By Randall Yip
I caught a video on You Tube this morning that my son pointed out to me.
The video, Saving Chinese Playground, was produced for a recent celebration marking the 40th anniversary of the Chinatown Community Development Center.
I had forgotten that at one point a proposal was made in the 70’s to level the San Francisco Chinatown playground for a parking lot.
Imagine that. The most densely populated neighborhood west of Manhattan without its most widely used playground and recreational area. Fortunately smarter minds prevailed and the playground today is thriving.
Chinese Playground in San Francisco is where I played both after school and during recess. I attended St. Mary’s Chinese Catholic Center in Chinatown and our school yard wasn’t big enough to accommodate it’s more than 200 students.
Several grades made the two block trek every day after lunch down Clay Street and through Hang Ah Alley to the playground for recess.
There we were in our salt ‘n pepper pants and white shirts in a double file line. The boys in one line. The girls in their checkerboard red and black skirts and white blouses in the other. We were quite a spectacle for tourists who happened to walk by, some who were curious enough to snap a picture of two.
Sister Beverly who taught me at St. Mary’s was among those who lead the fight to save the playground. Today it is named the Willie Woo Woo Wong Playground in honor of the late basketball player who happens to be my uncle. A member of the University of San Francisco athletic hall of fame, Wong originally gained fame playing basketball in the 40’s for the St. Mary’s Saints.
The playground was his second home and where he honed his basketball skills. Today the playground is being renovated as part of a San Francisco Parks and Recreation Department effort to upgrade its facilities. The family is currently talking to the Parks Department to donate some of Willie’s trophies for display at the playground. The family has also offered to donate trophies from the collection of his late sister, Helen Wong Lum. She also played basketball for St. Mary’s, but is even better known as an accomplished tennis player and an inductee into the Northern California Tennis Hall of Fame.
An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that this was CCDC’s 35th anniversary. We regret the error.
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