to live in a country “that basically didn’t want you here.”

“We are … using the walk as an education tool to show the next generation there is a history here of Chinese and their contributions being really instrumental,” he said.

Using technology to unlock memories

On the other end of the bay, to the north, a mobile phone app is reviving Santa Cruz’s last Chinatown after flooding from the San Lorenzo River wiped out the area in 1955.

UC Santa Cruz professors Susana Ruiz and Huy Truong grew up familiar with New York’s bustling Chinatown. So when they learned about Santa Cruz’s Chinatown, it stood in stark contrast — and sparked curiosity.

“It's completely visually absent from our landscape,” Ruiz said.

Recent city initiatives have added hints of Chinatown back to its former area. In 2019, Santa Cruz City Council renamed the pedestrian bridge over the San Lorenzo River across from the Front Street Trader Joe’s parking lot to the Chinatown Bridge.

A multicolored, but predominantly red with a yellow underbelly and blue spines, mosaic Chinese dragon is poised on mosaic clouds atop a yellow arch.
Janelle Salanga
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KAZU News
Santa Cruz's Dragon Gate sits above the Chinatown Bridge over the San Lorenzo River near Front Street. The archway and mosaic dragon were installed in Nov. 2020.

Truong says the river is really “what's left of Chinatown.”

Both professors are part of the team that designed the app, called Last Chinatown. (It’s downloadable for iPhone here.) It transforms the complex across from the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History into a public memorial, and is part of an exhibit called Watermarks of the Last Chinatown on display through May 26.

Three people, Susana Ruiz, KT Yamashita and Huy Truong, pose. The Santa Cruz Dragon Gate is in the background hovering slightly above them.
Janelle Salanga
/
KAZU News
UC Santa Cruz faculty members Susana Ruiz, Karen Tei "KT" Yamashita and Huy Truong were all part of the team that worked on the Watermarks for Chinatown app. They pose on Santa Cruz's Chinatown Bridge on May 10, 2024.

The Last Chinatown uses the same technology that powers the popular mobile game Pokémon Go — augmented reality.

Hands hold a phone that displays a drawing of nine houses, four facing five, across a street traversed by animated people. A photo of Chinese photographer George Lee holding his camera sits at the bottom left of the screen. "Locate a memory" is written across the top center part of the image. Some houses have numbers: the locations of 1, 2 and 4 are visible.
Janelle Salanga
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KAZU News
Truong shows the appearance of the Watermarks of Chinatown app at the start of the walking tour.

Pokémon Go uses a smartphone’s camera to impose interactive characters on the user’s real environment. Last Chinatown is site-specific and won’t work outside of the Santa Cruz Chinatown. The interactive characters it imposes are real people interviewed for the app and photographs taken by former Chinatown resident George Lee.

“They [Pokémon Go] got millions of people all around the world to leave their homes and go out to where they’ve never been before,” he said. “So why can’t we harness that same sort of mechanic or motivation for our histories?”

The museum serves as the starting point for the app-guided walking tour.

While walking toward the complex, the app broadcasts Lee’s narration. It accompanies a drawing of the houses that used to sit perpendicular to Front Street and the gardens that used to grow by the San Lorenzo River. Animated residents traverse the roads.

Lee’s photographs pop up on the app while walking by important Chinatown locations, like the river. On the app-guided tour, visitors are prompted to position themselves in the same place Lee was when he took the photographs.

As the images appear, so do the likenesses and voices of former Chinatown residents, like George Ow Jr., who share their memories of what life was like there.

“Chinatown was a place that you might call a ghetto,” Ow Jr. explained on the app, referencing its place in Santa Cruz’s public imagination as a red light district.

“But I never looked upon it as a negative for the Chinese, but also for Black people, because there were other Black people there too, and Mexican people and Filipinos and other minorities, where it wasn't safe or legal for them to buy or live in other places in Santa Cruz,” he continued. “So it was a haven for us.”

That haven — due to the flood — is no more.

But these community efforts, from Santa Cruz to Pacific Grove and Salinas, highlight the historic, cultural and emotional importance of these seemingly invisible histories, not just to one community, but many.

Janelle Salanga served as a reporter at KAZU from January - July 2024.
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