Chinatown
stands its ground
San Francisco’s renowned community resists the pressures of gentrification and cultural dilution
By Kelcie Lee 🏮 Bay City News
September 25, 2026
Narrow streets bustling with shoppers, rumbling cable cars, renowned dim sum, hidden alleyways, streams of red lanterns — they’re all unmistakable emblems of San Francisco’s world-famous Chinatown.
It has been a San Francisco landmark for almost two centuries, since the California Gold Rush of 1849. The oldest Chinatown in North America, it’s the most famous and, relative to its city’s size, the largest — a place that thousands of Chinese Americans and new immigrants call home. Walk into the maze of people and shops, and it’s like being transported to another world.
But today Chinatown faces challenges: an aging population, threatened encroachment from nearby neighborhoods, rising prices, cultural dilution and even geopolitics. And those issues cause some to question whether the neighborhood will continue to exist in anything like its traditional form.
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“People think that Chinatown is immutable — that it can never change,” said Chinatown Community Development Center CEO Malcolm Yeung. “But that is and will be an existential threat.”
The danger to Chinatown is not going unnoticed by city leaders either; they know that the historic community within Chinatown is a key part of San Francisco’s identity, including its appeal to visitors.
“We’ve got technology coming; we’ve got new developments that are happening in the city,” said Supervisor Alan Wong, who represents the Sunset District. “How do we protect the history, the culture, the language and also the people and affordability while there are these changes in our communities? I think we need to be very conscientious about how we adapt and what policies we make.”
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie has been unequivocal: “As Chinatown goes, so goes San Francisco.”
Along with challenges to the physical space of Chinatown, there are concerns about its cultural identity.
Historically, that identity has revolved around Cantonese culture and language — what some would call the “soul” of Chinatown. That’s because 19th-century immigration patterns that created the community originated in the southern tip of China, bringing Cantonese people with their own distinct language and culture to San Francisco. As one of the central Cantonese diasporic communities in the world, Chinatown has retained that identity.
Chinatown has retained its Cantonese cultural identity, but modern mainland China’s emphasis on ethnic unity and Mandarin as the official language could turn it into a Disneyland-type shell of its former self.
In modern Mainland China, however, the emphasis is on ethnic unity, and the official Chinese language — the one that is taught and commonly spoken — is Mandarin. That puts pressure on Chinese Americans, as does the assimilation of U.S.-born generations, some of whom are abandoning their Cantonese roots, language and culture. Some worry that without its historic cultural identity, Chinatown could become a Disneyland-type shell of a place.
“Of course, if younger generations do not maintain the culture and China’s policies aim to create a more homogenous language, Cantonese will face an uphill battle,” said a statement from advocacy group Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA) in response to questions from Local News Matters about the culture’s future in San Francisco.
To counter such concerns, community leaders and nonprofits are pushing for more cultural events, reinvestment into the community and language revitalization efforts. And city government is funding the $73 million renovation of Portsmouth Square, a project that many Chinatown residents feel is needed despite concerns about the disruption to business and recreation while construction is underway.
But the big question in many people’s minds is whether those measures, private and public, will be enough.
PRESSURE AT ITS DOORSTEP
The story of gentrification and technology booms is one that San Francisco knows well. Change can bring many benefits, not the least of which are jobs, tax revenue to the city and tools that improve our lives.
But it also comes with a cost.
Prices can skyrocket, making affordability a distant dream. The city’s most vulnerable, often belonging to diverse ethnic communities, typically bear the brunt of this change. It’s a tale that’s been repeated again and again, from the Fillmore District to the Mission.
In Chinatown, the financial pressures in many ways flow from its location. The cultural epicenter consists of approximately 30 square blocks surrounded by four prominent city neighborhoods: Financial District, Nob and Russian hills, Union Square and North Beach. In other words, Chinatown’s neighbors are downtown’s skyscraper skyline, a luxury residential community, a retail hub and “Little Italy.”
Hemmed in by other neighborhoods, Chinatown’s small size results in tight living quarters and a shortage of affordable housing. But it has been and remains a home to many multigenerational families, working-age adults, and seniors. The enclave has served as the primary gateway for newly arrived Chinese immigrants, many of whom stayed in single-room occupancy, or SRO, units that provided affordable temporary housing. Many Chinatown residents continue to dwell in these tight spaces.
It’s a stressful situation that sometimes bursts into the open, as it did this summer after a Los Angeles-based property investment business acquired an apartment building at 1120 Jackson Street.
Soon after Nabob Hill LLC bought the building, it began issuing citations to tenants for hoarding, insufficient cleanliness, clutter, safety issues and other public nuisance concerns. Eventually, six tenants received eviction notices, one of whom was a 92-year-old Cantonese-speaking resident. In response, protesters announced the formation of their own tenants association, alleging they were being pushed out of their rent-controlled units by Nabob in hopes of a larger return.
“At every stage, the owners have endeavored to act in full compliance with the law and have extended numerous courtesy notices to the tenants in an effort to address these issues amicably before pursuing further action,” said Daniel Bornstein, an attorney representing Nabob.
Laura Chiera, the executive director of Legal Assistance to the Elderly, noted, however, that evictions of seniors have been growing every year in San Francisco. Many of them have an income that hovers around the federal poverty level.
“Whenever communities start being characterized as ‘blighted,’ that’s when this conversation around changing the identity of the neighborhood really matters,” Community Development Center’s Yeung said. “And it’s because property owners are trying to find a way to basically profit off the value as opposed to reinvesting in what it was.”
The concern about encroachment isn’t new, and historically there’s been pressure on Chinatown’s eastern edge.
In the 1960s and ’70s, San Francisco’s urban renewal led to the dissolution of Manilatown, home to the Filipino American community and directly adjacent to Chinatown.
The International Hotel Manilatown Center on Kearny Street was central to Filipino life, arts and culture, as well as a residence for many Filipino and Chinese seniors. Despite widespread protests, residents were forcibly evicted in 1977, leaving the community displaced. Yeung said he can only hope history doesn’t repeat itself.
“If we didn’t do something as a community, the same thing would happen to Chinatown,” Yeung said.
BLUEPRINT FOR PRESERVATION
This very threat led Chinatown CDC to create the landmark 1986 Chinatown Master Plan. It was a massive effort that prioritized protecting affordable housing, preserving cultural heritage and supporting local business by fighting real estate pressure and using zoning measures to protect the neighborhood.
“Chinatown Master Plan is the single most important thing we’ve ever done because it ensured that Chinatown can continue to exist,” Yeung said. “And so much of our strategy today is rooted in making sure that the master plan continues as an enforceable, living document.”
The plan looked at Chinatown through three key lenses: a “capital” city, a tourist center and a residential village. Chinatown CDC sought to uplift the cultural and political capital of the district, and it continued to nurture tourism. But the most important of the three, Yeung said, is the idea of Chinatown as a residential village, taking into account affordability and livability.
While tourism is a valuable part of Chinatown’s existence, the residential village ecosystem is “the heart and soul” of the neighborhood, Yeung said.
“I can definitively say, if we lose that, we lose Chinatown,” he said.
This residential component makes San Francisco’s Chinatown different from dozens of other Chinatowns around the country.
Yeung pointed to Washington, D.C.’s Chinatown, which is historically significant, but devolved into a commercial and entertainment zone rather than a residential ethnic enclave. When Yeung brought the CDC staff to Washington, he told them, “I want you guys to see what we can’t become, what we’re fighting to not become. It’s a bunch of fast food restaurants with Chinese signs. It’s just terrible. And I think D.C. folks know that, too.”
But today the threat of encroachment is made more complicated by an aging population, declining immigration, the inexorable force of assimilation and the dilution of Cantonese culture.
AGING POPULATION, CHANGING IMMIGRATION
A walk down Stockton Street reveals what feels like an endless number of grocery stores and other businesses, all while dodging people rolling carts and holding bags. It also shows that Chinatown’s population is predominantly Chinese seniors, many of whom are low- or no-income. A 2025 study published by the city’s Office of Resilience and Capital Planning reported that fully 30.4% of Chinatown residents are age 65 or older, one of the highest of all San Francisco neighborhoods.
“Many people don’t know this, but the aging community has the highest number of people in San Francisco that are in poverty. And for every senior, we need to make sure that we have sufficient social services to support them,” Yeung said. “There are many nonprofits in Chinatown that work to support our seniors, whether it be housing, food access, healthcare, and we need to continue to support those services, to ensure that our seniors are able to age in place and age with grace.”
Sunset Supervisor Wong echoed this sentiment, and said he’s heard from many low-income residents that one of their biggest concerns is potentially being pushed out due to unaffordable housing, even with zoning protections and rent control in place.
Chinatown has historically replenished its stock of younger residents by being a gateway for Chinese immigrants. Its community, familiar feeling and essential resources have made it an attractive place for many arriving Chinese families.
But immigration from China is slowing, Yeung said, which threatens to diminish the arrival of new, younger residents.
THE ROLE OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING
If Chinese families could choose where to live, “place number one is always Chinatown,” Yeung said. “Even for the ones who have left Chinatown — and this for me was just really reaffirming — they still want to be connected to Chinatown in deep, deep ways. They still want the place to be where their kids go for school or childcare. They still want to come back to Chinatown to find community in meaningful ways. And we’ve actually had to create a new program for families who are not in Chinatown, but want to still be with Chinatown. There’s something there that’s really special, right?”
In recent decades, the Chinese presence has grown dramatically in other parts of the city, especially the Richmond District around Clement Street, the Sunset District and the Oceanview. But Yeung thinks people would flock back to live in Chinatown if only there were more affordable housing for families.
“Chinatown is a desirable place to live. We just don’t have the sufficient housing stock to meet that demand — that I know,” Yeung said. “I mean it’s expensive. We build housing, we know exactly how much it costs. It’s really hard.”
Chinatown CDC is now managing a new International Hotel, a low-income housing complex that reopened in 2005 on Kearny Street, not far from the old I-Hotel. Yeung said up to 5,000 people are on the waiting list.
“If you could drop $50 billion on our head and we could increase the stock of affordable family and senior housing in Chinatown, I think people would flock back.”
Malcolm Yeung, Chinatown Community Development Center CEO
Additionally, a new 15-story senior living project being built at the old New Asia banquet site on Pacific Avenue could have up to 10,000 applicants for 175 low-income units when it is scheduled to open in 2029, Yeung noted. That project, made possible by a $33.5 million grant from the California Department of Housing and Community Development, will also include a large banquet hall and open space.
For the most part, applicants include monolingual Chinese seniors living throughout the city who want to be in Chinatown or seniors living in the neighborhood’s SROs who want a nicer place. Either way, Yeung said they seek community, and that need will always be there — in Chinatown, and in the greater city.
“If you could drop $50 billion on our head and we could increase the stock of affordable family and senior housing in Chinatown, I think people would flock back,” Yeung said.
Sarah Wan, the director of Community Youth Center in San Francisco, also said Chinese Americans or immigrants whose first stop was Chinatown feel connected to the neighborhood. Even after moving away, many return for shopping at traditional family-owned businesses, English language programming, medical or essential services and community events, such as night markets or street fairs.
“They return to shop for groceries because it is cheaper or there is more variety,” CAA’s statement said. “Or they dine in Chinatown’s local restaurants, because you can only get Chinese-style fried chicken wings at Capital Restaurant, or egg tarts at Golden Gate Bakery, or enjoy high-end restaurants like Mister Jiu’s or Four Kings.”
A LANGUAGE OF RESISTANCE AND RESILIENCE
At the heart of San Francisco’s Chinatown is Cantonese language and culture, and both are threatened.
It is, in some respects, the hardest to quantify, and yet it may be the single most important issue when it comes to the community’s future.
China is roughly the same size geographically as the United States. But far more than in the U.S., the food, language and overall culture differ dramatically in China, based on region and province.
In the southern part of China, which includes Guangdong province, Hong Kong and Macau, the dominant language has been Cantonese — distinct from Mandarin, the official language of China and the most natively spoken language in the world.
Despite occupying a relatively small land area, South China is densely populated by people who speak and embrace Cantonese language and culture. Today, approximately 80 million people speak Cantonese globally, with the name “Canton” deriving from the Portuguese pronunciation of “Guangzhou,” Guangdong province’s capital city.
Historically, many revolutions have started in South China, grounding the language in stories of resistance, Yeung said. He tied this same Cantonese spirit to San Francisco Chinatown’s garment factory strikes in the 1900s that protested working conditions and low wages among many Chinese women.
Since the Gold Rush and the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad, Cantonese language, culture and food have dominated San Francisco’s Chinese communities.
Meanwhile, though, Mandarin is by far the most widely spoken language in China, and the Chinese government has prioritized and systematically promoted it — mandating its use by radio and television announcers, and by teachers.
On July 1 of this year, the Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law took effect in China, formally requiring that schools and government agencies use Mandarin.
As a result of these policies, several minority and regional languages, including Cantonese, have shrunk in education, government and daily life, even in Guangdong province.
The effects of the prioritization of Mandarin “should not be underestimated” for diasporic Chinese communities, according to CAA. Chinese newcomers to the U.S. are increasingly speaking Mandarin, which has an impact on schools and everyday use. And Gen Z has been suffering a substantial decline in their Chinese proficiency, even with family origins in Cantonese-speaking regions, CAA said.
“The relative presence of Cantonese within Chinese American communities is likely to continue declining unless it is actively maintained through families, community organizations, and language programs,” CAA said in its statement.
FINDING LINGUISTIC BALANCE
The prioritization of Mandarin in China is affecting many San Francisco institutions that, Wong said, “want to promote and teach the official language” because it can be seen as more beneficial or useful in the modern world.
But Wong and others say the disappearance of Cantonese from the city is far from a foregone conclusion. A significant population in the city still speaks Cantonese and “it’s important that we continue to do so,” Wong said.
Wan, the Community Youth Center director, sees a linguistic balancing act being played out right in front of her. CYC is a nonprofit organization that supports youth through programming and resources. Its Chinatown office at the Willie “Woo Woo” Wong Playground hosts summer programming, career exploration, STEM classes and cultural events. More specifically, the office focuses its support on immigrant youth within their first two years of arrival to the U.S.
Wan has seen an uptick in Mandarin speakers within the last six years, but experiences surrounding the languages are a lot more intertwined than most think, she noted. In fact, she sees that young people who only speak Mandarin are increasingly also embracing Cantonese, and are drawn to the idioms, slang, similarities and nuances between the languages.
According to Wan, Mandarin-speaking children often will pick up Cantonese from their friends, allowing them to learn from one another without judging each other for the language they use or cultural values they celebrate.
“Many young people I meet, they actually can speak Mandarin, Cantonese and English at the same time,” Wan said. “How can we promote that, lift that up, rather than just saying I will take one language over the other language?”
The language issue is playing out in higher education as well. After years of reducing Cantonese classes, administrators at City College of San Francisco in 2021 cited budget concerns and proposed eliminating them altogether.
At the time, Julia Quon was a nursing student who enrolled in Cantonese classes with the goal of bettering her language proficiency.
“I was shocked because Cantonese is such an important part of San Francisco’s history and identity, as well as the social services here, the cultural aspects of Cantonese,” she said.
Inspired by a similar movement at Stanford University, Quon, Alan Wong and others started the Save Cantonese campaign at CCSF, mobilizing students, educators, healthcare workers, business owners, first responders and cultural organizations. The group collected hundreds of testimonials and petition signatures to present at public meetings while hosting protests and community events to advocate directly with CCSF leadership. Eventually, CCSF capitulated and agreed to create a nine-unit program.
Still, Quon noted, it isn’t state-funded. Unlike Mandarin, Spanish, French or other language certificates that receive state recognition, CCSF’s Cantonese classes are simply acknowledged by the school, and “will always be first on the chopping block without the legitimacy of it as a state-funded certificate.”
‘IT STARTS WITH YOURSELF’
Yet another source of pressure on Cantonese is simply English-language assimilation.
Wan said many in the younger generation use only English to communicate, instead of embracing the language they learned at home, which leaves a substantial population of people who can listen to and understand, but not speak Cantonese.
“Cantonese faces pressure from two directions,” CAA said. “On one hand, many U.S.-born Chinese Americans have shifted primarily to English and no longer speak a Chinese language fluently. On the other, newer immigrants from China are increasingly Mandarin-speaking. The relative presence of Cantonese within Chinese American communities is likely to continue declining unless it is actively maintained through families, community organizations, and language programs.”
For Yeung, there’s not one simple solution or answer to the challenges faced by Cantonese. He thinks it starts with awareness of the problem and intentionality in keeping and honoring culture. Both Yeung and Quon hope to see a reinvestment in academic institutions and programs that honor Cantonese stories and culture.
“It starts with yourself,” Quon said. “Each of us has our own responsibility, not only to ourselves, but to our grandparents and the community around us, to preserve the language that is important to our ancestors.”
IDENTITY GOES BEYOND WORDS
CDC Planning Director Rosa Chen, who grew up in Chinatown speaking Cantonese, said she worries that the decline of Cantonese goes beyond the question of language. It poses, she said, a threat to the very spirit of Chinatown.
Yeung agrees.
“Something in the identity of Chinatown could be lost, not just the cultural traditions and the celebrations, but the tradition of how we’re organized,” Yeung said. “And I think that will erode our community power as a whole. And so I take these questions really seriously, not just because it’s good to have language and food and all that kind of stuff, but actually what it means for our ability to stay organized, keep organized, stay together and express collective voice and will. I think that is something that’s really at risk.”
Yeung pointed to another Chinatown that lost its unique Cantonese identity. Growing up, he spent a portion of his childhood in Yokohama, Japan, where he frequented the city’s Chinatown, historically a predominantly Cantonese-speaking cultural district. When he returned to visit years later, Yeung said the businesses, spirit and culture there had faded. He worries the same thing could hit San Francisco’s Chinatown.
While the Cantonese language is the easiest example to point to, Yeung said there’s something special about southern Chinese culture, art and food that are just as important. To those unfamiliar, it might be hard to distinguish various Chinese cultures, but he said Cantonese culture is “a large symbol of pride.”
Wong said growing up, both Chinatown and the Cantonese language played a large part in his life, and he added: “Cantonese cooking, in my opinion, is the premier food in the world. I don’t care what anyone says — period, full stop.”
But with the changes in immigration patterns, Yeung said it’s become more difficult to find people to replenish the workforce of Cantonese cooks. He worries that without intentional investment in culinary schools or workforce training centers, flavors and commercial traditions that bring popular dim sum and stir-fries could fade.
REASONS FOR HOPE
Still, no one is suggesting that San Francisco Chinatown is at immediate risk of disappearing.
While fully cognizant of the threats, community leaders express guarded optimism it will survive by displaying the same kind of creativity and resourcefulness that emerged during the potentially devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We saw how the community came together to protect one another,” CAA said in its statement. “CCDC passed out free meals and free COVID tests to its senior citizens. CAA helped residents apply for unemployment benefits. Night markets brought foot traffic back into Chinatown. This resilience will continue to be Chinatown’s greatest asset.”
And there are some encouraging developments regarding Cantonese preservation.
In the arts, for example, Cantonese plays are returning to Chinatown at places such as the Clarion Performing Arts Center.
CAA noted the rise in popularity of Cantopop music, Hong Kong films, Cantonese television dramas and a nostalgia for all things Hong Kong, which it hopes will also reinforce Cantonese language and culture.
Banquets, the Chinese New Year parade, street fairs, festivals and bakeries are all things that “stitch the fabric together” in bringing life to the southern Chinese spirit in Chinatown, Yeung said.
He hopes to see more support for artists, storytellers and documentarians in the community.
“We need to love them more,” Yeung said. “We need to shine a light on them more, and lift them up as the assets that they are.”
And at the foundation of it all, Yeung said, is an ongoing tradition of forming associations and local mutual-aid groups as a way to “organize ourselves.”
That, Yeung said, is fundamentally important because it centralizes power and creates a collective voice — a potent influence behind efforts to preserve Chinatown’s vibrancy and character.
Historically, these associations were based on shared family names, trades or home villages as a way to conduct mutual aid, mediation and cultural preservation.
One of the best-known associations, the Chinese Six Companies, was formed among prominent merchants from Guangdong province, and it acted as the main governing body, legal protector and social safety net for early Chinese immigrants facing intense discrimination in America. It and other groups remain very much a force today.
“The associations, it’s utterly and completely remarkable the way that we form ourselves. From 1847 until 2026, it’s like everything’s an association,” Yeung said.
“There’s like 200 associations in Chinatown!” he added. “That’s remarkable. Everyone can find something that they can belong to — that’s power.”
These powerful organizations, like such organizations everywhere, are not entirely without controversy — including a recent high-profile lawsuit by a former staffer alleging sexual harassment at the Chinese Chamber of Commerce.
Overall, though, groups like the Six Companies clearly play a crucial role in providing cohesion and leadership to the community.
With this infrastructure of powerful organizations, coupled with potent preservation legislation, reinvestment in infrastructure and a fierce determination to retain Cantonese culture, Chinatown may survive the pressures of encroachment and assimilation.
It remains true that the neighborhood faces a web of forces that tug at its existence and spirit.
But it is still very much a home and a valued community. And community leaders are betting, as Quon said, “it can remain a place where people build their lives, raise families and preserve their culture.”
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