Grace Young's San Francisco past fuels goal to save Chinatowns' future

Grace Young said she remembers spending much of her childhood summers driving around San Francisco with her father, a prominent liquor salesman who serviced Chinese grocery stores all around The City.

Inevitably, those days would usually end with the two swinging through Chinatown, where the majority of his accounts were located.

She recalls walking down the neighborhood’s bustling thoroughfares like Clay Street, Stockton Street, or Grant Avenue, and she told The Examiner that her father would bump into somebody he knew, or someone would call out his name, “every few steps.”

That familiarity, Young said, is what made Chinatown special. Wedged within San Francisco’s dense metropolis was a neighborhood with the charm of a one-stoplight town in middle America.

“Everywhere I went, there was this sense of home,” Young, who now lives in New York, told The Examiner in a recent phone call. “When I think back on it, I see that Chinatown was small-town America.”

Those experiences laid the bedrock for a career of culinary excellence for Young, a Julia Child-inspired award-winning cookbook author and renowned food historian. She has been called a “stir-fry guru,” “wok therapist” and “poet laureate of the wok.”

But in recent years, as Chinatowns nationwide have struggled to keep the lights on, she has added a new title: “The accidental voice for Chinatown.”

The plight of Chinatowns

Pandemic-fueled economic realities and gentrification have hollowed out the country’s Chinatowns , turning once culturally rich communities and vital immigrant gateways into ghost towns.

Between 1990 and 2020, populations plummeted in some of the nation’s largest and most historic Chinatowns, including New York City (a 24% decline), Washington D.C. (41%), and Philadelphia (15%), according to the U.S. Census.

San Francisco lost just 6% during that period, which some advocates credit to the neighborhood maintaining its affordable-housing stock . But San Francisco’s Chinatown hasn’t been immune to other challenges. More than 300 neighborhood businesses closed in 2022, up from 11 in 2010, according to an ArcGIS analysis. There was a 26% decrease in jobs in Manhattan’s Chinatown from 2019 to 2021, according to a 2022 study, 12 percentage points more than New York City’s average.

Last year, Chinatown leaders from across North America met in Vancouver in an effort to combat these issues.

Young — who grew up in Laurel Village and went to high school at St. Rose Academy — said her passion for saving these more than century-old enclaves traces back to early lessons from her father, who taught her to respect the owners and workers of Chinatown’s mom-and-pop shops, considered the lifeblood of the neighborhood.

But after seeing Chinatowns decimated nationwide, she said, “It just breaks my heart that all these people who have worked from morning until night their whole lives are seeing their American dream turn into a nightmare.”

How she’s given back

Since the pandemic, Young said, she has talked to hundreds of struggling Chinatown businesses, created informational videos , established charitable funds and traveled to major metropolitan U.S. cities to speak with businesses and city leaders, raising awareness about the potential extinction of family-owned institutions in the ethnic enclaves.

In 2022, Young added to a cabinet filled with the most prestigious culinary trophies. She received the James Beard Humanitarian of the Year Award and Julia Child Award , largely for her philanthropic work to save Chinatowns.

The latter was particularly meaningful to Young, who said she grew up idolizing the legendary French chef. The first recipe she ever cooked was a Julia Child brioche, a notoriously tricky pastry to make which she said, thanks to Child’s instruction, turned out “perfect.”

Young has frequently stated that she has tried to do for Chinese cooking what Child did for French cuisine, meaning she wants to “demystify” and “take the bugaboo” out of dishes many people perceive as intimidating.

“The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen,” Young’s bestselling first cookbook, pulled together 150 family recipes, translating many of her mother and grandmother’s traditional Cantonese dishes — often cooked from feel and memory — into digestible step-by-step instructions.

Young is now using that instinct to preserve the past as an activist attempting to rescue the family-owned restaurants, bakeries and delis that cook with authentic and specialized recipes and make up the soul of America’s Chinatowns.

“It wasn’t like someone appointed her to do this work,” said Janet Chan, owner of the Instagram account SF Chinatown Today , which posts pictures and videos of business and events in Chinatown to promote the neighborhood. “She just saw a need for it, and she just went and did it. That’s what makes it so amazing.”

Since stumbling upon Chan’s account — which currently has more than 15,000 followers — early in the pandemic, Young has frequently kept in touch with Chan for updates on her hometown and the status of The City’s recovery.

“Grace is not out there building publicity for her cookbook,” Chan said. “Her priority is that she loves all these Chinatowns and wants to preserve them.”

Saving San Francisco’s Chinatown

The COVID-19 pandemic ravaged Chinatown more than nearly any other district in The City, and slowly rebounding tourism continues to sting the neighborhood’s economy.

Young received $50,000 to donate as part of the Julia Child Award, doling out $10,000 to institutions in five different American Chinatowns. In San Francisco, the Chinatown Community Development Center and the historic Far East Cafe received the funds to distribute meals.

For many Chinese families, banquet halls such as Far East Cafe serve as vital multipurpose gathering spaces for family associations, civic organizations and mass celebrations such as wedding receptions, birthdays, anniversaries, and red-egg-and-ginger baby parties.

Some of Young’s richest childhood memories involved feasting on Peking duck, steamed fish and chicken stuffed with rice and Chinese sausage at establishments such as Golden Pavilion, Golden Dragon and Empress of China.

Young said Chinatown used to be home to 20 banquet halls. Far East Cafe is the last one standing.

“That’s heartbreaking,” she said. “That’s part of our history and our culture. It made it all the more important for me to try and save these old businesses.”

Malcolm Yeung, executive director of the Chinatown Community Development Center, said Young’s work has been instrumental in keeping Far East Cafe in business, which he described as critical to the “cultural and social fabric” of Chinatown.

Yeung said there used to be a feeling that Chinatowns across the country were taken for granted.

“What the pandemic did in many ways was it began lifting up this notion that, actually, Chinatowns are like any other type of community,” he said. “They have to be loved. If it’s a plant, they have to be watered and the soil has to be tilled. It has to be nurtured.”

Yeung said that having someone with the stature and platform of Young amplify that message makes a significant difference.

“I think Grace is one of those few high-profile Chinese Americans that have come across that really understand the importance of place versus just the broader concept of a racial or ethnic identity,” Yeung said. “She steered people towards that concept through her platform, and through her elevation of food institutions like Far East and others.”

Young acknowledged that even she was among those guilty of taking Chinatowns for granted before the pandemic.

“It’s like having water and fresh air,” she said of her previous belief it would “always be there.” “There’s nothing that could take it down.”

But then Young watched firsthand as New York City’s Chinatown lost 139 businesses and more than two dozen restaurants at the start of the pandemic.

She has since urged people to continue patronizing Chinatown businesses, which remain among the most affordable for groceries and meals.

Young also continues encouraging others to join in her social-media campaign with the James Beard Foundation, which asks people to post pictures of their favorite restaurants or shops, what they like to eat there and what Chinatown means to them, along with the hashtag #SupportChinatowns.

“I think to support Chinatown is to support the American Dream,” she said. “You want these people to succeed. I think that’s has fueled the work that I’ve done.”