Editor\u2019s note: This essay was written for the 2025 API Summer Journalism Internship program, hosted by the Alliance of Chinese Americans San Diego.<\/p>\n
Padres jerseys fill downtown San Diego, sidewalks blocked as people pose for selfies. Amidst loud pop music, at a corner along Third Avenue, white bricks build a small Chinese mission. Once the Chinese Community Church, this building now houses the San Diego Chinese Historical Museum, holding fading memories of the Chinatown once filling the street. For about 10 years, Amie Lee Garapich has led the museum\u2019s Asian Pacific Historic District Walking Tour, taking place on the first Sunday of every month. Last summer, weaving through San Diego tourists, Garapich led the walk reviving the rich Chinese history of San Diego.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Starting in the museum, attendees admired its walls lined with dioramas, one containing a wooden street of Chinatown \u2014 empty except for a few miniature figures and the plain, modest buildings beside them. Garapich, born and raised in Chula Vista and half-Chinese and half-English, recalls the appearance of Chinatown in the late 1940s and 1950s.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was young, I would come down here to San Diego\u2019s Chinatown, maybe to go to Woo Chee Chong, which was the major Chinese market in San Diego. I also attended Chinese language school twice a week in the Chinatown area,\u201d Garapich explained.<\/p>\n
If one were to stand in the museum and travel back to 1869, white brick walls would disappear, revealing a small Chinese fishing village by the bay. Named New Town, this was the first Chinese settlement in San Diego. Chinese settlers lived in shacks by the water, their fishing junks anchored in the harbor.<\/p>\n
However, after the Chinese Exclusion Acts of 1888 and 1892, the community that had been built in New Town crumbled, forcing immigrants to switch to other industries.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, they were forced to live here, so they started businesses, and they eventually started to raise families, and they got into other professions such as market gardeners, herbalists and produce vendors,\u201d Garapich said.<\/p>\n
As the tour led attendees outside the museum, some noticed how the building\u2019s appearance greatly resembled a church, a bell built inside its roof.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the late 1940s and early \u201950s, my dad was a pastor here at this church, and I would go to church here for Sunday services,\u201d Garapich recalled. \u201cThe church at this point was really flourishing and they were having services in English also, and setting up different clubs such as the Ladies Guild, and they had picnics and youth outings during the summers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Continuing down Third Avenue, Garapich passed preserved pieces of Chinatown buildings such as the Chinese Benevolent Association, Quin Produce and Yingon Labor Association. For many of the historical buildings, only a wooden door or roof carved with Chinese characters remained.<\/p>\n
An intricate painting of a traditional Chinese dragon catches tourists\u2019 eyes, many stopping to snap a picture.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is called the Third Avenue Mural of Dragon,\u201d Garapich said. \u201cIt was painted in 2001 with the support of the CCDC and building\u2019s owners, and it marks the northern end of Chinatown.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Turning right into Market Street, dodging lines for nearby clubs and bars, Garapich points to the first Japanese American restaurant in San Diego, its only remains displayed on a red label reading \u201c664 Sun Cafe\u201d on the second story.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was built between 1873 and 1883. It\u2019s one of the oldest buildings in this district,\u201d Garapich said. \u201cIt originally was called Obayashi Shooting Gallery in the 1870s, and they became so prominent that they decided to open their restaurant at the cafe in 1926. Unfortunately, though, during [World War II], they had to leave because they were picked up to go to the internment camps.\u201d<\/p>\n
With San Diego\u2019s flourishing community of Asian American markets now found only in small fragments along crowded streets, the preservation of the Chinese Historical Museum is crucial to grasping pieces of Asian history before they disappear from San Diegans\u2019 memories.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the reasons I chose to be a docent for this tour is to tell you some of my experiences in the \u201940s and \u201950s,\u201d Garapich expressed. \u201cI feel that without these recollections that I tried to replay during my tour, a part of history might be lost. I hope to help bridge the cultural gap between the Chinatown and the Pan-Pacific District of the past and present.\u201d<\/p>\n