Picture this:
An old man in a normal-enough looking community park. He's moving slowly like everything else on an early Saturday morning. He turns and performs a thrusting motion revealing a long, sword with a red sash hanging from its hilt. He moves in slow, fluid Tai Chi .
Forty yards away, several older men and women move in unison on a grassy square - no swords. They too practice the art (of Tai Chi or Falun Gong) in early morning light.
After a short walk east, red, dried 'Peking' ducks hang in large restaurant windows, red and gold trimmed Chinese characters adorn their windows. Men, dressed in white, silently busy themselves in food preparation - some Mandarin, some Cantonese style.
I guess they wouldn't make it here in Sacramento, they don't make tacos.
Hanging paper lanterns, fresh vegetable stands, the lyrical rhythm of the language spoken in rapid staccato, old men and women walking the streets with full grocery bags and carts, dancing dragons and firecrackers during the Chinese New Year are some of my memories of Chinatown in Manhattan's South Central near Federal Plaza and Canal Streets.
I hear tell there's a block of 'Chinatown' in downtown Sac, but... A block? Chinatown?
Nope.
Not in Sacramento.
Someone said the flavor there - at the one restaurant that says it's Chinese - leans toward Vietnamese cuisine.
There is a Little Vietnam, though in south Sac;
with two violent gangs.
Welcome to Sacramento. Hope you like tacos.
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