Why are monuments going to be removed from Chinatown?

Portsmouth Square in San Francisco’s Chinatown is receiving $60 million for a major revamp, but the community is raising questions about the threat of erasure to Asian American history and the need for proper representation. Last Tuesday, city officials revealed more details about plans for art in the park.

Endearingly referred to as the “living room of Chinatown,” Portsmouth Square was originally called Plaza de Yerba Buena, when it was the city’s first park from when California was still part of Mexico. It has since become a gathering spot for the Chinatown community, bustling with people heading to their commutes, huddled playing cards, or finding reprieve from small cramped apartments.

“This is the birthplace of San Francisco, and it’s the living room for Chinatown. Most of the people you see here live in Chinatown,” Chinatown expert and historian David Lei told KQED. “Generations of Chinese have started out this way, as poor immigrants, and here, you can put a roof over you and your family’s head. The purpose is to allow people to have a chance.”

Talks about this renovation began in 2021, but initially the city’s approach simply involved stowing old monuments away. According to KQED, over the last year, a group known as the Chinatown Arts & Cultural Coalition gathered to defend against the erasure of history at the historic square, and suggested artworks that they would like to see that educates the public and represents the community.

“There’s arguably no artwork in Portsmouth Square that actually commemorates Asian American history,” Hoi Leung, curator and deputy director of the Chinese Culture Center, told KQED. Currently, there are no artworks by Asian Americans either.

After years of activism, the most recent plans demonstrated an effort to listen to the community’s voices.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the city proposed removing a large bust of Scottish novelist Robert Louis Stevenson, the marker where the first American flag was raised in San Francisco during the U.S conquest of California, and a plaque for Andrew Smith Hallidie who is known as the inventor of the cable car system. 

The Goddess of Democracy monument, a bronze replica of a statue originally created during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest in Beijing, and the playground Zodiac sculpture were proposed to stay. 

The city also proposed to amend certain monuments, such as a stone monument honoring the state’s first public schoolhouse that opened in 1848. Some park-goers advocated for its removal for upholding racist narratives since it excluded Asian students from enrolling.

Prior to the meeting, Lei said he would make a fuss if the public school monument was removed. Rather, he argues that the monument should be given more historical context to commemorate its significance for multi-racial history in the area. The land for the school was donated by William Leidesdorff, a Black and Jewish businessman who was also one of the first biracial U.S citizens in California and a founder of the city. 

The park will begin renovations late this year and last 24 months. The current budget for public art in the renovation will be $604,000 according to the Recreations and Park Department.