Wok Wiz: San Francisco’s Happiest Tour Guide
The Wok Wiz: San Francisco’s Happiest Guide
By Rebecca McCormick • Special to The News-Star • July 18, 2010
Last year, Forbes.com included San Francisco as the only North American city on their list of “The World’s Happiest Cities.”
Citing “urban centers closely associated with unmitigated joy,” the magazine editors may well have based their decision largely on one unofficial San Francisco ambassador: Shirley Fong-Torres, better known as The Wok Wiz in tourism and culinary circles.
I first met Shirley several years ago while standing among tourists at The Tennessee River Freshwater Pearl Farm — America’s only site for freshwater culturing. While everybody waited to take pictures of a diver climbing out of the oyster pit, Shirley was the one cracking jokes.
“How do you tell if a pearl is real?” quizzed the diver.
“You bite it!” answered a young schoolgirl.
“Yes, but for that you would need real teeth,” quipped my new best friend.
When Myron and I planned our vacation to San Francisco last November, we decided to surprise Shirley by showing up unannounced for her 10 a.m. daily Wok Wiz tour of Chinatown — although it never occurred to us one of her other guides might be scheduled for our particular tour.
Huddled with a dozen other coffee-drinking tourists in the lobby of the Chinatown Hilton Hotel, we recognized Shirley’s larger-than-life laugh before she ever rounded the corner.
I stood silently, waiting for her to look my way before flashing a smile.
It worked.
“Heyyyyyy!” she said, looking at us like a mother welcoming her kids home for Christmas. “You look just like a friend of mine from Arkansas!”
For the next three hours, our group walked with Shirley through Chinatown, a vibrant historic neighborhood that is home to more than 10,000 residents and host to millions of tourists each year.
We started our adventure with a stroll through Portsmouth Square, where locals gather to visit, talk and relax in their “outdoor living room.”
“The first Chinese who came here were Guangdonese men who took long journeys to come to the ‘Gold Mountains,’ as they referred to San Francisco,” said Shirley. “Their suitcases were packed with more than toothbrushes and family pictures. They were filled with dreams of a better life.”
Although some people refer to early life in Chinatown as “a bachelor society,” Fong-Torres insists this is an inaccurate description of courageous men who lived sorrowful lives separated from their wives, children and other family members.
Originally confined to a five-block area, Chinatown grew in creative directions: up, as well as underground — where a massive tunnel system once existed.
“They also learned creative ways to stretch their food,” Shirley explains. “That’s why we still see dried fish, shrimp, scallops and mushrooms throughout the markets here.”
Now, Chinatown boasts more than 100 restaurants featuring everything from preserved thousand-year old eggs so “fish so fresh they nearly jump in your steamer.”
Life cranks up early in Chinatown. Shopkeepers along the main arteries enticed us to explore a myriad of must-haves — like porcelain and clay teapots, linens and silk, pearls and gold. Art galleries accent the streets like studs on a tuxedo.
On Stockton Street, we perused crowded markets where fresh fish and vegetables show off splashy colors like the garments hanging from overhead clotheslines. Clay Street boasts the Chinese Historical Society of America. But along upper Grant, smells of livestock markets remind us who rules the food chain. Perfumes from the herbal markets wrap us in centuries of traditions. And we are altogether taken.
Red Blossom Tea Company, for instance, has become to tea aficionados what Nashville’s BlueBird Café is to songwriters. Brother and sister Peter and Alice Luong are direct importers, traveling thousands of miles in search of rare teas and artisan tea ware. Don’t worry, though; they have a staff fluent in both Chinese and English — all trained to make you feel comfortable in a perhaps unfamiliar world of exotic leafy treasures.
After a full morning of lively learning, Shirley escorted us to a neighborhood dim sum restaurant.
“Dim sum was around long before tapas became trendy,” she laughs. “It’s a way of life for us. In fact, a typical lunch for Maggie and Stella (my 4- and 6-year old granddaughters) and me would be har gow shrimp dumpling, sil mai-pork dumpling, siu loong bow-Shanghai dumplings, taro puff, sticky rice in lotus leaf, bean curd roll, silky tofu, beef and baby bock choy chow fun, mango pudding and orange Jell-O. It’s like a party on the table!”
Shirley patiently and professionally explained the parade of selections piled on the carts around us. No wonder she’s been seen on the History and Discovery channels and is up for another appearance on the Food Channel — this time with Andrew Zimmern of Bizarre Foods. Her expertise has also earned her spots on in-flight videos for three airlines. And her latest book is titled “The Woman Who Ate Chinatown, a San Francisco Odyssey.”
“Dim sum is definitely a delicious way to end a day in Chinatown,” she cheered, snapping pictures of her guests grazing on the mounds of food under their chins. No wonder Shirley’s tours have been called “a feeding of the mind by a street poet of America’s most food-obsessed ethnic neighborhood.”
But they left out the stand-up comedy. Shirley’s smile and quick wit turn a boring history tour into a boisterous hilarity tour. Her passion and warmth have made all of Chinatown her friend. And all the world is her stage.
Bravo, Wok Wiz! Bravo!