Exploring Asian Roots at the Wing Luke

I had previously visited the Chinese Historical Society of America in San Francisco and remember learning so much about the Chinese settlers in the area.  Because of this, I had high hopes for the Wing Luke Museum, which seemed like a much more organized version of the Chinese Historical Society of America.

We had wanted to do a Chinatown tour, which was $24.95 and included a general admission ticket to the museum.  The Chinatown tour is held at 2pm on a daily basis, and we arrived at the museum before 12:30pm so that we could partake in the Hotel tour, which was also included with our admission ticket. 

The hotel tour took us into parts of the building which were not accessible to the public.  The very first place we were brought to was a local store that was run by a Chinese family.  Immediately, I felt a sense of nostalgia as the items in the store reminded me very much of my grandmother’s basement.  She had many of these same items in her basement for years.

We proceeded to visit some of the living quarters of the immigrant workers and learned about the hardships that many of them faced as new immigrants.  We saw the small rooms where an entire family would have to live in, as well as the small bedrooms of male workers who were saving their hard earned income to send home to their loved ones.  Often, the rent for a room would be around a quarter of their salary, so to lower this cost, a small room would be shared between 4-6 men and they would alternate work and sleep shifts, with half of them working during the night and half of them working during the day. 

The building was home to mainly Chinese, Japanese and Filipino immigrants, and the main areas were shared amongst all of them.  Seeing as how cramped their rooms were, the main hall must have been a welcome escape.

We had about 30 minutes from the time the Hotel tour finished to the start of our Chinatown tour, and we could have used this time to explore the rest of the museum.  However, we were feeling the effects of two full days of walking around and really needed to give our feet the time to rest.  Unfortunately, this meant that we couldn’t fully engross ourselves in all of the interesting exhibits they had to offer.

The Chinatown tour was exactly as the name suggests.  We were brought around Chinatown and got to take a glimpse into some old homes and businesses and told interesting stories about many of the buildings in the area.  One interesting thing that stood out to me was that the area had a much larger Japanese population in the beginning, and eventually, it turned into more of a Chinatown.  However, both Japanese and Chinese presence is still strong and the street signs clearly show where one begins and where the other ends.

Before our tour ended, we made a quick visit to Union Station, a beautiful public area that was once the main train station in the city.  Apparently, people still work in that building and people in the area will spend their lunch hours there, but it is generally a big huge building that isn’t really used to its capacity.

I enjoyed the visit to the Wing Luke Museum, but due to my own time constraints, I was unable to visit many of the exhibits they have on.  I was also told that they do food tours and many other interesting cultural tours, so I’m sure I will be back to visit again if I’m ever in Seattle again.