San Francisco and ChinatownIn the Gilded Age, San Francisco was a beacon for travelers heading to the West Coast of the United States. The most important city in the developing West during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, San Francisco encompassed a number of contrasting identities. This time period marked a transitional phase in San Francisco's development, evolving from a thriving "frontier city" to a "civilized metropolis," the emerging San Franciscan identity maintaining qualities from both poles of this spectrum. Chinatown, existing as a city within a city, shared this relationship of extremes with San Francisco. For travelers visiting San Francisco, Chinatown was a must-see. Travelogue writings published in this period describe Chinatown through a mix of revulsion and curiosity, its inhabitants virtuous and subhuman. In short, within the developing city of San Francisco, an expedition to Chinatown remained a visceral exploration of a foreign and exciting environment. Emily Faithful, an English woman writing in 1884, traveled across America to explore the changing position of women during the 19th century. century.[1] Faithful noted, “San Francisco is a city of strange contrasts. There is perhaps no faster place in the world, yet there are few more notable for works of true benevolence. There is more alcohol and more fanatical total abstinence than I have ever encountered anywhere else..."[2] Faithful focused primarily on the moral decadence that accompanies San Francisco's prosperity, yet closed its description of San Francisco contrasting the decadence of the "so-called society set,"[3] to the equally great "cultured...... middle of paper......ities (Philadelphia: Hubbard Brothers, 1883), 455 and Alfred Falk, Trans -Pacific sketches; a tour through the United States and Canada (Melbourne: G. Robertson, 1877), 23.[8] Glazier, Peculiarities of American Cities, 464.[9] Nicholas Everitt, Around the World in Strange Company; America, British Columbia and the West (London: T. W. Laurie Ltd., 1915), 270.[10] Green, Notes, 65.[11] Glazier, Peculiarities of American Cities, 468.[12] Glazier, 469.[13] Catherine Bates, A Year in the Great Republic (London, Ward & Downey, 1887), 140.[14] Ibid.[15] Bates, A Year in the Great Republic, 141.[16] Ibid.[17] ibid., 142.[18] Glazier, Peculiarities of American Cities, 469.[19] Green, Notes on New York, San Francisco, and Old Mexico, 71.[20] Ibid.[21] Green, Notes, 71.[22] Glazier, Peculiarities, 470.[23] Ibid, 471.