Irving Street, USA

The first time I walked along Irving Street, I revelled in the feeling that I had been transported back to Hong Kong or China. Even though I hadn't spent much time in that part of the world, and the last 14 generations of my ancestors had lived and died in Taiwan, I decided with great satisfaction that on Irving Street, I was among my people: the old Cantonese women pushing you out of the way, cutting you off in line and thrusting their produce on the scale so that the cashier has to serve them first; the fresh, cheap Chinese vegetables and fruit stacked high along the sidewalk, oblivious to the possibility of someone running by and making off with an armful of mangoes or daikon radish; the tiny, painfully made-up and perfectly coiffed Hong Kong skank-hos in Bebe fashions, hanging out in front of boba shops with their rice rocket boyfriends; the twenty salons on a ten-block span of greasy restaurants, barbecued meat counters, and Chinese bakeries; the intimidating concrete shop scattered with feathers and the deafening indignant clucks of hundreds of fat poultry birds in cages; and of course, KFC and Starbucks. Cars crawled across intersections swarming with Chinese people, mostly hunched seniors hobbling towards the curb as if they had all afternoon to get there. Which, I suppose, they did. This stretch of Irving Street, at first glance, was pure, unspoiled China.

Once two giddy European backpackers stopped me at the market and asked me to take their picture in front of a display of longyan and aisles lined with all varieties of flowing green choy. They were shivering with the excitement of discovering what seemed to be a secret Chinatown hidden in the middle of the great American city of San Francisco.

After all, this span of Irving Street, between 19th and 25th Avenues in the Sunset District, is not given much real estate in most travel guides. If a guidebook mentions Irving Street, it is usually refering to the more mainstream, palatable and American 9th Avenue area, packed with coffee shops, mungey diners, pretentious art galleries, trendy sushi bars, cheap Indian food, creperies with menus bigger than France, and local hangouts for the young professional and UCSF medical school crowds.

But the "other" Irving Street, buried ten blocks further west in the fog, is, like all Chinatowns, Koreatowns, Japantowns or Little Saigons across the country, not an exact replica of Hong Kong or Taipei thriving uncorrupted in their adopted culture, but a bustling community of immigrants and first generation Americans, mostly from south China, that has retained most of the look of the homeland, but is also undeniably American.

I pedalled slowly west on Irving, scanning both sides of the street for salons. I found the first one at 13th Avenue. Fifteen bucks for a cut. I decided to keep riding. Once I crossed 19th Avenue, there were about two salons on every block. On one block, they were next door to each other. All but one charged $10 for a cut; the one that charged $9 had a crowd of waiting patrons.

I walked my bike up and down the sidewalk, trying to appear inconspicuous as I peered into salons to size up the stylists and clientele. Even though I had a Chinese face, I still stuck out. I was a 30-year-old female on a racing bike, my bike shoes clicking as I walked, one ashen brown calf exposed under a rolled up pant leg. I looked like a yuppie, or a bohemian version of one. The senior set probably saw me and thought, guailo.

At least they didn't see me and recoil in horror, thinking, Mormon. A day on Irving Street wouldn't be complete without seeing the tall pastey white guys in their black suits, clutching the Book of Mormon and timidly sidling up to old Chinese people, blurting greetings in Cantonese. So far I've never been approached by one. Perhaps it's my age; I've still got time to be saved. Or perhaps I'm so obviously Westernized that I don't need to be lifted from any backwards Oriental ways into the palm of Jesus Christ.

I walked into a salon. One of the stylists looked expectantly at me but didn't greet me. She looked Chinese, but she could have been Vietnamese. It was the usual dilemma I had everytime I walked into a business run by Asians in San Francisco. What language do I speak to get the best service, or the biggest discount? Most Chinese in the city speak Cantonese or another southern Chinese dialect, not the Mandarin that I speak. Many "Chinese" are actually Vietnamese, or Korean, or Japanese. Wo yao jian tou fa, I practiced in my head. I decided not to risk offending anyone with my presumptuousness, so I said, "I'd like a haircut." Another stylist came out and waved me into a chair. I showed him a picture of the style I wanted, and he nodded.

"Maybe two inch shorter, okay?" he said, and went to work. The other stylists chatted with customers in what sounded like Cantonese. I assumed my stylist also spoke Cantonese, so I gave up on trying to remember how to say "long," "short," and "Stop cutting, too much gone!" in Mandarin.

I moved my hand out from under the barber's cape to catch a cough. My stylist stopped hacking at my hair until I finished coughing. A few minutes later, I had to cough again. This time, he kept chopping away. The cough was stubborn and persistent, but it didn't seem to phase this man. He didn't seem to notice the mild bronchitis symptoms, nor did he seem to be concerned that my heaving body might result in a bad haircut. Not even, "Are you okay? Would you like some water? Kleenex?" This man was very Cantonese. He let out a long, rolling burp. His scissors didn't even pause.

The haircut turned out well, and I gave my stylist a $3 tip for the $10 service. He accepted it happily, but I wondered if it secretly insulted his proud Chinese sensibilities to be offered a 30 percent tip by someone twenty years younger than he was. In my American mind, it seems insulting to give a $1.50 tip for anything. Even when I get a $3.99 haircut at Hair By Henry, a Vietnamese joint in Houston, I tip $2 and feel guilty and cheap for a week.

I once offered a Korean cab driver in Chicago a $2 tip for a $5 trip. "Oh, you tip so big," he said, eyes wide. He gave me a dollar back, and said I reminded him of his daughter, and I wondered if he thought I was being condescending or disrespectful to tip 40 percent to someone who was comfortable imagining himself as my father.

I never really noticed all the shops selling really cheap junk. I had a new haircut and tiny prickly hairs poking me through my shirt; now I was ready to buy a rug. I noticed some tolerable Oriental rugs hanging outside a shop. Within a two-block radius I discovered four more stores selling Oriental rugs, including an actual rug store. In front hung a 4’ x 5’ rug with a Kokopeli design, which was a bit of a cliché but at least toed the tasteful side of the rug fashion line.

I went inside to see if they had anything else I could envision on my bedroom floor, and was greeted by a 21-year-old kid wearing white gold chains around his neck. I thought what everyone thinks when they walk into an Oriental rug store: It’s a front for a drug smuggling operation. I don’t even know if that idea comes from some internalized racism or just my own ignorance of the world of Oriental rugs and drug smugglers. I suppose it's really the same thing.

“What is it made of?” I quizzed the kid. I was a little nervous about possibly stumping him.

“Oh, um.”

“Wool?” I said, trying to help him out.

“Oh, no! Not wool. That would be too expensive.”

“Oh. Do you know what it is then?”

“I don’t know. Not wool.”

“Can I put it in the washer?”

“No, definitely not. But it’s sturdy. You can vacuum it.”

“I’ll take it.” I tried not to think of the third-world child labor that was used to make that rug so cheaply. “I might have to come back for it in an hour or so. I’m on my bike.”

He assured me that once it was rolled up, the rug would be manageable, but he didn’t look convinced of it. With some clever spatial adjustments, I was actually able to lash the rug to my messenger bag and carefully wobble my way home. I would have felt a bit self-conscious with a four-foot rug sticking out from either side of me as I biked, but as my friend Megumi says, “It’s San Francisco.” People magically carry longboards, poster tubes, dry-erase boards and all sorts of sharp objects while riding their bikes. My great concern was not jousting any pedestrians or newsstands as I passed.

At last, the rug and I made it home in one piece, successfully procured on Irving Street, USA: open for all kinds of business.