• Tin How Temple, Waverly Place (oldest Chinese temple in the United States, founded circa 1852)
• Portsmouth Square (heart of historic Chinatown)

San Francisco's Chinatown is the oldest Chinatown in North America, established in the early 1850s when Chinese immigrants — drawn primarily from the Pearl River Delta region of Guangdong province — arrived in large numbers during the California Gold Rush. The first Chinese arrived in San Francisco in 1848, and within two years an estimated 20,000 had landed at the city's waterfront, the principal port of entry for the gold fields. They settled near Portsmouth Square along Dupont Street, now Grant Avenue — San Francisco's first street — creating the dense urban enclave that would become the cultural and commercial center of Chinese America for more than a century.

The community endured the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first U.S. law to bar a specific ethnic group from entry, and survived the 1906 earthquake and fire that destroyed the entire neighborhood. City officials moved to relocate Chinatown permanently to the outskirts of the city, but merchant leader Look Tin Eli and the Chinese Six Companies secured the original location and rebuilt — deliberately commissioning pagoda rooftops, curved balconies, and ornamental facades that transformed a razed district into what became the architectural template for Chinatowns across North America. Reconstruction was completed in 1908, a year ahead of the rest of the city. The Tin How Temple on Waverly Place, originally founded circa 1852 and rebuilt in 1910, remains the oldest Chinese temple in the United States.

That story — resilience, refusal, and reinvention in the face of exclusion — is precisely what MY-NHD apparel is built to honor. Wearing Chinatown means wearing one of the most contested and enduring neighborhoods in American urban history.