Feb 10, 2026
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Creativity in Chinatown and Catching Up with Clara Hsu
by Doniphan Blair
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The City Lights Bookstore block party, in 2019, was enjoyed by a graphic designer, one of the few Asians in attendance, even though Chinatown was literally next door. photo: D. BlairI WAS PARTYING WITH HANSON LEE, A
Chinese-American electrician, art enthusiast and hippie, on Columbus Avenue, in the middle of San Francisco’s Italian neighborhood, North Beach.
We were attending the 100th birthday of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a Jewish-Italian-American poet, publisher and beatnik, at City Lights, the bookstore he founded in 1955. It was quite the party: 500 attendees and plenty of food, poetry, music, and, of course, wine (see story here).
As Hanson and I toasted plastic cups of Italian wine, however, I looked back at City Lights and noticed that right behind it—looming over it, surrounding it, in fact—was Chinatown.
Founded in 1848, it is the oldest Chinese community in the western hemisphere and the second largest, after New York’s. But having occupied the center of San Francisco for so long, it seems to have almost been forgotten.
Long gone are the 1920s, when intellectuals would explore Chinatown, looking for opium dens or Buddhist scholars, according to journalist Emily Freidkin, a friend of this author, or trying to meet Chinese women, as illustrated in “The Chinese Nightingale”, a poem by Vachel Lindsay, my great-uncle.
By the time I hit San Francisco in the ‘70s, Chinatown was mostly known for restaurants and cheap consumer goods. It was where my commune purchased crates of oranges.
Chinatown and one of its first new year's parades, circa 1955. photo: courtesy SF ChronicleTrue, there were also dusty old herb shops with great ginseng and the Buddha Lounge, where you could meet colorful characters like Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow.
A tough, short guy, who liked to date Caucasian women, Chow immigrated from Hong Kong, took over a “tong”—which means fraternal association but can also be a mafia family—and ended up having a couple of competitors killed. Chow’s story captivated San Francisco and the famous Black Panther lawyer and native son hippie, Tony Serra, mounted a determined defense, but he got life in 2016.
For out-of-control tongs, however, you had to go back to 1977 and the notorious Golden Dragon massacre, which killed five and injured eleven, at the eponymous Washington Street restaurant, three blocks from where Hanson and I were standing.
Across Columbus Avenue from City Lights, we could see Chinatown's main drag, Grant Street, down the alley next to the bookstore; to our right, the last Chinese restaurant, the New Sun Hong Kong, before Little Italy took over, and to our left, Francis Ford Coppola’s elegant, eight-story, triangle building and Café Zoetrope, also surrounded by Chinatown.
A bit tipsy, I became entranced and suddenly fancied myself an explorer surveying a new world. Chinatown must have some fascinating filmmakers and artists, I thought.
Although that realization was followed by fears that I would be accused of cultural colonialism, someone had to offset the general absence of awareness; I had spent five years traveling and living in Asia and South America, almost always welcomed by locals; and I didn’t see why Chinatown would be any different.
Hanson Lee (rt) and Doniphan Blair 'explore' Chinatown. photo: D. Blair Plus I just met Hanson.
Growing up in the highly cultured Shanghai, albeit during the Cultural Revolution, Hanson retained a fondness for Mao, who cancelled classes for all his high school years. Making his way to New York and then San Francisco, where hipster life was a little easier, he became active in the electrician trade—in fact, he has worked all over Chinatown.
He also became a dedicated devotee of the arts, notably San Francisco’s renown John Coltrane Church, where he sits on the board and which I hoped would make him amenable to my scheme.
Hanson was, and our first encounter with contemporary Chinatown culture was with Leland Wong, a personal friend of his, whom we met over dinner at the New Sun Hong Kong Restaurant.
A prolific artist and illustrator but also silk-screener, photographer and multi-media maker, Wong was raised in Chinatown and helped pop-ify its identity with colorful, cartoon-like imagery, among many other styles and projects. In 2014, he was the artist-in-residence at the Chinese Historical Society (see Wong's page), a large, well-developed institution on Clay Street.
Wong also provided a peak into the Chinatown of the 1960s. Although not many of his contemporaries made it across town to the Haight-Ashbury, they, too, were in rebel mode. “They liked amphetamines,” Wong told me.
Chinatown artist Leland Wong's 'Kois at Dragon Gate Mural', 2013. photo: courtesy L. Wang Hanson and I began frequenting the two local libraries, going so far as to collaborate with the North Beach branch on a monthly poetry presentation, tellingly titled “Beat Poets East-West”.
From my first awakening at City Lights, I had wondered how much rapport there was between Chinatown and the bookstore, or North Beach in general. Not much, it turned out, a paucity Hanson and I hoped to ameliorate.
One poetry night we looked at Le Bai, an innovative and romantic bohemian from the 8th century, who became the Tang Dynasty’s most revered poet; another at Gary Synder, a poet, beatnik and esteemed environmentalist who became a Buddhist monk in Japan for some years and integrated those ideas into his work (see that story here).
As we explored Chinatown, however, I came to realize it was somewhat frozen in the 19th century, although I doubt there are any opium dens left.
Well aware of this, the doyens of Chinatown gave it a massive make-over in the ‘50s, with the initiation of the still-popular new year’s festival and parade, which comes in February and includes the crowning of Miss Chinatown. The parade allowed Chinese lesbians and gays to march under their own banner in 1994, a notable achievement, considering the even later opening up of other ethnic parades.
Li Bai poster from Lee and Blair's 'Beat Poets East West' at the North Beach Library. image: D. Blair Indeed, by the 1990s, Chinatown had become an object of renewed fascination. The massive bestseller “The Joy Luck Club” (1989) was set there, although author Amy Tan was born and raised in Oakland’s Chinatown, America’s eighth biggest. Oakland was also home during his college years (CCA) to Wayne Wang, originally from Hong Kong, the lauded filmmaker who turned the book into a well-received movie, four years later.
The monumental movie innovator and star Bruce Lee (1940–73) was born in Chinatown, before his family moved back to Hong Kong, and lived there upon his return in 1958. But he soon moved to Seattle, which had a tiny Chinatown, and, of course, Hollywood.
Chinatown remains rather medieval today because it is controlled by antique money and inhabited largely by the elderly, who get subsidized housing, and impoverished new immigrants, who work the restaurants and are often in-debt to people smugglers. The families of earlier immigrants have long since joined San Francisco’s middle class and decamped to the Sunset neighborhood or the suburbs.
Moreover, there is little evidence of the vibrant, ambitious and hyper-new China of today, in the form of fancy new stores, cultural centers or the consulate. Although renovated on the inside, the Historical Society is in a cultural heritage building, while the consulate general of the People's Republic of China sits a few miles away, in Japantown, as it happens. That building is so nondescript, in fact, it suggests the PRC is boycotting San Francisco’s Chinese community for being reactionary.
In sum, Chinatown evidences little of the highly artistic and mystical side of China—except in a few select locations.
The opening of Clarion Music Center in Chinatown, 1982. photo: courtesy C. Hsu One of those is Clarion Performing Arts Center. A lovely space with a stage and seats for 60, it is located in the heart of Chinatown on Waverly Place at Sacramento Street, three tiny blocks from the famous Portsmouth Square.
Clarion is owned and directed by Clara Hsu, who also came from Hong Kong as a teen, albeit to the East Coast. Although born into a musical family and musically trained, she didn’t discover her muse until her 40s and an awakening to the power of poetry.
So profound was Hsu’s mystical and artistic revelation, she eventually converted Clarion from the music shop, started by her father, James Ma, into a performing arts center in 2016. It now produces everything from children’s theater to a monthly Thursday night open mic, an all Asian burlesque show or a Chinese tea ceremony with poetry.
One event, “Sparring with Beatnik Ghosts” produced by Daniel Yaryan, was a poetry and music night examining the beats.
After my year of sniffing around Chinatown, I realized Hsu’s story was an incredible one: How an ancient, overcrowded and feudal neighborhood could embark on creative renewal.
She graciously agreed to an interview.
Clara Hsu at the Clarion Performing Arts Center. photo: D. Blair cineSOURCE: Have you been opening up Clarion?
Clara Hsu: No, we are closed [due to Covid].
But we have been opening up once in a while, for example, the production of the children’s theater. The kids have been coming in one at a time. They sit against the blue screen and I film them individually. Then we put it together. Last night, I was at the editor’s.
Didn’t you just have a performance?
The night before last [August 25th], we had a performance of ’Love on the Magpie Bridge’ on YouTube, last year’s performance that was filmed. We just taped it for archive’s sake, but I am really glad we did. Who knows when we can do that performance again.
It has been getting good reviews, comments from people who have seen it. The viewership is climbing—over 360 already—and that makes me happy. The kids were lovely and it was really a fun performance.
The whole idea is to spread the arts.
Were most of the kids from Chinatown?
Yes, and all students of Clarion. Last year’s group had eight kids. This year we had ten [for the new play, ‘The Piano’].
At first, I didn’t think we would be able to do a performance, since we can’t meet, and I didn’t know how the kids would feel. So I had a Zoom meeting, and they said they wanted to do it. We did all the rehearsals on Zoom, which was not easy.
Then came the point when we had to film. At first I thought, ‘Why don’t the kids film themselves?’ But it is not easy, so we set up a [green] screen here. Everyone came in one at a time, and we filmed them.
The kids—as one comes in and the other is leaving—they wanted to hug each other. They wanted to stay and play: it was bittersweet. For them, having that community, doing things together, is so important.
I am really glad we did the filming, and now we are editing. It is not the same as a play. I call it a ‘play movie.’ It is a play, but it is really is a movie. I am very excited about it.
The child actors playing the Cow God and the Cowherd in 'Love on the Magpie Bridge', a Clarion play of 2019. photo: courtesy C. Hsu When did you write the play?
‘The Piano’ I have been thinking about for a couple of years. My father was a piano manufacturer in Hong Kong. He was probably the only [piano] builder who had his own design, his own factory, his own market.
How did he learn? Did he apprentice?
He basically learned it by himself. He was in Singapore during the Second World War.
There was a lot of fighting there.
Yes. He got out just after the Japanese invasion; he was very lucky.
In Singapore, he worked as a radio repairman. But the radio repair shop was inside a piano shop, and he saw people putting pianos together. He was fascinated by that. I think that was his only hands-on experience. But I don’t know how much hands-on he really did, because he only saw it.
A self-taught piano maker?
Yes.
At the height of his career, how many pianos did he produce?
Umm. I don’t really remember the figures but I think he was able to produce 50-75 units a month.
A month! That is incredible.
He had a local market in Hong Kong but also Singapore, Malaysia, New Zealand and Australia.
Were you living with him then?
Yes, I was a little kid. I was able to spend some time in the factory, also the first workshop he had, which was in the basement of a church.
Hsu's entire life it threaded through her Clarion project. photo: D. Blair I remember—I was probably about four years old—I walked into this room that was very dark and dusty and walked into something that was really soft. It was sawdust. I was playing with the sawdust. That was my playground.
Amazing. Did he immigrate with you to the States?
No, I came first. I came to school, the last two years of high school, at a private school in New Jersey, called Pennington. Then he came over. He got remarried to a woman who lived in San Francisco.
[A school teacher, Hsu’s mother passed from brain cancer when she was 39 and Clara was nine.]
My grades were really bad. There was no chance of me going to college in Hong Kong. Hong Kong was very competitive. I was very lucky. I had an uncle, who was a professor at Princeton University [New Jersey]. So he made a connection for me to go to this private school.
They said, ‘Well, your grades are really poor. So you can’t graduate in one year. See if you can do in two years.’ Then I went to Westminster Choir College, also in New Jersey, a music school.
Did you connect to the Chinatown in New York?
Yes, I did actually, after I graduated. I worked in Chinatown in a shop that was very similar to Clarion. Have you been downstairs? We have these tiny [rehearsal] rooms, which are exactly like the shop in New York’s Chinatown. I taught there for a year and half. Then I got married and moved to the Bay Area… 1981.
Did you become involved in [San Francisco’s] Chinatown or—
I was living with my husband in Livermore. I didn’t have anything to do and didn’t know what to do.
My dad had just immigrated to the Bay Area. He decided to make a piano kit. He heard about American hobbyists, who like to make kits. ‘People like to make harpsichords,’ he said, ‘so why can’t they make a piano?’ So he and my step-brother Richard designed a piano kit. And he imported the kit to San Francisco.
Clara Hsu, her father, James Ma, and some of the instruments of Clarion Music Center, circa 1982. photo: Jim Block Manufactured in Hong Kong?
Yes, at that time he still had his factory.
Unfortunately, this was about the time that Chinese pianos started to come into the market—flooded the market, in fact. If you think of the famous [Asian] pianos like Yamaha, they have always been around. You could say Yamaha was my father’s competitor in Hong Kong. But, because he made [his pianos] in the factory there, he was competitive. Yamaha was an import, more expensive.
But when he brought his kit over here, you could buy a Chinese piano for $1200. Who would buy a kit, which you have to put together, for $1500? It doesn’t make any sense. Also, it is not so easy. A harpsichord [which also comes in kits] is a relatively light instrument and not so complicated.
It didn’t go well. He managed to sell a few pieces but not a lot. [Ultimately,] what he did was put all the pianos together and we put them downstairs [at Clarion] to use for rehearsal and giving music lessons.
My dad was really a genius. I was just tagging along because I didn’t know what I wanted to do in life.
But you did know you wanted to study music?
Umm. I think I studied music partially because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Music didn’t come easy for me. It is very difficult. I have to practice A LOT to be able to play. I was a good student, so I did well in [music] school, because I worked very hard.
But it didn’t give me joy and pleasure—it was work. I am not good enough, technically, to go anywhere with it. It was very difficult for me: to have this genius father who could do almost anything.
He also played the piano?
He played the organ, and he played the cello. I just tagged along. Opening the shop was his idea. He said, ‘You should have your own shop, but I will help you.’
I said, ‘Sure, whatever you think.’ So we went on like that until he had a stroke. So he said, ‘I am going to sell my business to you, and you keep going.’
Hsu, her father, James Ma, and younger sister, Gloria, Hong Kong, circa 1968. photo: courtesy C. Hsu I said, ‘OK.’ For lack of a better thing to do, I bought his business and kept going until I was 44, and I discovered poetry.
You are not a typical Chinese ‘striver’, you know what I mean?
I think that is from Chinese culture, especially in Hong Kong. You try, you strive. I was, too, but I didn’t think I had any ability, you know.
I didn’t have any passion for anything, until I found poetry. Then I said ‘Wow, this is something I really want to do.’ I had no training, no background, but I didn’t feel intimidated.
I think that is very important: You cannot feel intimidated! For example, when I was a musician, I felt intimidated by other musicians. [With poetry] I didn’t feel intimidated, even though I didn’t know anything.
You work and it didn’t feel like work—it feels like play! It is so exciting! Without these two ingredients [no intimidation, work as play], you can’t strive. You work very hard and you are not happy.
I thought, ‘Wow, I found this when I was 44. I am going to do something about it. I am not just going to sit around.’
But I have this shop, which is a huge burden on my shoulders. Everyday there is a disaster—everyday there is a crisis—if you go into retail and run a shop. So I sold it to my associates.
But then you took it back?
I took it back, not as business but as a performing arts center, because the space is so precious. They didn’t want to run it any more because retail is dead, because of the internet—you can’t survive.
I bought the space back, but I said, ‘You have to sell all the instruments, because I am not doing retail. I will build a stage; I am going to do poetry; I am going to do art; I am going to do theatre.
When you were 44, what poetry were you inspired by: ancient Chinese, modern American?
No. It really came from the heart.
'The Call', a fully feminist but also ancient-evocative poem by Clara Hsu. photo: D. Blair I would say I liked poetry but I didn’t really read it. I read it sometimes. I would say, ‘I like Chinese poetry,’ like someone said, ‘I like wonton soup.’ There was no emotional connection.
It came from within. One day, during a very bad time, when my marriage was not working, I sat down, and it came. I started to write. It came out as poem, and I said, ‘This is interesting.’
And after it came out, I felt a lot better: ‘Wow, this is amazing.’ Writing seemed to be very therapeutic. I later heard that many people started writing like that. It came from a very deep and painful place. It’s a healing process.
At some point, after I wrote for about year, I looked back at all the things I had written. They were so painful and so dark and so sad, I said, ‘I am not gong to live like that. I am going to write something happy.’
And so you start to change and hone in on your art and start to question, ‘Oh, how can I make a poem interesting?’ That is when I started to read other people’s poems, when I felt there is a need to get better at it.
Any particular poems you liked at that time?
Not really. There were online poetry groups; they critiqued each other; they posted their own poems.
I was a lurker for a long time—nearly a year. I didn’t know what to say, what to do. I was scared to death because they were going to critique me—some people are not very kind. But, at some point, I did. It was OK.
I felt there had to be poetry readings that you can go to, so I looked around. In the East Bay, at that time, there was nothing. You can go to Walnut Creek; you can go to Barnes and Nobles—few and far between.
Then I discovered Sacred Grounds at Cole and Hayes, right near the Panhandle [the longest running open mic in Bay Area.]
They have it every Wednesday, and they had about 30 poets every time. So I stayed there for many, many years. That was my home.
That was your workshop?
Yeah!
And the poets were so kind, very supportive, and that is what I needed at that time. Someone to say, ‘Oh, that was good.’ A little encouragement is precious.
Hanson Lee encountering a couple of Academy of Art film student's availing themself of a set with lovely light. photo: D. Blair You know, it is like a child. A child needs this kind of encouragement. It doesn’t mean you are great, but they appreciate your effort. And that is very important.
When did you start this place [Clarion], the performance side of it?
2016.
As you recall I was going around with Hanson and we were researching Chinatown and we didn’t find very much. First, we were looking for filmmakers, then we branched out and talked to some visual artists.
Generally speaking, however, it seems Chinatown became a place of mostly older people. The young, vibrant people have integrated and moved out to the Richmond or Sunset neighborhoods.
It is true and not just in San Francisco Chinatown. If you look at New York or Los Angeles, what do you see when you walk into Chinatown? It is food.
No one is thinking, ‘I am going to Chinatown and see a show.’ That is not going to happen, because it is not there.
But I feel that is a real need in the community. They are not waking up to it at this point, but they will, if we keep doing it. Then the community will say, ‘Oh, let’s see what is happening at Clarion.’
It was really hard for me to get the kids to do the plays. It is not the kids who are unwilling, it is the parents. They don’t know what I am talking about, what I am trying to do with their children.
These kids are mostly kids of recent immigrants?
Some of them are but not all. Most are born here. But the culture is not in the arts, the culture is in the food, that is what they grow up knowing.
The incredible thing about Chinese food: It was the first ethnic food, AND it conquered the whole world.
Yes. But there are other things, too.
Poetry has such a long history; it is so much a part of Chinese culture. Ordinary people, when they speak, they use ancient expressions. They don’t know where it came from—they wouldn’t even question—but it all came from poetry.
Who is interested in Chinese poetry right now? Not the younger generation but the older. So I have a group of seniors in their 80s and 90s. We have poetry on the phone.
A spirited performance at Clarion's open mic, which transpired on monthly on Thursdays (pre-Covid). photo: D. Blair A conference call? .
We have a conference call, and we recite Chinese poetry. They are very interested, because that is what they grew up with.
Hanson and I came to a performance here, about eight months ago.
Oh that’s right, I remember, but what were we doing? ‘Sparring with Beatnik Ghosts’?
It was a variety, one guy sang, another played the piano, an amazing variety of performances.
Oh, it was open mic.
When Hanson and I met at City Lights, I was joking with Hanson when he said he was from China, ‘If you broke through the wall in the back of City Lights, you would be in China.’
[Clara laughs.]
And he said, ‘Yes, and you would need a visa to go through.’
That is when I realized Chinatown was a mystery, right here in the middle of San Francisco. I have been here for 40 years, but it was still a mystery.
We made it our project to go around and discover some stuff. We came about ten times and had a meal and met some people, artists, librarians. Unfortunately, we didn’t find any filmmakers, except one night, some [white] kids from the Academy of Art, shooting a street scene—beautiful light.
Obviously, Chinatown has been here for many years, and it has been through many changes. I think it could have another change. Especially since China today is a very important part of our culture.
Yes.
There are a lot of possibilities. There are Chinese-American artists—they are everywhere—but we are not connected. We have the space and I want to preserve that until we can meet again [after Covid] and make it into a movement.
Any thought of bringing over guest poets or something from China?
No. I worked with one. I translated some of his poems, and they ended up in the Jung Journal. But I didn’t invite him, the Chinese Culture Center invited him. I don’t have a whole lot of connections with China.
Let’s get back to ‘The Piano’, the play.
The full cast of 'Love on the Magpie Bridge'. photo: courtesy C. Hsu I thought about it for a couple of years, and I sketched out the outline. After we did ‘The Magpie Bridge’ last year, the kids came up to me and said, ‘What are we doing next year?’
[‘Love on the Magpie Bridge’, professionally presented and nicely acted, can be seen here.]
I said, ‘I don’t know but I have something cooking, let me pull it out: ‘The Piano’.’
Because of my experience with my dad in Hong Kong in the factory—a unique experience—I incorporated that. I made him into a character.
Three piano students are waiting to be picked up after their lessons. They gossip about their teacher, Ms Clara, whose father was a piano maker. One of them warns that they should be careful, as Ms Clara said if they don’t sit up, with proper posture, they might get sucked into the piano. They laugh at the absurdity of the idea, not realizing that the piano has suddenly grown in size and two of them get sucked in.
Inside the piano, they meet Mr. Hammer, Ms Strings and Mr. Ma, the piano maker. They are taken on a tour of his factory in 1970s Hong Kong. A philosophical discussion follows during which they figure out how to get back—that is the basis of the story.
I felt it was a good thing to do. It was a way to honor my dad, using my own art. Finally his experience, my poetry—we could put it together. I don’t feel like someone who just tagged along, who was not able to do anything with my life.
To me, it is a very important play. I worked on it, and we were going to do it this year.
But I didn’t write any music, since I thought, ‘There is such a rich repertoire of classical piano music.’ But, because of Covid, I was stuck at home. So I thought, ‘Why don’t I write some music for the play?’ So now we have original music to go with the play, which I am really pleased about.
Sounds good. My big question is: Is there an art scene in Chinatown or is it mostly right here [at Clarion]?
I have to say there are a lot of artists in Chinatown, we just don’t know each other. It is not centrally located. You can’t find a group of people gathering together.
There are some artists but we don’t come together and show each other stuff. I am hoping that Clarion could be that kind of place, where people can come together. We aren’t right now but eventually it could be. If we generate enough different types of performance, then it will happen.
Hsu studied and taught piano and also composes. photo: D. Blair We have some filmmakers. I can give you Felicia Lowe’s info, she has done documentaries, and she is doing a workshop to show people how to do documentaries. There is also Arthur Dong, although he is now in Los Angeles.
We just installed a screen and projector, a few months ago, so we can show films. We can do poetry; we can do multimedia; we can do dance—limited [since the stage is only 18 x 12 feet]—but it can be done.
There are also younger Asian poets. I have not met them but I have heard them in poetry readings.
I think they just go to the regular poetry slams, as would any other person of color, doing their own thing.
Yes. I think there is a lot to learn if you come together. We all have different styles, different ways of doing things. The more we can come together and see what each other is doing, the more we get better at what we are doing.
A lot of times it is not that easy. Sometimes people feel it is a threat. They don’t want other people to see what they are doing. You have to break down these barriers. ‘Hey, you know it is OK. Your ideas won’t be stolen. And what if it is stolen? You will have another idea.’ (laughs)
The appropriation problem?
It is not just the Chinese community; it is everywhere; it is artists.
Everyone appropriates. Everyone borrows. Picasso said, ‘Good artists borrow, great artists steal.’ They hide it in their stuff so well, you don’t know they stole it.
Exactly. Because it is all built on something. Words are build on words, you can’t say, ‘This is my word.’
Generally speaking, words are about talking to someone else, which requires you understand them. I often say, ‘All culture is multi-culture.’
Absolutely, it is a process. We do it as much as we can. I really believe in having the community come together.
Obviously, you have done a lot of work for that, and this is a great place.
Clara Hsu in front of the Clarion Performing Arts Center. photo: D. Blair I felt we were just beginning, just beginning to have an audience, just beginning to have people recognize Clarion. But then Covid hit.
But hey, we’ll do it online and have a bigger audience. We had 360 views of ‘The Magpie Bridge’ in two days. We did three [live] performances here: each performance is only 60 people. If you think about that, if we can put something meaningful on the web, we can generate a much bigger viewership.
And that is OK—that is really fantastic, actually. And when we come back [post-Covid], we will have something already there. We have that platform, and we will continue. So it is OK.
It is a big change but we have to go with it.
We will get through it.
Today, before I came, I was having this poetry group with the seniors and we read this Chinese poem. It talks about this child who was really, really poor, and the family couldn’t afford to have light, to have oil, to buy a lamp, to study.
But next door was a rich man. Every day the lights were on and he was having parties. So this little, poor kid decided to drill a hole in the wall so that he could read with the next door’s light.
So we were reading this and they were saying, ‘We don’t have to worry about it now because everyone has light and electricity.’ But it tells you about the resilience of people: it is not just the boy trying to steal the light.
We are locked in, but we pick up the phone and talk to each other. It is the same idea.
It also reminds us that culture comes from poor people.
Un hunh.
There are artists in every strata of society. Sometimes we forget that when we talk all about privilege and Ivy League education.
You won’t have that if you don’t have the base to support you. The mountain is built from the bottom up. There is no peak, if you don’t have the bottom. So the bottom is incredibly important.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached Posted on Sep 11, 2020 - 07:17 PM
by Doniphan Blair
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The City Lights Bookstore block party, in 2019, was enjoyed by a graphic designer, one of the few Asians in attendance, even though Chinatown was literally next door. photo: D. BlairChinese-American electrician, art enthusiast and hippie, on Columbus Avenue, in the middle of San Francisco’s Italian neighborhood, North Beach.
We were attending the 100th birthday of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a Jewish-Italian-American poet, publisher and beatnik, at City Lights, the bookstore he founded in 1955. It was quite the party: 500 attendees and plenty of food, poetry, music, and, of course, wine (see story here).
As Hanson and I toasted plastic cups of Italian wine, however, I looked back at City Lights and noticed that right behind it—looming over it, surrounding it, in fact—was Chinatown.
Founded in 1848, it is the oldest Chinese community in the western hemisphere and the second largest, after New York’s. But having occupied the center of San Francisco for so long, it seems to have almost been forgotten.
Long gone are the 1920s, when intellectuals would explore Chinatown, looking for opium dens or Buddhist scholars, according to journalist Emily Freidkin, a friend of this author, or trying to meet Chinese women, as illustrated in “The Chinese Nightingale”, a poem by Vachel Lindsay, my great-uncle.
By the time I hit San Francisco in the ‘70s, Chinatown was mostly known for restaurants and cheap consumer goods. It was where my commune purchased crates of oranges.
Chinatown and one of its first new year's parades, circa 1955. photo: courtesy SF ChronicleA tough, short guy, who liked to date Caucasian women, Chow immigrated from Hong Kong, took over a “tong”—which means fraternal association but can also be a mafia family—and ended up having a couple of competitors killed. Chow’s story captivated San Francisco and the famous Black Panther lawyer and native son hippie, Tony Serra, mounted a determined defense, but he got life in 2016.
For out-of-control tongs, however, you had to go back to 1977 and the notorious Golden Dragon massacre, which killed five and injured eleven, at the eponymous Washington Street restaurant, three blocks from where Hanson and I were standing.
Across Columbus Avenue from City Lights, we could see Chinatown's main drag, Grant Street, down the alley next to the bookstore; to our right, the last Chinese restaurant, the New Sun Hong Kong, before Little Italy took over, and to our left, Francis Ford Coppola’s elegant, eight-story, triangle building and Café Zoetrope, also surrounded by Chinatown.
A bit tipsy, I became entranced and suddenly fancied myself an explorer surveying a new world. Chinatown must have some fascinating filmmakers and artists, I thought.
Although that realization was followed by fears that I would be accused of cultural colonialism, someone had to offset the general absence of awareness; I had spent five years traveling and living in Asia and South America, almost always welcomed by locals; and I didn’t see why Chinatown would be any different.
Hanson Lee (rt) and Doniphan Blair 'explore' Chinatown. photo: D. Blair Growing up in the highly cultured Shanghai, albeit during the Cultural Revolution, Hanson retained a fondness for Mao, who cancelled classes for all his high school years. Making his way to New York and then San Francisco, where hipster life was a little easier, he became active in the electrician trade—in fact, he has worked all over Chinatown.
He also became a dedicated devotee of the arts, notably San Francisco’s renown John Coltrane Church, where he sits on the board and which I hoped would make him amenable to my scheme.
Hanson was, and our first encounter with contemporary Chinatown culture was with Leland Wong, a personal friend of his, whom we met over dinner at the New Sun Hong Kong Restaurant.
A prolific artist and illustrator but also silk-screener, photographer and multi-media maker, Wong was raised in Chinatown and helped pop-ify its identity with colorful, cartoon-like imagery, among many other styles and projects. In 2014, he was the artist-in-residence at the Chinese Historical Society (see Wong's page), a large, well-developed institution on Clay Street.
Wong also provided a peak into the Chinatown of the 1960s. Although not many of his contemporaries made it across town to the Haight-Ashbury, they, too, were in rebel mode. “They liked amphetamines,” Wong told me.
Chinatown artist Leland Wong's 'Kois at Dragon Gate Mural', 2013. photo: courtesy L. Wang From my first awakening at City Lights, I had wondered how much rapport there was between Chinatown and the bookstore, or North Beach in general. Not much, it turned out, a paucity Hanson and I hoped to ameliorate.
One poetry night we looked at Le Bai, an innovative and romantic bohemian from the 8th century, who became the Tang Dynasty’s most revered poet; another at Gary Synder, a poet, beatnik and esteemed environmentalist who became a Buddhist monk in Japan for some years and integrated those ideas into his work (see that story here).
As we explored Chinatown, however, I came to realize it was somewhat frozen in the 19th century, although I doubt there are any opium dens left.
Well aware of this, the doyens of Chinatown gave it a massive make-over in the ‘50s, with the initiation of the still-popular new year’s festival and parade, which comes in February and includes the crowning of Miss Chinatown. The parade allowed Chinese lesbians and gays to march under their own banner in 1994, a notable achievement, considering the even later opening up of other ethnic parades.
Li Bai poster from Lee and Blair's 'Beat Poets East West' at the North Beach Library. image: D. Blair The monumental movie innovator and star Bruce Lee (1940–73) was born in Chinatown, before his family moved back to Hong Kong, and lived there upon his return in 1958. But he soon moved to Seattle, which had a tiny Chinatown, and, of course, Hollywood.
Chinatown remains rather medieval today because it is controlled by antique money and inhabited largely by the elderly, who get subsidized housing, and impoverished new immigrants, who work the restaurants and are often in-debt to people smugglers. The families of earlier immigrants have long since joined San Francisco’s middle class and decamped to the Sunset neighborhood or the suburbs.
Moreover, there is little evidence of the vibrant, ambitious and hyper-new China of today, in the form of fancy new stores, cultural centers or the consulate. Although renovated on the inside, the Historical Society is in a cultural heritage building, while the consulate general of the People's Republic of China sits a few miles away, in Japantown, as it happens. That building is so nondescript, in fact, it suggests the PRC is boycotting San Francisco’s Chinese community for being reactionary.
In sum, Chinatown evidences little of the highly artistic and mystical side of China—except in a few select locations.
The opening of Clarion Music Center in Chinatown, 1982. photo: courtesy C. Hsu Clarion is owned and directed by Clara Hsu, who also came from Hong Kong as a teen, albeit to the East Coast. Although born into a musical family and musically trained, she didn’t discover her muse until her 40s and an awakening to the power of poetry.
So profound was Hsu’s mystical and artistic revelation, she eventually converted Clarion from the music shop, started by her father, James Ma, into a performing arts center in 2016. It now produces everything from children’s theater to a monthly Thursday night open mic, an all Asian burlesque show or a Chinese tea ceremony with poetry.
One event, “Sparring with Beatnik Ghosts” produced by Daniel Yaryan, was a poetry and music night examining the beats.
After my year of sniffing around Chinatown, I realized Hsu’s story was an incredible one: How an ancient, overcrowded and feudal neighborhood could embark on creative renewal.
She graciously agreed to an interview.
Clara Hsu at the Clarion Performing Arts Center. photo: D. Blair Clara Hsu: No, we are closed [due to Covid].
But we have been opening up once in a while, for example, the production of the children’s theater. The kids have been coming in one at a time. They sit against the blue screen and I film them individually. Then we put it together. Last night, I was at the editor’s.
Didn’t you just have a performance?
The night before last [August 25th], we had a performance of ’Love on the Magpie Bridge’ on YouTube, last year’s performance that was filmed. We just taped it for archive’s sake, but I am really glad we did. Who knows when we can do that performance again.
It has been getting good reviews, comments from people who have seen it. The viewership is climbing—over 360 already—and that makes me happy. The kids were lovely and it was really a fun performance.
The whole idea is to spread the arts.
Were most of the kids from Chinatown?
Yes, and all students of Clarion. Last year’s group had eight kids. This year we had ten [for the new play, ‘The Piano’].
At first, I didn’t think we would be able to do a performance, since we can’t meet, and I didn’t know how the kids would feel. So I had a Zoom meeting, and they said they wanted to do it. We did all the rehearsals on Zoom, which was not easy.
Then came the point when we had to film. At first I thought, ‘Why don’t the kids film themselves?’ But it is not easy, so we set up a [green] screen here. Everyone came in one at a time, and we filmed them.
The kids—as one comes in and the other is leaving—they wanted to hug each other. They wanted to stay and play: it was bittersweet. For them, having that community, doing things together, is so important.
I am really glad we did the filming, and now we are editing. It is not the same as a play. I call it a ‘play movie.’ It is a play, but it is really is a movie. I am very excited about it.
The child actors playing the Cow God and the Cowherd in 'Love on the Magpie Bridge', a Clarion play of 2019. photo: courtesy C. Hsu ‘The Piano’ I have been thinking about for a couple of years. My father was a piano manufacturer in Hong Kong. He was probably the only [piano] builder who had his own design, his own factory, his own market.
How did he learn? Did he apprentice?
He basically learned it by himself. He was in Singapore during the Second World War.
There was a lot of fighting there.
Yes. He got out just after the Japanese invasion; he was very lucky.
In Singapore, he worked as a radio repairman. But the radio repair shop was inside a piano shop, and he saw people putting pianos together. He was fascinated by that. I think that was his only hands-on experience. But I don’t know how much hands-on he really did, because he only saw it.
A self-taught piano maker?
Yes.
At the height of his career, how many pianos did he produce?
Umm. I don’t really remember the figures but I think he was able to produce 50-75 units a month.
A month! That is incredible.
He had a local market in Hong Kong but also Singapore, Malaysia, New Zealand and Australia.
Were you living with him then?
Yes, I was a little kid. I was able to spend some time in the factory, also the first workshop he had, which was in the basement of a church.
Hsu's entire life it threaded through her Clarion project. photo: D. Blair Amazing. Did he immigrate with you to the States?
No, I came first. I came to school, the last two years of high school, at a private school in New Jersey, called Pennington. Then he came over. He got remarried to a woman who lived in San Francisco.
[A school teacher, Hsu’s mother passed from brain cancer when she was 39 and Clara was nine.]
My grades were really bad. There was no chance of me going to college in Hong Kong. Hong Kong was very competitive. I was very lucky. I had an uncle, who was a professor at Princeton University [New Jersey]. So he made a connection for me to go to this private school.
They said, ‘Well, your grades are really poor. So you can’t graduate in one year. See if you can do in two years.’ Then I went to Westminster Choir College, also in New Jersey, a music school.
Did you connect to the Chinatown in New York?
Yes, I did actually, after I graduated. I worked in Chinatown in a shop that was very similar to Clarion. Have you been downstairs? We have these tiny [rehearsal] rooms, which are exactly like the shop in New York’s Chinatown. I taught there for a year and half. Then I got married and moved to the Bay Area… 1981.
Did you become involved in [San Francisco’s] Chinatown or—
I was living with my husband in Livermore. I didn’t have anything to do and didn’t know what to do.
My dad had just immigrated to the Bay Area. He decided to make a piano kit. He heard about American hobbyists, who like to make kits. ‘People like to make harpsichords,’ he said, ‘so why can’t they make a piano?’ So he and my step-brother Richard designed a piano kit. And he imported the kit to San Francisco.
Clara Hsu, her father, James Ma, and some of the instruments of Clarion Music Center, circa 1982. photo: Jim Block Yes, at that time he still had his factory.
Unfortunately, this was about the time that Chinese pianos started to come into the market—flooded the market, in fact. If you think of the famous [Asian] pianos like Yamaha, they have always been around. You could say Yamaha was my father’s competitor in Hong Kong. But, because he made [his pianos] in the factory there, he was competitive. Yamaha was an import, more expensive.
But when he brought his kit over here, you could buy a Chinese piano for $1200. Who would buy a kit, which you have to put together, for $1500? It doesn’t make any sense. Also, it is not so easy. A harpsichord [which also comes in kits] is a relatively light instrument and not so complicated.
It didn’t go well. He managed to sell a few pieces but not a lot. [Ultimately,] what he did was put all the pianos together and we put them downstairs [at Clarion] to use for rehearsal and giving music lessons.
My dad was really a genius. I was just tagging along because I didn’t know what I wanted to do in life.
But you did know you wanted to study music?
Umm. I think I studied music partially because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Music didn’t come easy for me. It is very difficult. I have to practice A LOT to be able to play. I was a good student, so I did well in [music] school, because I worked very hard.
But it didn’t give me joy and pleasure—it was work. I am not good enough, technically, to go anywhere with it. It was very difficult for me: to have this genius father who could do almost anything.
He also played the piano?
He played the organ, and he played the cello. I just tagged along. Opening the shop was his idea. He said, ‘You should have your own shop, but I will help you.’
I said, ‘Sure, whatever you think.’ So we went on like that until he had a stroke. So he said, ‘I am going to sell my business to you, and you keep going.’
Hsu, her father, James Ma, and younger sister, Gloria, Hong Kong, circa 1968. photo: courtesy C. Hsu You are not a typical Chinese ‘striver’, you know what I mean?
I think that is from Chinese culture, especially in Hong Kong. You try, you strive. I was, too, but I didn’t think I had any ability, you know.
I didn’t have any passion for anything, until I found poetry. Then I said ‘Wow, this is something I really want to do.’ I had no training, no background, but I didn’t feel intimidated.
I think that is very important: You cannot feel intimidated! For example, when I was a musician, I felt intimidated by other musicians. [With poetry] I didn’t feel intimidated, even though I didn’t know anything.
You work and it didn’t feel like work—it feels like play! It is so exciting! Without these two ingredients [no intimidation, work as play], you can’t strive. You work very hard and you are not happy.
I thought, ‘Wow, I found this when I was 44. I am going to do something about it. I am not just going to sit around.’
But I have this shop, which is a huge burden on my shoulders. Everyday there is a disaster—everyday there is a crisis—if you go into retail and run a shop. So I sold it to my associates.
But then you took it back?
I took it back, not as business but as a performing arts center, because the space is so precious. They didn’t want to run it any more because retail is dead, because of the internet—you can’t survive.
I bought the space back, but I said, ‘You have to sell all the instruments, because I am not doing retail. I will build a stage; I am going to do poetry; I am going to do art; I am going to do theatre.
When you were 44, what poetry were you inspired by: ancient Chinese, modern American?
No. It really came from the heart.
'The Call', a fully feminist but also ancient-evocative poem by Clara Hsu. photo: D. Blair It came from within. One day, during a very bad time, when my marriage was not working, I sat down, and it came. I started to write. It came out as poem, and I said, ‘This is interesting.’
And after it came out, I felt a lot better: ‘Wow, this is amazing.’ Writing seemed to be very therapeutic. I later heard that many people started writing like that. It came from a very deep and painful place. It’s a healing process.
At some point, after I wrote for about year, I looked back at all the things I had written. They were so painful and so dark and so sad, I said, ‘I am not gong to live like that. I am going to write something happy.’
And so you start to change and hone in on your art and start to question, ‘Oh, how can I make a poem interesting?’ That is when I started to read other people’s poems, when I felt there is a need to get better at it.
Any particular poems you liked at that time?
Not really. There were online poetry groups; they critiqued each other; they posted their own poems.
I was a lurker for a long time—nearly a year. I didn’t know what to say, what to do. I was scared to death because they were going to critique me—some people are not very kind. But, at some point, I did. It was OK.
I felt there had to be poetry readings that you can go to, so I looked around. In the East Bay, at that time, there was nothing. You can go to Walnut Creek; you can go to Barnes and Nobles—few and far between.
Then I discovered Sacred Grounds at Cole and Hayes, right near the Panhandle [the longest running open mic in Bay Area.]
They have it every Wednesday, and they had about 30 poets every time. So I stayed there for many, many years. That was my home.
That was your workshop?
Yeah!
And the poets were so kind, very supportive, and that is what I needed at that time. Someone to say, ‘Oh, that was good.’ A little encouragement is precious.
Hanson Lee encountering a couple of Academy of Art film student's availing themself of a set with lovely light. photo: D. Blair When did you start this place [Clarion], the performance side of it?
2016.
As you recall I was going around with Hanson and we were researching Chinatown and we didn’t find very much. First, we were looking for filmmakers, then we branched out and talked to some visual artists.
Generally speaking, however, it seems Chinatown became a place of mostly older people. The young, vibrant people have integrated and moved out to the Richmond or Sunset neighborhoods.
It is true and not just in San Francisco Chinatown. If you look at New York or Los Angeles, what do you see when you walk into Chinatown? It is food.
No one is thinking, ‘I am going to Chinatown and see a show.’ That is not going to happen, because it is not there.
But I feel that is a real need in the community. They are not waking up to it at this point, but they will, if we keep doing it. Then the community will say, ‘Oh, let’s see what is happening at Clarion.’
It was really hard for me to get the kids to do the plays. It is not the kids who are unwilling, it is the parents. They don’t know what I am talking about, what I am trying to do with their children.
These kids are mostly kids of recent immigrants?
Some of them are but not all. Most are born here. But the culture is not in the arts, the culture is in the food, that is what they grow up knowing.
The incredible thing about Chinese food: It was the first ethnic food, AND it conquered the whole world.
Yes. But there are other things, too.
Poetry has such a long history; it is so much a part of Chinese culture. Ordinary people, when they speak, they use ancient expressions. They don’t know where it came from—they wouldn’t even question—but it all came from poetry.
Who is interested in Chinese poetry right now? Not the younger generation but the older. So I have a group of seniors in their 80s and 90s. We have poetry on the phone.
A spirited performance at Clarion's open mic, which transpired on monthly on Thursdays (pre-Covid). photo: D. Blair We have a conference call, and we recite Chinese poetry. They are very interested, because that is what they grew up with.
Hanson and I came to a performance here, about eight months ago.
Oh that’s right, I remember, but what were we doing? ‘Sparring with Beatnik Ghosts’?
It was a variety, one guy sang, another played the piano, an amazing variety of performances.
Oh, it was open mic.
When Hanson and I met at City Lights, I was joking with Hanson when he said he was from China, ‘If you broke through the wall in the back of City Lights, you would be in China.’
[Clara laughs.]
And he said, ‘Yes, and you would need a visa to go through.’
That is when I realized Chinatown was a mystery, right here in the middle of San Francisco. I have been here for 40 years, but it was still a mystery.
We made it our project to go around and discover some stuff. We came about ten times and had a meal and met some people, artists, librarians. Unfortunately, we didn’t find any filmmakers, except one night, some [white] kids from the Academy of Art, shooting a street scene—beautiful light.
Obviously, Chinatown has been here for many years, and it has been through many changes. I think it could have another change. Especially since China today is a very important part of our culture.
Yes.
There are a lot of possibilities. There are Chinese-American artists—they are everywhere—but we are not connected. We have the space and I want to preserve that until we can meet again [after Covid] and make it into a movement.
Any thought of bringing over guest poets or something from China?
No. I worked with one. I translated some of his poems, and they ended up in the Jung Journal. But I didn’t invite him, the Chinese Culture Center invited him. I don’t have a whole lot of connections with China.
Let’s get back to ‘The Piano’, the play.
The full cast of 'Love on the Magpie Bridge'. photo: courtesy C. Hsu [‘Love on the Magpie Bridge’, professionally presented and nicely acted, can be seen here.]
I said, ‘I don’t know but I have something cooking, let me pull it out: ‘The Piano’.’
Because of my experience with my dad in Hong Kong in the factory—a unique experience—I incorporated that. I made him into a character.
Three piano students are waiting to be picked up after their lessons. They gossip about their teacher, Ms Clara, whose father was a piano maker. One of them warns that they should be careful, as Ms Clara said if they don’t sit up, with proper posture, they might get sucked into the piano. They laugh at the absurdity of the idea, not realizing that the piano has suddenly grown in size and two of them get sucked in.
Inside the piano, they meet Mr. Hammer, Ms Strings and Mr. Ma, the piano maker. They are taken on a tour of his factory in 1970s Hong Kong. A philosophical discussion follows during which they figure out how to get back—that is the basis of the story.
I felt it was a good thing to do. It was a way to honor my dad, using my own art. Finally his experience, my poetry—we could put it together. I don’t feel like someone who just tagged along, who was not able to do anything with my life.
To me, it is a very important play. I worked on it, and we were going to do it this year.
But I didn’t write any music, since I thought, ‘There is such a rich repertoire of classical piano music.’ But, because of Covid, I was stuck at home. So I thought, ‘Why don’t I write some music for the play?’ So now we have original music to go with the play, which I am really pleased about.
Sounds good. My big question is: Is there an art scene in Chinatown or is it mostly right here [at Clarion]?
I have to say there are a lot of artists in Chinatown, we just don’t know each other. It is not centrally located. You can’t find a group of people gathering together.
There are some artists but we don’t come together and show each other stuff. I am hoping that Clarion could be that kind of place, where people can come together. We aren’t right now but eventually it could be. If we generate enough different types of performance, then it will happen.
Hsu studied and taught piano and also composes. photo: D. Blair We just installed a screen and projector, a few months ago, so we can show films. We can do poetry; we can do multimedia; we can do dance—limited [since the stage is only 18 x 12 feet]—but it can be done.
There are also younger Asian poets. I have not met them but I have heard them in poetry readings.
I think they just go to the regular poetry slams, as would any other person of color, doing their own thing.
Yes. I think there is a lot to learn if you come together. We all have different styles, different ways of doing things. The more we can come together and see what each other is doing, the more we get better at what we are doing.
A lot of times it is not that easy. Sometimes people feel it is a threat. They don’t want other people to see what they are doing. You have to break down these barriers. ‘Hey, you know it is OK. Your ideas won’t be stolen. And what if it is stolen? You will have another idea.’ (laughs)
The appropriation problem?
It is not just the Chinese community; it is everywhere; it is artists.
Everyone appropriates. Everyone borrows. Picasso said, ‘Good artists borrow, great artists steal.’ They hide it in their stuff so well, you don’t know they stole it.
Exactly. Because it is all built on something. Words are build on words, you can’t say, ‘This is my word.’
Generally speaking, words are about talking to someone else, which requires you understand them. I often say, ‘All culture is multi-culture.’
Absolutely, it is a process. We do it as much as we can. I really believe in having the community come together.
Obviously, you have done a lot of work for that, and this is a great place.
Clara Hsu in front of the Clarion Performing Arts Center. photo: D. Blair But hey, we’ll do it online and have a bigger audience. We had 360 views of ‘The Magpie Bridge’ in two days. We did three [live] performances here: each performance is only 60 people. If you think about that, if we can put something meaningful on the web, we can generate a much bigger viewership.
And that is OK—that is really fantastic, actually. And when we come back [post-Covid], we will have something already there. We have that platform, and we will continue. So it is OK.
It is a big change but we have to go with it.
We will get through it.
Today, before I came, I was having this poetry group with the seniors and we read this Chinese poem. It talks about this child who was really, really poor, and the family couldn’t afford to have light, to have oil, to buy a lamp, to study.
But next door was a rich man. Every day the lights were on and he was having parties. So this little, poor kid decided to drill a hole in the wall so that he could read with the next door’s light.
So we were reading this and they were saying, ‘We don’t have to worry about it now because everyone has light and electricity.’ But it tells you about the resilience of people: it is not just the boy trying to steal the light.
We are locked in, but we pick up the phone and talk to each other. It is the same idea.
It also reminds us that culture comes from poor people.
Un hunh.
There are artists in every strata of society. Sometimes we forget that when we talk all about privilege and Ivy League education.
You won’t have that if you don’t have the base to support you. The mountain is built from the bottom up. There is no peak, if you don’t have the bottom. So the bottom is incredibly important.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached Posted on Sep 11, 2020 - 07:17 PM
