[San Francisco] Chinatown

Week 1
Day 6 (Nov 25th, Tuesday)
Day 4 in San Francisco - Chinatown

There's a Chinese saying that says "wherever there's water, there's Chinese people". Today we paid a visit to the very famous San Francisco Chinatown, which is actually located just a few blocks away from our hotel.

The gateway into Chinatown, with a plaque bearing the words "天下为公" which means "Let there be justice under heaven". A fair thing to say, if only it were true. Then there would not be so many innocent lives lost.

There are many copper statues of animals and children throughout the US, just like those seen in MJ's Neverland. This tortoise statue reminds me of this ridiculous piece of news I just saw today - "90 year old tortoise finally pops its cherry".

On Grant Avenue

Old St. Mary's Church. Below the clock there's a plaque that reads "Son, observe the time and fly from evil". Very intriguing.

Cable car passing through Chinatown.

Now this whole Chinatown thing didn't really excite me much. Being Chinese, it just felt familiar, like I was strolling the streets of Hong Kong and Petaling Street in KL. Chinatown smelled of dried foodstuff and cheap t-shirts and old men counting money behind their cash registers. If not because mom wanted to buy some American ginseng and traditional foodstuff, I think we would have just driven through the area and left. :-P

The immigrants here did everything they could to reconstruct a mirror image of their homeland. Even the banks in this area are housed in buildings with pagoda roofs! This is the Bank of America.

I saw from Joan's blog that there's a shop in Chinatown that sells very very yummy egg tart. Wee Meng confirmed it. But where's that shop? I wanna try the egg tart too.

For lunch, we just popped into the nearest restaurant that looked the most decent (and with a very tempting display of roast duck outside). Yee's Restaurant.

This is after we had our lunch. Thumbs up!

This is pigeon meat... I think. But mom says the slices are too big to be pigeon.

Fried beef strips with peas

Mongolian-style something... can't remember

Everything was very oily but it was one of the best meals we'd had for days! Enough of hamburgers, more hamburgers and cup noodles everyday... we were craving for hot, steamed rice and Chinese food! And eating in Chinatown is really cheap too compared to other parts of San Francisco!

When we came out from the restaurant I discovered a laminated magazine page stuck to the wall outside. It seems that Yee's Restaurant was named restaurant with the "Best Peking Duck" by The Western Insider! We immediately ta-paoed Peking duck for our dinner.

There were soooooooo many Chinese everywhere, for a moment there I swear I thought I was in Hong Kong and not America! The street signs there had Chinese words on it too, Pacific Street is 柏思威街... I don't see Americans there making a big fuss out of street signs unlike our Malaysian politicians!

Before lunch mom had already bought mushrooms, American ginseng, fish maw, etc. Now after she regained her energy after lunch she popped into more supermarkets to buy more stuff - fruits, vegetables, etc. It was like a normal shopping day in Ipoh old town for her.

Baby waiting outside sundry shop...

...while this street cleaning machine caught my eye. I also saw a traffic police summoning two blacks for some traffic offence.

Everything's so gigantic there... I still have my mini Japanese sweet potatoes from Cameron Highlands that I haven't eaten yet that's only the size of my finger.

The sea cucumber is expensive though... mom only bought the South African thorned sea cucumber (on the right) which has like blunt thorns all over its body.

What a morning in the bustling streets of Chinatown... now we had had enough of walking and shopping and we were ready to leave for the City of Angels with the beautiful aroma of roast Peking duck in our car... ^__^

The Transamerica Pyramid - I think it houses finance offices inside or something

A closer look at the Transamerica Pyramid

Crossing the Bay Bridge... goodbye my beautiful and romantic San Francisco... hope to see you again...

There's really an island called Treasure Island! It's just off San Francisco... something like our Pulau Jerejak at Penang.