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CHINATOWN_EDWORDS

                                                    July 22, 2015


"Bohemian San Francisco" by Clarence E. Edwords is
essentially a series of restaurant reviews published in      [ref]
1914 (for Edwords "Bohemian" apparently means "foodie"),
just 8 years after the earthquake and fire.

Edwords refers to the tours of Chinatown described by
Walcott in his 1907 novel, though Ewords like Burke,
takes the insider's dismissive view of shows for the
tourist:


    "To speak of seeing Barbary Coast brought furtive looks
    and lowered voices, as if contamination even from the
    thought were possible. No slumming party was completed
    without a visit to the 'Coast', after Chinatown's
    manufactured horrors had been shuddered at."


But Edwords later rhapsodises about "A Breath of the
Orient", even while showing a certain appreciation of the
exotic (even though he apparently doesn't care for
chinese food):


    "San Francisco's world-famed Chinatown, like the rest of the
    city, is changed since the big fire, and the Chinatown of
    today is but a reminiscence of the old Oriental city that was
    set in the midst of the most thriving Occidental
    metropolis--The City That Was. There has never been much of
    Chinatown that savored of Bohemianism, but it has always been
    the vogue for visitors to make a trip through its mysterious
    alleys, peering into the fearsome dark doorways, listening to
    the ominous slamming doors of the 'clubs,' and shuddering in
    a delightful horror at the recumbent opium smokers, pointed
    out to them by the industrious guide. And when they were
    taken into one of the gambling houses and shown the double
    doors, and the many contrivances used to prevent police
    interference with the innocent games of fan tan and then were
    shown the secret underground passage leading from one of the
    gambling houses to the stage of the great Chinese theatre,
    two blocks away, they went home ready to believe anything
    told them about 'the ways that are dark and tricks that are
    vain,' for they were sure 'the heathen Chinee was peculiar.'
    "

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