San Francisco’s Chinatown on Zoom with authors Dick Evans and Kathy Chin Leong
Even though the 2021 Chinese New Year Parade has been cancelled due to COVID- Enjoy this book and take a self-guided walking tour of Chinatown to celebrate the Year of the Ox!
“A vividly realized tribute to one of Northern California’s most revered cultural neighborhoods.” —Kirkus
February 11, 2021 @ 5:30 pm
This meeting will take place over Zoom. To receive an invitation to the meeting, please sign up using the Eventbrite link below. You will receive an invitation and a link to Zoom two days before the event.
If you have not received a Zoom link by the day before the event, please contact us at rsvp@milibrary.org
Following his award-winning book on San Francisco’s Mission District, Dick Evans turns his attention to Chinatown, the fifth of a square mile that attracts more tourists than the Golden Gate Bridge but where the median household income is a quarter of the citywide average. From delicious dim sum to wok-filled shops, from iconic red lanterns to elaborate parade floats, from inside single-room occupancy apartments to outdoor games of Chinese chess in Portsmouth Square, Evans captures a place filled with diverse residents and a unique mélange of American and Chinese architecture, cuisine, and culture. Vibrant images are interspersed with sidebars highlighting particular people and institutions, deepening viewers’ immersion into this community. Kathy Chin Leong’s lucid text introduces readers to the history of the neighborhood, as well as to themes of tourism, daily life, and celebrations. At the heart of the book is a tight-knit community and a thriving neighborhood, which welcomes immigrants with supportive institutions and entices tourists to experience a wide array of Chinese traditions. Evans’s photos highlight a place undergoing visible progress but, unlike other San Francisco neighborhoods that are gentrifying, maintaining its unique character and authenticity.
Admission: Mechanics’ Institute Members FreePublic Sliding Scale $5 to $10
Questions? Pam Troy – 415-393-0116
About the Speakers
Dick Evans, Photographer
Dick Evans became interested in photography as a graduate student at Stanford University and continued his practice throughout a forty-seven-year career in the global metals industry that took him all over the world. San Francisco always remained home base, though, and he now lives in the city with his wife, Gretchen. Evans is the author of the photography book San Francisco and the Bay Area: The Haight- Ashbury Edition (InTransit Images and The Booksmith, 2011), as well as The Mission (Heyday) and San Francisco’s Chinatown (Heyday).
Kathy Chin Leong
Kathy Chin Leong is an award-winning journalist who has been published in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Sunset Magazine, and many other newspapers and magazines. As a second-generation ABC (American-born Chinese), she grew up in San Francisco’s Sunset District and spent nearly every weekend in Chinatown visiting her grandmother and helping her mother shop for groceries.
