Is anyone else as into Lunar New Year as I? I find the San Fran Chinatown to be very touristy and filled with gawky gwei-lo. The Oakland Chinatown is much more authentic, but smaller and less fabulous. February will soon be upon us, and I need to decided where I want to spend my Lunar New Year.
I agree with you, i like Oakland chinatown better. there is a lot of awkward "gei-lo" in SF chinatown. where are some good spots to hang in oakland chinatown?
what is "gawky gwei-lo", white tourist? When it comes to writing the stuff out in english, I don't understand, but then again, I would not understand it in chinese either, lol.
Yes, the "gawky gwei-lo" are just the white tourists that crowd the streets buying awful (and mostly non-Chinese) trinkets from stores that are really just copies of each other. I speak Mandarin, but gwei-lo is actually a Cantonese term that means "white ghost". It's kind of not a good thing to say but....It illustrated my point. I think they are "gawky" in the sense that they walk into you, so busy staring at everything through the lens of their nikon coolpix, or the D60 (because people like to play photographer in SF).
In contrast, the Oakland chinatown is less touristy and more residential. You don't have trinket shops. You have pharmacies and grocery markets and blanket shops, etc.
Just my personal preference.
Posted By: plainjohn
what is "gawky gwei-lo", white tourist? When it comes to writing the stuff out in english, I don't understand, but then again, I would not understand it in chinese either, lol.
alot of tourist in SF Chinatown (having grown up there and hopefully be able to attend 2013 lunar new year, having missed a good last decade of them). You get them here and there, not the back streets of Ctown, i think most of them go to Jtown. One thing that is always a constant, that i remember, is the rain during the parade, lol
I grew up in both, and I feel that I've always seen annoying tourists. Both there and Japan Town, but SF Chinatown is so awfully gaudy, I usually don't stay long. The fact that you can buy Japanese styled chopsticks with ukiyo-e (japanese woodblock paintings) in SF CHINATOWN, bothers me.
I think I'm just going to go to the one in Oakland. Less showy, but feels more authentic.
Why did you miss the other parades?
Posted By: turady69
alot of tourist in SF Chinatown (having grown up there and hopefully be able to attend 2013 lunar new year, having missed a good last decade of them). You get them here and there, not the back streets of Ctown, i think most of them go to Jtown. One thing that is always a constant, that i remember, is the rain during the parade, lol
As a black woman, and also a foreigner who lived a good majority of my childhood in southern China, the words aren't the same. The N word was a derogatory name given to a class of people brought to different countries against their will and made second class citizens. Gwei lo was given to White imperialists who invited themselves into the countries of others for colonial purposes, and marginalized the existing communities.
I find that, when they buy their cheap "fu manchu" hats and cheap Japanese chopsticks, tourists in Chinatown act very gwei lo in manner. I would not use the word if it didn't fit the action. We will have to politely disagree on what we call obnoxious tourists.
Also, I have the ability to weave in and out of crowds (living in the 3rd world is very crowded), but I still don't like the SF Chinatown atmosphere. I wish it was more residential, like the Oakland one. I wish the Oakland one was larger.
Posted By: kenny_starr
stay off Grant street, that is where the tourists go. You should be ok on the side streets if you want to avoid the majority of tourists.
they don't bother me really, I'm good at weaving in and out. Must be from years of riding Muni...
please don't use gwei lo either, definitely not a good thing to say. Almost like the N word.
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