There were no unforeseen snafu's this morning; so, we actually got to Hanford, this afternoon 😉
The drive went smoothly 🚘💞
Finding the oil & lube business to cater to Betsy, did not - we knew the general location 🗺️, but Holland could not remember the name 🤔 of the business … and the temperamental GPS was no help at all 🤬
We did locate it after 3 passes through Hanford's business district: and every time we passed old china town's entrance, I yearned 🙏 for a closer look.
But my husband was on a mission, and his thoughts, and eyes, were 100% laser-focused 🎯 on that pursuit.
Finally parked at the destination he had aimed for when we left Coalinga, he slid out of Betsy's cab to double-check 🧐 the oil and filter replacement were still where he had placed them for this particular moment. While he was outside … I literally had a bird's-eye-view 👀 down the backside of china town in the short distance viewed from where I sat behind the windshield protection of Betsy's cab.
I actually considered walking the distance: I figured I could be there and back again before Betsy's maintenance was wrapped up 😉
But I checked myself - my husband 🦁 takes my safety very seriously. I knew he'd be worried while Betsy was being tended to; and antsy to be sure with his own eyes, that I was safe. He knows california better than I do, having lived and worked here most of his life before I became a permanent fixture in his life; there are a lot of unstable, troublesome people roaming around the streets of california - and california laws favor criminals more than victims. He'd worry himself to death while I was gone. So, I stayed put.
And I hoped we'd have the time to outpace Holland's pain level before we headed back home. He did ditch the narcotic painkillers for my sake ❤️🤝 … and I rein my wanderlust wants in, when necessary, for his sake ❤️🤝
But I was hoping 🙏
And the wishing, and hoping; and thinking, and praying … payed off 👏👩❤️💋👨😁
I practically skipped over the leaf litter 🍂🍁 as I rounded the corner and walked into another, older world view 🔍✅
With a population of roughly 61,238 today, Hanford-CA is a quiet agricultural town, surrounded by acres of almond, walnut, peach trees, among other crops. But, back in the beginning of Hanford, there was livestock and railroad (both operating prosperously with chinese labor) - and that was how Hanford - specifically China Alley in Hanford-CA, was established.
The 200-foot long China Alley in Hanford, California, features 11 historic buildings.
In the 1800s, Chinese immigrants in California established various camps - serving as vital hubs for commerce, fishing, and mining, though often facing discrimination. These camps, with their simple structures like huts, stores, and joss houses, reflect the resilience of Chinese laborers who built new lives after the Gold Rush, providing essential services and industries. In 1877, Chinese immigrants established a sheepherder's camp in the San Joaquin Valley, which grew into the foundation of Hanford, California, a significant Chinese community developing around the Southern Pacific Railroad, leading to historic areas like China Alley and preserving a rich, resilient heritage despite challenges.
China Alley boasted homes, restaurants, boarding houses, general merchandise stores, a laundry, herb shops, groceries, gambling establishments, a chinese school, and a temple - an arsonist set fire to the temple in May of 2021, so the video below was made before the fire; the building, though charred and heavily damaged, is structurally stable (as seen in my video made this afternoon) … but a good portion of the collection shown in the PBS video was destroyed:
Hanford's China Alley~PBS 12 Video: https://video.pbs12.org/video/byyou-exploration-hanfords-china-alley/
A chinese noodle house was established in china alley, in 1883; Gong Ting Shu named his establishment Mee Jan Low, and it prospered into a 5 star restaurant that occupied 4 buildings in china alley - it's door steadily revolving with business until 2006 …
{{In Rural California, an Imperial Dynasty Ends
~March 24, 2006~By Sasha Khokha
European monarchs dined there. Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek once sent ambassadors to try the famous escargot. Ronald Reagan ate there when he was governor of California. Yet this food mecca is not in the culinary cities of Paris, San Francisco or Rome.
Instead, the Imperial Dynasty restaurant is nestled among pastures and cotton fields in rural California. One family has run the business for 123 years. Now, as Sasha Khokha of member station KQED notes, 84-year-old chef Richard Wing has decided to close down the five-star restaurant.
Wing's grandfather opened up shop in the tiny city of Hanford's Chinatown in 1883, selling bowls of steaming noodles for five cents. Wing himself began cooking when he was six -- peeling onions, washing bean sprouts and shelling shrimp.
Wing left Hanford during World War II to join the Army. And in 1945 he caught the attention of Gen. George C. Marshall, who asked Wing to accompany him to China as his personal chef.
"It was like a fantastic dream for me," Wing says. "Imagine for a humble Chinese cook to be offered this wonderful privilege to be assigned to the great five-star general."
That assignment also included being a food taster for Marshall, who was allergic to shellfish and strawberries. Wing tasted food from kitchens in Europe and Asia, where he carefully watched chefs and compiled his own recipes. During this service to Marshall, Wing also cooked for Presidents Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower.
When he returned to Hanford in 1958, his mission was to bring fine dining to California's rural San Joaquin Valley. He transformed his grandfather's noodle house into a five-star restaurant, decorating it with intricate jade carvings, and tasseled Chinese lanterns. But the Imperial Dynasty was not a Chinese restaurant.
"It's more French cooking than Chinese," with a bit of Russian, German, Italian and Swiss flavoring throw in, Wing says.
Wing's menu boasted Cornish game hen and poached salmon, with egg fu yung as the only obvious Chinese dish. Soon, the Imperial Dynasty attracted diners from all over the world to the cow town. A group of wealthy New York businessmen used to fly in once a month just for the escargot -- a garlicky recipe Wing took years to perfect.
In the restaurant's final months, locals -- mostly wealthy farmers -- came back three and four times a week just for those buttery snails. And for beer and wine -- the basement cellar holds 70,000 bottles -- some from the 1920s.
This wine, and Wing's menu, won him scores of international awards. But health problems kept him out of the kitchen for the past year. He says he's tired, and the fourth generation of Wings doesn't want to take over the restaurant business. So the Imperial Dynasty, which anchored Hanford's fading Chinatown, has closed its doors for the last time.}}
By the early 1960's the chinese community was losing head count, and the buildings were neglected, falling into decay, and vandalized; in 1972 a restoration committee was formed by temple members. Despite the vacancy and neglect of the community, in 2011 China Alley was included in the National Trust for Historic Preservation Listings - as the 11 historic buildings in the Alley are by & large, structurally intact; and looking as they did when erected 140 years ago. In 2021, a female arsonist torched the temple causing damage, but it still stands - waiting as all of the Alley does, for it's restoration to begin in earnest. According to my online research while preparing this post, the Johnson Architecture of Fresno was retained to handle the restorative process … but, according to what I personally viewed this afternoon - that has apparently been put on hold, or they have backed out.
There is no visible sign of active restoration taking place anywhere in China Alley.
{{One Of California's Most Historic Streets Could Disappear Forever
~March 9, 2025~By Andrew Pridgen
Today, perhaps more than any other time in its nearly 150-year history, Hanford’s China Alley feels like it’s on the precipice of something. Should things go in the right direction, one of the country’s oldest and most notable Chinatowns could become a forever landmark and a bustling street that anchors a rejuvenated Central Valley corridor.
But China Alley’s mere existence is fragile; its current condition is fatigued. Set foot onto the narrow street, and it takes but a few seconds to see that the place could be wiped from the face of the Earth with a single bad break: a fire, an earthquake, even a violent storm. Blight and lack of use have defined its existence the past few decades. And yet, China Alley remains and stands, perhaps as it always has, defiant, if not underestimated.
One of California’s original Chinatowns
China Alley got its start in 1877, when the Southern Pacific Railway laid down a track between the growing Central Valley towns of Goshen and Coalinga. The tracks traversed a Chinese shepherd camp and this, in turn, became the origin of the town of Hanford.
As quickly as stakes could be driven into the ground, Hanford became a focal point of travel and a main stopover through the valley. And while the city of Hanford grew up to eventually incorporate in 1891, its first epicenter also rose up in 1877: the neighborhood that housed the majority of the immigrant workers who built the railroads.
Known for its historically buzzy main drag and referred to then, as today, as China Alley, it was a place where an entire ecosystem of families spun up grocery stores, housing, restaurants, herb shops, laundries, herbal doctors, gambling halls, a school and a Taoist temple. “It soon became known as a ‘city within a city’ with buildings lining both sides of the alley made from bricks formed and fired on site,” the China Alley Preservation Society’s website reads.
China Alley is one of California’s original Chinatowns, many of which are gone. Starting in the late 1800s, a wave of anti-Chinese racism tore through the state. In 1886, an anti-Chinese convention was held in San Jose, with the mayor declaring Market Street, a main thoroughfare through that city’s Chinatown, a public nuisance. Soon after, arsonists burned Chinatown to the ground, displacing more than 1,400 people and incinerating hundreds of homes and businesses.
During that era, a rash of similar ghoulish activities took hold up and down the state. In 1877, an anti-Chinese labor group killed six Chinese workers at Butte County’s Lemm Ranch and the next day, Chico’s Chinatown burned down. Redding’s Chinatown was also destroyed about a decade later. The Santa Ana Board of Trustees voted to burn down their Chinatown, and in May 1906, did just that.
Even the Chinatowns that remained intact through the decades have faced difficulties. In 2022, Fresno lost Bow On Tong, one of the city’s oldest buildings in its Chinatown, to a fire. In San Luis Obispo, a once thriving Chinatown in the heart of downtown on Palm Street, is now paved over and occupied mostly by a boutique hotel and a parking garage.
In spite of the long odds, somehow China Alley remains intact. It is now only a shell, but it’s also an untouched shell. Built brick by brick, the flat-fronted two- and three-story structures, many with Western-style facades, are accented with pagoda rooflines. The sides of the buildings still feature the faded paint signaling the names of businesses long shuttered.
But China Alley isn’t simply on autopilot. Its continued survival is thanks to its pristine nature — and a hanndful of docents with deep roots in the area. It has, in other words, been largely ignored as the town — like many of its larger Central Valley neighbors — has succumbed to more than 50 years of tract development away from the core that made it desirable in the first place.
Federal funding freeze puts China Alley in jeopardy
As it sits mostly empty, waiting for whatever comes next, China Alley seems like a time capsule that is at once too good to be true and too precious to be ignored. The first thought that comes to mind when setting foot in China Alley is: How has this place been let go for so long?
“It’s a question we ask ourselves every day,” Arianne Wing told SFGATE.
Wing is a fourth-generation Hanfordite and the torchbearer of one of the families whose mark can be seen all over China Alley, even today. She’s tasked herself with shining the light on China Alley and helping it remain, with hopes of restoration and revitalization.
Over the past 15 years, China Alley has garnered attention. In 2011, China Alley was listed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as one of the 11 most endangered historic places in the United States. Artifacts from the Taoist temple have been featured in an exhibition at the Hong Kong Museum of History.
Last March, Hanford received a $15.5 million grant from the Department of Transportation, part of which was earmarked to restore China Alley.
For every step forward, there also seems to be a setback, Wing said, noting the federal grant money is now in limbo because of the Trump administration. “It’s frozen because a lot of things are frozen right now,” she said.
'I’d been working in that restaurant since I was in my mother’s womb'
The Wing family dynasty at China Alley is an epic unto itself. Arianne Wing’s great-grandfather, Shu Ting Gong (known here as Henry Wing) was “a political rabble rouser. He was very anti-the Qing government,” she explained. “In the early 1880s, he cut off his ponytail and rebelled against the caste system.”
One day near his home in Canton province, now Guangdong, soldiers chased Henry to the banks of the Pearl River. He dove in and was rescued by a boat bound for San Francisco. He went with them, leaving behind a wife, five children, 30 acres of rice paddies and a small eatery. After landing in San Francisco, he ended up making his way down to the more agricultural part of the state and discovered Hanford. By 1883, he’d opened a small noodle house called Mee Jan Low (“Beautiful and Precious Restaurant”) at 6 1/2 China Alley.
The noodle business thrived, and by 1906, Wing was able to send for his eldest son, who also went by Henry. The pair worked side by side and after Henry Sr. died in 1923, his son closed down Mee Jan Low and opened the Chinese Pagoda restaurant on the same block in 1937.
“The Pagoda stayed open until 1981,” Wing said. “I’d been working in that restaurant since I was in my mother’s womb.”
Then, another member of the Wing family would bring the family legacy to new heights. Starting in the 1940s, Arianne Wing’s uncle Richard left for a stint in the army as five-star general George C. Marshall’s personal chef and food taster. “He went all over Europe and Russia and even back to China,” Wing said. “When he was there, he met Madame Chiang Kai-shek, who taught him to make a soup that she said would be very good for the general’s cold.”
Following the war, Richard went back to school in Hong Kong and worked as an importer-exporter there, but soon was pulled back home to Hanford at the promise of a post-war boom. “Lemoore was going to build a naval air station, agriculture was growing, we had industry coming in, we had Armstrong Tire,” Wing said.
Indeed, it was a gilded time in the valley, and Richard decided it was his turn to jump into the family business, but only if he could do it his way. The result was one of mid-century California’s most legendary and sought-after restaurants: Imperial Dynasty, located in the heart of China Alley, right next door to the Chinese Pagoda.
The birth of Asian fusion cuisine
Imperial Dynasty drew attention, and not only from the culinary world. It soon turned into a spot where celebrities, presidents and dignitaries often dined. “Elegant food complemented by a museum-like display of Oriental art in an architectural monument — a restaurant that has become a travel destination as well as a place to eat,” Sunset Magazine wrote.
“We had a really good ride,” Wing, who also worked at the Imperial Dynasty for decades, explained. “What an anomaly for a small town — middle of nowhere. We had people flying in and coming from all over the place. I tripped over Evel Knievel’s foot — he had a cast on it. I got to serve [actress] Kristin Shepard [actor Mary Crosby], just after she shot J.R., Bing Crosby played piano there. Richard Chamberlain told me I had a lovely name.”
Richard Wing compared his cooking to dancing: “You should develop a certain rhythm, so you won’t get tired,” he told the Hanford Sentinel in late 2005, on the eve of the restaurant’s closure. “You put your soul and heart into it. It’s like a salad bowl where you can be so creative and add things here and there. Cooking is like tossing a salad bowl, only you have a little heat in there.”
Whether it was the famous clientele, its 70,000-bottle wine cellar, which won Wine Spectator Grand Award, or its introduction of Asian fusion into the food culture vernacular, Imperial Dynasty was, by all accounts, one of California’s most notable and influential restaurants, ever.
“Many people attribute the founding of chinois cooking to Austrian chef and restaurateur, Wolfgang Puck, who popularized the culinary synthesis of French and Chinese cooking at his restaurant Chinois located in Santa Monica, California.,” food and wine blogger Prince of Pinot wrote in 2010. “However, Wing and undoubtedly others, preceded him by a number of years.”
‘This is my life’s work’
Today, time and resources are working against China Alley, even as recognition of its stature continues to grow.
Physically, the buildings are in dire need of repair and restoration. Arson in 2021 almost took out the Taoist Temple completely. Small businesses, including a yoga studio and a counseling center, occupy a couple of the storefronts, but on a recent Friday evening, there were few people in sight.
“It’s sad to see it deteriorate,” Erica Craig, who works inside one of the small businesses still located on China Alley, told SFGATE during a recent visit. “We still have a lot of people that will come here and take pictures. People will bring their family here, always. It kind of makes you feel like you’re in a different place.”
Craig’s co-worker Gabrial Ledesma said sometimes he comes outside for a break and looks up and down at the buildings, simply to marvel at them. “It’s beautiful and very unique,” he said. “I take time to look at it. … I think about how there are different groups of immigrants and the past. … It’s a cool thing.”
Wing currently serves as president of the China Alley Preservation Society. And her partner Steve Banister helps run the nonprofit and is in charge of the temple’s restoration after the fire. Both admit that there have been many false starts in recent years toward getting something going in China Alley, including their own business, the LT Sue Tea Room, which was once featured on “Road Trip With Huell Howser.”
But starts and stops are a part of it, they said, and the work continues. The couple, who acquired the Imperial Dynasty building in 2019, are also in the middle of trying to revitalize the block with five separate businesses, the way it was originally set up. They also believe infill housing development in the neighborhood adjacent to China Alley, the way it was originally set up, would complement any new business endeavors.
Through its ups and downs, Banister says the interest in China Alley has never waned. In fact, he feels curiosity around China Alley is currently on the uptick. “If we had a dollar for everyone who’s taken a picture here, we’d be able to restore the temple,” he said.
“We could use a phone call from Oprah,” Wing joked.
Just before I left during my recent China Alley visit, a large family piled out of an SUV and began walking up and down the street, smiling, pointing to the roofs, sounding out the words of the faded lettering on the buildings and generally marveling at this place, so rare, so unusual and so vibrant even in its repose.
The family gathered for a photo at the front door of the Imperial Dynasty, still intact with a placard with the restaurant’s hours. Mission accomplished, they piled back into their car and drove off.
Once they left, I thought of the words Wing left me with when she spoke about China Alley, her family’s legacy — and what may be in store.
“Some days you get really discouraged,” she said. “And other days, I think, ‘Yeah, I need to do this. This is my life’s work.’”
https://www.sfgate.com/centralcalifornia/article/historic-california-chinatown-disappearing-20209540.php}}
Though Hanford's China Alley is not a manicured, bustling, thriving community today - it is rich in History, and that is basically all I am interested in. I love the history of places; even places that resemble ghost towns that have not totally shed their vitality skins.
I am glad I was able to visit this historical place today, given the concerns stated in the articles posted above highlighting very real concerns 🤷♀️😟 that it may not survive to go into the next decade 😢😔
And I am thankfully grateful for my husband, who really does go out of his way to make way for my wanderlust wants 👩❤️💋👨
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