San Francisco Chinatown traumatized after looting, struggles to recover
It was a sleepless night. Non-stop messages were popping up in the Chinatown merchants’ social media chat room, showing the photos and videos of the latest looting scenes happening in San Francisco downtown.
And the nightmares finally came: the looters ran from Market Street and Union Square, entering the neighboring Chinatown, at about 11:30 pm.
From Saturday(May 30) night to early Sunday(May 31) morning, hundreds of Chinatown merchants in that Wechat room were holding their phones witnessing the vandalizing, stealing, and the destruction of the quiet community.
Dozens of storefronts and parked cars’ windows were smashed, valuables were stolen, and at least one resident of Chinatown, who was trying to stop the looting, was beaten up.
Five days later, the streets of Chinatown regained its tranquility, with plenty of the businesses not only choosing to close indefinitely, but also installing the wooden boards and bigger locks.
People in the community recalled the memories of that night and remained shocked, intimidated, and traumatized.
“I feel scared”, Eva Lee, the president of the Chinatown Merchants Association, told the World Journal. Some of her properties are on Grant Avenue, where the looters hit the hardest. Fortunately, she said that her properties were intact, “but I am still worried about our merchant tenants because the merchants across Chinatown are scared.”
The unprecedented looting in Chinatown also rewrote the neighborhood’s history. Eva Lee said she has never experienced such a riot in Chinatown before. Pam Tau Lee, the co-founder of the Chinese Progressive Association, who’s born and raised in Chinatown and now 72 years old, also said she didn’t know of any similar events in Chinatown, until this one.
“Looting in Chinatown in the modern era has been rare”, said Doug Chan, the chair of the board of the Chinese Historical Society of America, which is located on the Clay Street of Chinatown. He mentioned the brutal “1877 riots in San Francisco” against the Chinese community and another looting in Chinatown that lasted “relatively short time period after the Great Earthquake and before the fire in 1906”. Both incidents dated more than a century ago.
One rumor concerning the community is that there were clashes and bloodshed between a Chinatown resident and looters on Grant Avenue that night. A person with knowledge of the situation confirmed the incident to the World Journal.
Tony Lau, who worked in the home renovation industry, arrived in Chinatown the next day after the looting to help the merchants and residents to install wooden boards for their broken front doors. He confirmed that a resident living on Grant Avenue went down to the street to stop the looters that night. And the looters summoned a crew to assault that resident physically, and smash the residential building’s front door.
Lau helped board up the residential building’s door on Sunday, so he learned the incident. The owner of the building declined the interview request through Lau, expressing the concern of the publicity of the address of the building.
On Sunday morning, blood stains can be spotted on the sidewalk in front of the building.
On Grant Avenue and every other corridor in Chinatown, wooden boards flourished to protect and cover the storefront glass, while some graffiti was painted on some iron doors. Many jewelry stores and gift shops on Grant were targeted in the looting. Now the facades have been renovated, but almost all of the stores were closed, including the Bank of America branch on Grant.
Few pedestrians were passing by on Grant, as the businesses struggled to recover.
Luk Fook Jewellry, a well-known store on Grant, got broken into during the looting. The owner of the shop, who’s not identified here, told the World Journal that they lost several electronic devices, and no jewels were stolen because all the displayed products were packed up and put away safely when the pandemic shut down the store.
Zhanting Chen, who operates a hair salon on Sacramento Street, reflected on what she saw in the WeChat room that night and still felt terrified. She said that at about 11:30 pm, there were videos of rioters running into Chinatown from the archway gate on Grant Avenue, and then the vandalizing started.
In the WeChat room, messages from residents in Chinatown and the grassroots Chinatown patrolling team “United Peace Corps” constantly updated the scenes of smashing, looters gatherings, and police vehicle presence. The chat continued until about 3 am in the morning and merchants were anxious in waiting to find out whether their stores would be the victims.
“I’m so nervous that I can’t sleep at all”, said Chen.
The looting and the pandemic are now doubling the threats. Chinese Hospital, the only hospital in Chinatown that is open 24-hour/seven-day, has strengthened its security measures after the looting disturbance. Chief Executive Jian Zhang said that she was really “concerned” after knowing the issue, and immediately contacted the Chinatown police station branch and the city supervisor’s office asking for more protection, especially for the on-duty medical staff and the patients in the hospital.
The lootings in the San Francisco downtown area happened after the protest over the Minnesota police killing of George Floyd. Till now, the exact situations, developments, and consequences of the Chinatown sufferings are still unclear.
On Sunday(May 31), San Francisco Police Department(SFPD) responded that they “do not have the number of businesses that were affected yet nor the total amount of arrests made”, and “are still gathering lots of pertinent information from last night’s/this morning’s downtown violence”.
Five days later on June 5, the World Journal made another inquiry about the police actions and the updates of the investigation in the Chinatown looting, but has not heard back yet.
“We have to help each other right now”, said Eva Lee. “We don’t want the bad guys to succeed.”
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A shorter version of this story in Chinese language appeared on the World Journal on Jun 6, 2020.
