Then … There’s a lot going on in the next montage image; kitchen workers prepare dim sum through the window of a restaurant while reflected pedestrians pass by outside.
… and Now, this was the Hong Kong Teahouse at 835 Pacific Avenue; it’s now the New Wing Long Food market. The arrow points to that part of the window, only recently covered by bars, that the camera spied into.
As confirmation that this is the right place, let’s take a closer look at the movie’s window reflection. Since it’s a reverse mirror window image, we first reverse it, like so…
… then we turn around and see if the same image is across the street. Voila! The building is part of the Ping Yuen North public housing complex at 838 Pacific Avenue, photographed here in 2019. The red box outlines the area in the movie image above.
… and Now, following a 2019 street level remodel, only the section at far right in this view (mostly obscured by trees) remains unchanged today.
Then … Next, viewed from Jackson Street across from the Tao Tao restaurant at 675 Jackson, the Transamerica Pyramid office tower rises in the background .
… and Now, newer structures partially block the view of the pyramid from here. 675 Jackson, currently vacant and recently listed for sale, has retained its oriental styling.
Then … Here’s another restaurant; after struggling for some time to find it, CitySleuth was bailed out by ReelSF reader Notcom who came up with its location. It was Meemie’s Coffee Shop restaurant at 727 Washington on the corner of Walter U. Lum Place. The view on the left looks through both corner windows across Walter U. Lum Place and Portsmouth Square towards the Bank Of America Center at 555 California Street rising in the distance. Another clue was the reflection of three window arches from a building across the street (arrows).
… and Now, the current tenant, Sweet Mart, has been shuttered since the pandemic but in this pre-pandemic photo the vertical post inside the corner window that supported the shelves, above, was still there.
… and Now, here’s the building opposite showing the window arches reflected in the Then image above.
Then … What?? An Italian market in the heart of Chinatown? At least it’s advertising Chop Suey. This is 699 Jackson on the corner of Grant Avenue.
… and Now, the store now sells souvenirs, not food, but that old Chop Suey sign is still there.
Here, the camera slowly pans along a large group of elderly ladies as they congregate on a sidewalk. But where? Director Wayne Wang told CitySleuth that the scene was filmed “somewhere on Kearny Street” but even knowing that, this location remains as yet unfound. Anyone who recognizes it is asked to contact citysleuth@reelsf.com.
Also yet to be found is this store displaying a Confucius figurine in a festive tinsel-framed window.
Then … In this, the movie’s final image, the sign and the 1980 city directory tells us where this window was filmed. It’s one of the rooms of the Wing On hotel at 917 Kearny Street. The Far East Travel Service store is below it at 911 Kearny Street.
… and Now, the sign today advertises the current tenant - Wayne’s Liquors. The name has changed but it’s the same original sign, even down to the support wires, a convenient clothes line then as now for the occupant of the room. The Wing On hotel now operates as a single-room-occupancy building called the 917 Kearny Street Apartments.
… and Now, a wide angle view of the window and Wayne’s Liquors. The hotel entrance is the orange doorway at far right.
Wayne Wang ends the movie with an extended montage of real-life Chinatown juxtaposed against stereotypical lyrics of Pat Suzuki’s stirring rendition of the Rodgers and Hammerstein song ‘Grant Avenue’ from the 1958 Broadway stage musical ‘Flower Drum Song' - a choice that he later said was “tongue in cheek”.
Then … Appropriately the montage begins with a view stretching south down Grant Avenue from Jackson Street. The banner strung across the street adds to the truncated array of exotic (to the American eye) blade signs, many of them restaurant names.
… and Now, there are not as many signs today as there used to be, but that’s mitigated somewhat by the colorful overhead array of lanterns.
Then … A young man passing by hardly notices the rain as elderly ladies huddle under umbrellas in front of a window displaying a draped selection of patterned materials. The magazine rack against the tiles on the left alerted CitySleuth to this location - he had seen it earlier in the movie. This is the Washington Street side of the Imperial Fashion corner store at 867 Grant Avenue.
… and Now, the Heart Of Shanghai souvenir shop is the current tenant. The tiles seen above are behind the bubblegum machine below; they are hidden here by the retracted security bars but they have since been stuccoed over anyway.
Then … Next up, a detail on a pagoda-styled roof.
… and Now, this is the roof of 743 Washington Street, a branch of Bank of Canton when the movie was filmed but now a branch of EastWest bank. It’s a building with a very interesting history …
This used to be the Chinese Telephone Exchange which opened in 1901 at which time, pre dialing, the operators had to know all of the Chinatown customers by name and address because it was considered rude to refer to a person by number. Each operator also had to speak the many dialects of Chinese spoken by the residents. It was no surprise perhaps that the original male operators were soon replaced by women, on account of their "good temper". Here’s the building in 1947 (as seen in the movie The Lady From Shanghai two years before the exchange closed). Since then it has over the years housed a succession of banks.
The Lady From Shanghai also preserved a record of the inside of the exchange with this shot of two of the "good tempered" operators.
Then … Moving on, a fascination with texture might have drawn the filmmakers to this brick wall. Old bricks, stains, repairs, rusted iron anchor plates, wilting wooden window frames - you name it, you’ll find them all here. Not to mention a voyeuristic glimpse of an undergarment hung out to dry.
… and Now, over a period of many months CitySleuth, having committed this movie frame to memory, looked out for it every time he walked the streets of Chinatown. Then one day … Eureka! … there it was. 44 years later the anchor plates and the brick repairs around the windows remain unchanged. One big difference - the ground level has been raised, covering the previously exposed basement. And the rough-hewn charm of the venerable brickwork has been marred by garish graffiti-covering paint.
… and Now, it’s the south wall of an old building set back at the rear of this parking lot on Washington Street between Kearny and Grant (map).
Then … A moment of levity follows as an elderly lady walks along a balcony then stops and sways back and forth to the background music.
… and Now, she is outside apartment 117 at the Ping Yuen Central public housing complex at 711 Pacific Avenue (map) - the red box below outlines the area framed above.
… and Now, here’s a wider view of the apartment complex - the arrow points to apartment 117. The movie footage in the Then image above was filmed from the street through the railings. Ping Yuen Central was one of 3 sections of the housing project that opened in 1951 (Ping Yuen East, Ping Yuen Central, Ping Yuen West). A fourth section (Ping Yuen North) was added in 1961. (The name Ping Yuen translates to Tranquil Gardens).
Then … Next, a peek into a bakery window that’s displaying a kung fu poster, possibly at director Wang’s request; he references Asian stereotypes several times in the movie. The menu is also on display - it tells us where it is: Ping Yuen Bakery.
Then … The Ping Yuen Bakery was at 1066 Grant Avenue, glimpsed from Jo’s cab earlier in the movie (on the right, on the southeast corner of Grant Avenue and Pacific).
… and Now, that site, just like the old Telephone Exchange that appeared earlier in the montage, is also a branch of EastWest Bank.
Then … Jo has given up on finding Chan Hung. “Here’s a picture of Chan”, he says, “and I still can’t see him”. The two friends are posing on either side of a Buddha in front of a gift shop. (That’s director Wayne Wang posing as Chan). The reflection in the window of the building across the street was the clue that led CitySleuth to this location.
… and Now, here’s the same shop window today with the same reflection. This is the Canton Bazaar gift shop at 616 Grant Avenue. Compare the Then and Now reflection within the highlighted area but don’t be fooled by the fact that one of the reflected building’s windows below its carved wooden pediment has since been bricked up.
… and Now, the reflected building was then, and still is today, the Bank of America Chinatown branch at 701 Grant on the corner of Sacramento. Note the carved wooden pediments that span groups of three windows; one of each group is now bricked up. The blue box outlines the area reflected in the Canton Bazaar shop window (that reflection of course is a reversed mirror image).
Bank of America opened the branch in 1962 in what was originally the Nanking Fook Woh Company building. In this 1960s photo we see the window (at left, partially obscured) before it was bricked up.
The Canton Bazaar building was built soon after the 1906 earthquake - it’s seen here in a 1910 photograph that also shows the Nanking Fook Woh Co. building on the left. Had the man next to the Canton Bazaar entrance stopped and looked back he would have seen the same reflection in its window of the area outlined in yellow that director Wang captured behind Jo seventy years later.
… and Now, it’s been 114 years since it opened and the Canton Bazaar is still there. In Chinatown, a neighborhood of relative stability, many things resist change.
On a historical note, the Nanking Fook Woh Company imported and sold oriental fine arts. This colorful lithograph depicted it soon after it was built. Note the cable car on Sacramento Street running on the Sacramento & Clay line that would eventually close down in 1942.
And, thirty or so years later, here’s a cable car at that corner one year before the line closed down; the tenant in the Nanking Fook Woh Company building at that time was T. Iwata & Co. Incidentally, the telegram office on the left appeared in scenes in the 1948 noir Walk A Crooked Mile and in the 1949 noir Impact - each posted in this blog.
Director Wang trained a camera on a bus stop to capture the ebb and flow of the activity there. For a minute and a half we are voyeurs as shoppers pass by and make their way in and out of the two stores. Waiting passengers gaze expectantly in the direction of the oncoming bus in hopes it will hasten its arrival. The GIF below is a brief representation.
Then … the clue to finding this location was the brick detail highlighted below; fortunately it’s still there today. The bus stop was on the west side of Stockton Street near Jackson alongside a restaurant and a flower shop.
… and Now, here’s that location today. The rectangle outlines the movie frame’s field of view; the oval outlines two vertical columns of bricks, now partly covered with security bars but the exposed left column matches Then and Now. On the right Wellman’s Pharmacy at 1053 Stockton was the Lai Wah Florist when Chan was filmed while the restaurant on the left was then, and still is, the Gourmet Kitchen at 1051 Stockton.
That same bus stop was the subject of a wide angle 1970s photo by Bob Eckert Photography, perfectly capturing the diurnal hustle and bustle of Chinatown. But you won’t find the bus stop at this location now, it’s been moved south one block.
Interesting trivia - the movie Petulia was filmed here twelve years before Chan. It included a scene showing Julie Christie shopping on Stockton Street in Chinatown. The boutique on the left, street number 1053, was the Lai Wah flower shop seen above (the Chinese characters on the window say so and the phone number was the flower shop’s number) repurposed for this scene to complement the colorful fruit stand next to it.
Undulating waves and ripples fills the screen, capturing Jo’s confusion as he admits he no longer knows who Chan Hung really is. He recounts one by one in voiceover how everybody he has asked remembers Chan as a completely different person. Is he real or is he really the embodiment of the Chinatown community?
Then … Jo muses on while driving along Grant Avenue. Just as in the movie’s opening scene the sidewalk storefronts pass by horizontally while concurrently the upper floors of the buildings, reflected and flipped 90 degrees by the steeply raked windshield, overlap and slide by vertically.
… and Now, he was passing the elaborately oriental-styled building on the corner of Grant and Clay, home of the Soo Yuen Benevolent Association and the Louie Fong and Fong Family Association. This corner had also been seen earlier in the movie.
