Los Angeles herald., 1905-05-13
CHINATOWN NOW
ALMOST DESOLATE
QUAINT SETTLEMENT PASSING
INTO HISTORY
SAD SCENES IN THE STREETS
once Prosperous Quarter, With Its
Beautiful Oriental coIoring, Fast
Fading Into Poverty and
Forgetfulness
SAD SCENES IN THE STREETS

TOTYGlIuHICSS
Chinatown desolated of all that
makes 1t a resort of tourists and lovers
of color-this is what artist souls in
Los Angeles are mourning now and
will mourn during the coming months.
Piece by piece all that makes this
quaint, brilliant and yet disreputable
part of town what it is will be taken
whence it Comeback to China-leav-
ing but the ragtag end of a once pros
porous settlement to dwindle away
into poverty and forgetfulness.
One has but to go into this changed
and changing settlement along lower
Marchessault street, Alameda street
and "Nigger alley to realize that the
Chinese are really going, and that their
places are being filled, not by more
Chinese, but by Americans. The
Chinese themselves admit this. The
exclusion act is becoming too much
for them they cannot stand the sever
ity of 1t. Every Chinaman that can
get away has packed up his things and
gone, or is preparing to go, and those
that are left are with but few excep-
tions, the poorer class, the class that
is unable to get back to a country that
means prosperity compared to condi-
tions as they now exist on this coast.
A Chinese Ambition
The ambition of a Chinaman, when
he comes to this country, is, as one of
the more open vegetable men on the
alley confided, "to make thosand dolla,
go back to China, heap lichee."
Now that the enforcement of the ex-
clusion act has become so vigorous
thousands of Chinese from San Fran
cisco and down the coast-nearly all
those who did not have their business
tied up-have gone back to China.
The local settlement was never so
sad and desolate looking as it is at the
present time. There are new places
going up on the alley; new SNUG
American places. 1t is the same on
Marchessault street, a thoroughfare
that six months ago was never in
vaded by such throngs of American
workingmen except on some gala oc-
casion, and then they were the guests
of these silent, conservative yellow
men. There is besides a quantity of
street work going on.
There is an air of mystery about the
Cinnamon left All through the town,
on every available wall, are posted
long notices on brilliant strips of or
ange and black, and an eager throng is
always pausing at these points to read
the mysterious black characters.
Sad Side of 1t
Along the dirty cutters, where last
month crowds of brilliant exotic little
people from over the sea were wont
to play and lend q delightful color to
the narrow vivid street vista, are
ranged pathetic crowds of old men,
the riff-raff of Chinatown, those who
earn their poor living any way; the
Cinnamon who are fated to be left be-
hind, and who sit there and humble to
each other about their fate, the fate
of the poor and aged, condemned to
die alone in this country of strangers,
with the rice fields of their youth but a
dream that they cannot now attain.
1t is the spectacle of these poor old
malcontents that is the saddest feature
of the change in Chinatown. The dis
appearance of the foreign braveres of
the street, supplanted by the new
American shops, the paved streets, is
not pathetic; in it Los Angeles has
only lost a charm, but in these poor
old men lies the real tragedy of the
evacuation.
Great local Chinese festivals are at
an end. There is not enough wealth
left in the town to muster such a gor-
geous spectacle as that of three years
ago, the Festival Of the Fates, the
sacriicial rite for the spirits of dead
ancestors. Next year is the recurring
date for this tremendous pageant of
heather zeal. When the day comes
there will be but a few toothless old
people, a few of the farming class.
who have made this country their
home to welcome it, and it will be
with an absence of pomp in marked
contrast TO that old celebration that
Los Angeles will be a long time for
getting.
In "Nieger Alley
''Nigger alley" not the changed, rem
ovated 'Nigger alley" of today, was
blaze of huge blue and red and yell
low lanterns, and the square off the
alley, magnifcently lighted, supported
altars and altar cloths so wonderful
that curiosity collectors see them yet
in their dreams. There was a huge
brilliant-garbed idol with sacrifcial
punk burning before it and guarded
by mimic men-at-arms in wonderful
trappings and carrying metal spears
every scrap of the magnifcence
brought from the old country by the
wealthy Cinnamon of the town, the
Chinamen who in the last few months
have deserted those picturesque alleys
and gone back TO their native land. If
YOU ask the sad-faced Vellou, naonia