Chinatown

Lantern Festival lures many back to Oakland’s Chinatown

Oakland’s Chinatown was transformed Sunday into a vibrant street market, where the aroma of cooking food mingled with the crackle of conversation and the bright colors of balloons and paper lanterns. Beneath a canopy of floating red lanterns, vendors hawked rib and radish soup, boba tea, and pineapple buns.  The joyful event was a collective effort by the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities to support small businesses and create a sense of safety and belonging in the area. Coinciding…

Oakland looks to make Chinatown’s streets safer by redesigning them

From horses to highways, the streets of Oakland’s Chinatown have been shaped by every form of traffic since its founding in 1850. Soon it will be reshaped again. With a $500,000 Caltrans Sustainable Communities grant, Oakland’s Department of Transportation will fund a multilingual community outreach program to collect input from the neighborhood and redesign the streets of Chinatown. The public’s opinion will be solicited beginning early 2022. The project’s goal is to increase pedestrian and bicycle safety and reduce carbon…

Artists paint murals on boards that Chinatown shopowners put over smashed windows

On a recent Sunday afternoon, Callan Porter-Romero dragged her little red trolley to a restaurant in Chinatown. She unloaded her ladder, placed paint cans and brushes on the ground, then mixed purple and pink on her palette. Atop the spattered ladder, she drew orchids on the restaurant window. The flowers surrounded a sketched hand holding a pair of green chopsticks.  “We need more art in the community to show that people who grew up here are still here, and their…

VIDEO: Assaulted Chinatown Chamber president resolves to protect Asian community

The president of the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, who has spoken out against Anti-Asian hate crime, was recently attacked as he was on his way to visit another Asian assault victim.  Carl Chan said he was walking on Broadway near Eighth Street on the afternoon of April 28 when someone hit him in the back of the head while spewing racial slurs. Chan was knocked to the ground and briefly blacked out, but got up and was able to…

Oakland tries a new way to prioritize city improvement projects: by considering equity

Rows of people sway together during a lunchtime Tai Chi session at Lincoln Square Recreation Center. Not a space is left in the full-size gym. “In and out,” the instructor chants, reminding the practitioners to breathe as they try to avoid colliding with each other and the walls.  “It’s like this every day,” says Gilbert Gong, the center’s longtime director, referring to the size of Friday’s crowd as he surveys the attendees. In the corner of the gym, he stops…