The former section said that we got to America on Oct 26, 2011 to undertake the task of looking after our granddaughter Angie M Song. Later our daughter-in-law Lei Meng asked her own mother also came and before long they three together went home Xi’an, leaving three of us in America, namely Liangliang Song and we old pair. So we had time to travel to the west of America.
At 10:04 a.m. April 4, 2012, we took off from O’Hare airport and at 12:53 we arrived San Francisco. Because there was two hours’ time difference, actually, the plane flied for 4 hours and 49 minutes.
Long ago I got to know that another name of San Francisco was Old Gold Mountain, because in the mid nineteenth century it was developed rapidly on account of gold mining. Later in order to differentiate it from the gold mine discovered in Melbourne of Australia, San Francisco was called Old Gold Mountain. San Francisco was located on the north end of the peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay, which was developed by Spain in 1776, belonged to Mexico in 1821 and then to America in 1848. San Francisco Bay is a big bay and from the Pacific to enter the Bay you must go through the Golden Gate Channel. The city of San Francisco lies in the north of the Channel on the peninsula. As Golden Gate Bridge and other 4 cross bay bridges were built, both the north of the Golden Gate Channel, and the east and west of the San Francisco Bay were all developed, forming a large city around the bay.
Can you point out the location of the old San Francisco?
… San Francisco is a veritable mountain city. According to my imagination the bay is a deep canyon, with mountains around it and all the architectures were constructed on the mountain. Look at the city map and you’ll find that the streets from north to south and from east to west were dense, dividing the land into almost equal blocks. No matter how uneven the land is the streets go straight forward, without any direction change, making us surprised. We got to the Lombard Street, whose slope is 40 degrees, so frightening (traffic accidents often took place) that it had been changed into one-way traffic, only down not up and transformed into nine curved turns. Flowers and trees are growing along the street, flowers blooming among green leaves and you can overlook the bay bridges and Coit Tower on The Telegraph Hill in the distance. If you walk instead of driving, you can go along the pedestrian way, enjoying the beautiful scenes of the characteristic tourist spot.
nine curved turns 40 degrees slope with flowers
On the old gold mountain peninsula there are some level ground, for example China Town is located where the terrain is somewhat flat. China Town in San Francisco is the largest one I’ve ever seen. I have been to several oversea China towns, for example those in Melbourne, Sidney, Frankfort, London, Manchester, Toronto, New York, Washington DC, and Chicago, I have never seen so large an area China town covers as that of San Francisco, where there are about 18 blocks, which I have ascertained on the map. The old Chinese immigrants came here in boats with three masts or ships, drifting on the ocean for more than two months, with difficulties and hardships, dangers and disasters. It was 150 years since 1850 the Chinese gold miners opened first nine small shops in Sacramento Street. Living here is the same as living in China and there are all Chinese in the square, most of whom are Cantonese. Chinese account for one third of the population of the whole city. On Oct of 2011, Mr. Mengxian Li, a Chinese American, succeeded in running for mayor, the first Chinese American mayor of this western coast city since 160 years ago.
a corner of China Town of San Francisco
When you come to San Francisco, you’re sure to visit bridges, the most famous among which is Golden Gate Bridge across the Golden Gate Channel. It began construction on Jan. 5 of 1933 and was completed in April of 1937 and had a history of 75 years in 2012. Its two ends are on the mountains, so there are no approach bridges, 2737 meters long. The bridge towers are 342 meters high, equal to the height of 70 stores’ building. The bridge face is 27.4 m wide, six traffic lanes and two wide right and left pavements for pedestrians. In 1579, The Britain explorer Francis Drake discovered the channel connecting the Pacific and San Francisco and entered the inside of the San Francisco Bay.
Cruise ship going under the Golden Gate Bridge
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Five Bridges across Golden Gate Channel and San Francisco Bay
The diagrams above show the five bridges across the sea: ② is Golden Gate Bridge, which is most famous, and the shortest one. The longest is ④, San Mateo-Hayward Bridge, 7 miles, equal to 11.3 km long, completed in Oct. 1967. According to my survey there used to be a bridge in 1929, the longest one in the world at that time and nowadays it is ranked the 25th place in the world. Sutong Yangzi River Bridge in China is 32.4 km long, the Hangzhou Bay cross-sea bridge is 36 km long. When I was writing this section, Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao bridge was open to traffic, which was 55 km long. As we stayed in the hotel of Union City located across Old Golden Mountain in the southeast, from the airport to the hotel we had to go on ④San Mateo-Hayward Bridge, which had a history of 45 years and I discovered it was quite a long bridge.
In the diagram, ③ is San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, shortened Bay Bridge, from San Francisco across to Oakland, 7.18 km long, began to be constructed in 1933 and was completed in 1936, one year earlier than Golden Gate Bridge. This bridge has two-layer, the vehicles from west to east go on the lower layer and those from east to west on the upper layer. After we toured in downtown we went back to Oakland through the lower layer. In the diagram ① is Richmond-San Rafael Bridge and ⑤ Dumbarton Bridge.
When visiting San Francisco, do not forget that it is the base of the Silicon Valley. The number of computer companies choosing the valley as their headquarters is over 1500. Depending on the support of research powers in first-class universities, such as Stanford, Berkeley and California Institute of Technology, using small and medium sized companies with high technology as the base and having major companies such as CISCO, Intel, Hewlett-Packard(HP), LUCENT and Apple Inc. the Silicon Valley inosculate science, technology and production as a whole. We had not been to the Silicon Valley, only visited a corner of Stanford University, whose rank was the fifth in America. Just as other colleges and universities, it has no walls around it, and no gates and you can enter it from several blocks. The University covered 35 square kilometers and was built in 1885.
| Leland Stanford was the Railway King at that time, who used to be governor of California. The university was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford in memory of their only child, Leland Stanford Jr., who was born after their parents’ marriage for 18 years and had died of typhoid fever at age 15 the previous year. |
Old Leland Stanford
In the campus Mrs. Stanford built a Memorial Church, where tourists like to take photos.
Memorial Church close to Hoover Tower
Stanford has an eminent schoolfellow, the 31st president of the US, Herbert Clark Hoover, whose reputation was not good and one of the worst presidents, because he suffered from bad fortune. During his term of office, the Great Depression (1928-1932) was taking place. He carried out a lot of economic stimulus measures, including constructing Hoover Dam. It was a pity that the effects could not appear immediately and he was rejected by voters. In fact, Hoover was a talented man. He was born poor and his father was a blacksmith, dying when Hoover was only 6. When he was only 9, his mother also died. As an orphan, Hoover and his brother and sister were brought up by their uncle, father’s brother and two years later Hoover began to live in his mother’s brother. Hoover graduated from Stanford, specializing in mining. In 1897, he was employed by a company and went to Australia. The next year he went to China, and worked in Kaiping Coal Mine. Boxer Movement broke out and he was exempted from disaster because he was familiar with the geography of China and could speak Chinese. Later he formed a company himself and owned assets of $4 million, supported by which he entered the political circles. In 1921, he held the position of minister of commerce. In 1928, he was accepted the nomination of the republicans to run for the president and succeeded. After failing to be elected again he worked in the government of Roosevelt diligently and conscientiously, winning the recognition of the public.
Stanford has a Hoover Institute and a Hoover Tower, 87 m high, which was built in 1941, celebrating the 50th birthday of Stanford. We got to the Tower too early, styed there not long and lost the chance to climb it and to watch the whole campus from a height and a distance.
Hoover Tower in Stanford Campus
One-day touring in San Francisco caused me to have a lot of thoughts and feelings: I admire the national spirits of the old Chinese who floated across the seas and oceans, not afraid of hardship for the enterprise. The cross sea bridges of San Francisco had already a history of 75 years, which was an important signal of a developed country. A steep street where traffic accidents happened frequently became a scenic spot, manifesting the wisdom of the local people.
America produced a lot of men of wealth, among whom many left indelible marks. People are desiring for wealth, risking their lives in order to show their value of life. However, wealth can not be brought with one’s birth and taken away with one’s death. A lot of wealthy men contributed his or her whole wealth to the society before they left the world. The Chinese poor people have hostility to the rich, which came from the belief that richness is equal to cruelness and kindheartedness cannot bring you wealth”. The Chinese catchword “poor life produces trickery and richness promotes conscience.” Actually “kindness” and “conscience” do not have such a relation with being poor or rich. The rich are not all cruel and it is untrue that none of them is kind-hearted. The same, not all the poor are full of trickeries. Thinking of the status of being poor or rich as the standard for the morality is obviously unfair. My opinion is that we should believe “compassion is universal, a sense of shame is universal, respectfulness is universal, and sense of right and wrong is universal”. Love is unbounded, including the poor and the rich. Such a natural instinct is “conscience” of a human being. A small number of people have lost their conscience on account of various causes, who have become unkind and selfish completely. After the reform and opening to the outside world, there appear a lot of tycoons in China, some of whom have made substantial donations to charity, and they are worth praising by all of us including later generations. Our society should hold millionaire, billionaire and trillionaires, and can also support disadvantaged poor people. No matter what happens, we should not initiate a movement to cause the rich to have no feeling of security and try to immigrate abroad or cause the poor to rise again to kill the rich to save themselves. Such a fiddling around will add to scars on our lovely China.
Oct. 31, 2018 in Xuzhou
Proofreading on Jan. 5 2019 in Xuzhou
Uploading on Aug. 2023 in Xuzhou
