Chinatown Gone but Not Forgotten as Historic Site

More than 60 people plodded around a grassy square and an empty alleyway Saturday on a tour of a Ventura Chinatown that no longer exists.

None of the 10 or 12 buildings that formed a one-block Chinese community near the San Buenaventura Mission are still standing. Only a few photographs and some broken artifacts remain to tell the story of about 200 Chinese immigrants who lived and worked in the city of 1,500 from the 1880s through the turn of the century.

Although the structures were condemned and burned, the story of this determined group of Chinese workers remains very much alive, said tour guide Richard Senate, manager of Ventura’s historic sites.

Beginning about 1848, Chinese immigrants began crossing the Pacific in overcrowded clipper ships to escape war, poverty, disease and government collapse in China, Senate said. Conditions on the ships were so bad, legend has it that sharks would follow them to devour the dead thrown overboard, Senate said.

Of the 200 Chinese counted in the 1876 census, only five were women. Families would send one son to California to earn money for the family, Senate said. The men hoped to return to their native country and had no desire to adopt American customs. That is one reason for the discrimination they faced here, he said.

“They made a great scapegoat,” Senate said. Laws were passed preventing them from mining gold, fishing and farming. “They’d go into an industry, they’d flourish, and then they’d get pushed out,” he said.

Although the Chinese were eventually prohibited from mining gold, Senate said, they were able to make a decent living during the Gold Rush in another industry: laundry.

American gold miners, separated from their families while they prospected in the mountains, sometimes shipped their dirty laundry as far away as Hawaii. Chinese laundries proved to be much more convenient and inexpensive.

Five Chinese laundries opened in Ventura. Chinese restaurants also became popular, but fewer were opened because they required a larger investment than laundries, Senate said.

A wealthy and powerful restaurateur, Sing Kee, started a volunteer fire brigade in 1876, which operated for 30 years.

The brigade was formed to fight fires in Chinatown, Senate said, because community members were doubtful that the white Ventura Fire Department would respond to a Chinatown fire. But the brigade answered calls in all parts of town, often arriving and even extinguishing the blaze before the city’s firefighters appeared, Senate said.

The fire brigade’s reputation improved Chinese-American relations, and when their fire hose wore out in the 1890s, the city bought them another one.

Ventura’s Chinatown stood on the section of Figueroa Street that is now a plaza blocked off from traffic. It included a grocery and a few other stores selling Chinese goods, including fireworks.

Several of the area’s lodging houses packed residents into bunk beds with one blanket and a wood block for a pillow. A small building called the “sleeping room” was home to the five Chinese women, most of whom were prostitutes, Senate said. Most were tricked into coming to America with promises of marriage to rich Chinese-Americans, he said.

Also included on the small block was a Chinese barbershop and the Joss House, a Taoist temple painted red, the Chinese color for good luck. “Joss sticks,” a kind of incense, were constantly burned, and there was a vent in the building’s roof to allow the smoke to escape.

The founding of Oxnard in 1903 marked the end of Ventura’s declining Chinatown. A sugar beet factory was built there, and Chinese workers were recruited for inexpensive labor.

Many of Ventura’s Chinese residents moved to Oxnard, while only a few were actually able to return to China. Chinatown’s buildings were condemned, and a car lot was built.