Chinatown

Oakland sharply increases trash pickup but can’t keep up with illegal dumping, especially in Chinatown

Oakland Chinatown is one of the communities deeply bothered by illegal dumping, even though the city has seen a nearly six-fold increase in the quantity of trash cleared from its streets in the past seven years.  Liao Shen, an employee at D&K Market in Chinatown, said the store pays about $800 a month for trash services and then has to deal with trash overflow from illegal dumpers.  “It is very frequent,” said Shen. “It happens all the time.” Businesses in…

After decades in prison, Oakland Chinatown ambassador works to keep streets safe and clean

It’s 5 a.m. and the seagulls are perched on top of Da Feng Feng Seafood in Chinatown, screeching. “They’re here for the trash,” Sakhone Lasaphangthong says, pointing with blue medical gloves to an overturned garbage can.  Near the littered food scraps are a giant TV and mattress on the sidewalk. Sakhone snaps a photo that he sends to SeeClickFix, the city’s citizen reporting app for illegal dumping. Last year, he sent over 200 of those photos. As a community ambassador…

Break-ins set Oakland Chinatown businesses back: ‘Things were slowly getting better, then all of a sudden the doom arrived.’

It was quiet in Oakland Chinatown at 3 a.m. on Thursday, March 23. The last two eateries on Eighth Street — Lounge Chinatown and New Gold Medal Restaurant — were wrapping up business for the day. At a quarter past 3, workers at both restaurants locked glass doors and then iron gates. At Lounge Chinatown, wooden doors added to the security. But it wasn’t enough. Ten minutes later, as the street became darker and quieter, burglars broke into the two…

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…