Group 5 Blog Post 3

    Two weeks ago, I (Christine) attended the class field trip to SF Chinatown for a tour led by David Lei. Mr. Lei shared impressionable bits and pieces of Chinese history that I was never aware of. It was extremely rewarding to learn such extensively detailed information about how SF Chinatown has contributed to national history through periods of exclusion, injustice, and hatred. I was most astonished at how richly SF Chinatown provided opportunities for low-income immigrants that desired to achieve the success, wealth, and stability that they have been yearning for decades and through family generations.

    Roger Pincombe, director and co-owner of the Great Star Theater, also provided an intriguing tour of his theater, the only remaining theater in SF Chinatown today. Pincombe and his wife have a 10-year contract with this building, allowing them to make necessary renovations and miscellaneous additives in order to keep the theater in-tact, ADA-accessible, and welcoming for the modern audience. To exemplify this, Pincombe showed us the wooden armrests that are the originals from the 1920s, which is incredibly impressive as they are durable enough to support the new, bright red seat cushions that Pincombe purchased in the past 3 years. Upon entering the theater, these red seats boast a theater-type atmosphere that welcomes the audience to sit down. The colorful light bulbs tracing the arch of the stage excites the audience to be immersed in the play. The Great Star Theater, complimented by its renovations, rich history, and choice of showings (from ballet to circus), is an immersive experience, one that made me question what the Grandview Theater was like when we later visited the building on the tour.

(High-angled view of the Great Star Theater)

(Exterior of the Great Star Theater)

(Backstage of the Great Star Theater)

    The Grandview Theater, as it is no longer in business, is interestingly now a Buddhist store. I was surprised to find that it was a lot larger than it looked from the storefront; the ceilings were exceptionally high, and the store extended to the back. I noticed that most of the architecture was fairly simple: it looked like a normal room with a high arch-shaped ceiling from the front to the back. There was about ⅙ of the overall store in the back that was separated from the rest of the store with a curtain. I presume that this back area was where the seats began, though I could not confirm because of the curtain. After looking around the store myself, I walked to the front where the cashier was folding paper price tags. Unfortunately, because of the language barrier, I was unable to communicate with the cashier and other female workers. She did, however, slightly nod her head when I showed a picture of a theater. It was interesting to note her subtle reaction to my questions because it seemed like the historical aspect of the store was preserved enough to be recognized, but not enough to be framed or talked about regularly in today’s use of the building. With the countless tables and cabinets of religious items, children’s toys, and cultural symbols, I would never have known that it was a theater in the past. So while it was disappointing to not see the remains of the theater in the same way that the Great Star Theater had, I enjoyed seeing the Buddhist store to imagine, using the research from our previous blog post, what the Grandview Theater would have been like if it was still here today.

(Grandview Theater now a Buddhist store)

(Exterior of the Grandview Theater with Buddhist arrangements)

(Grandview Theater next to a Dim Sum restaurant in the middle of Chinatown)

    All things considered, however, it is still disheartening to see that such few traces remain of such a historical and culturally impactful theater. Grandview was the first theater that intentionally sought to serve the Chinese population of San Francisco, historically ushering in the promotion of Chinese films to the community and thus fostering that cultural community through the showing of the founder (Joseph Sunn Jue)'s own original films; the films even featured Chinese actors who lived and worked in San Francisco, thus supporting the local underrepresented Chinese entertainers through employment and exposure. Jue himself was truly a jack-of-all-trades as he was a producer, script-writer, sound technician, and more for the films he created, thus not only helping in distributing Chinese films but actively partaking in creating them as well. This theater was a place of community and connection for Chinese immigrants who were learning to navigate the SF area, so it is unfortunate that as the cultural barriers weakened after the war, so did the flow of revenue and patrons for the all-Chinese theater— eventually leading to the closing and selling of the once-prominent cinema house. The new owners who ended up unwittingly discarding the hundreds of Jue's films after the property purchase did not even know that they were throwing away decades of cultural production and history. Even now, the Buddhist store cashiers may not know much about the significance of their property's predecessors. Similarly, as our group continues to try to find interviewees connected to or knowledgeable about Grandview, its history, and its founder Joseph Sunn Jue, we find ourselves hitting literal dead ends as we keep discovering that our potential prospects have long since passed away; it seems that Grandview's history is one that has been loosely buried, so if anything, our research and desire to uncover its past significance is all the more meaningful and exciting now.