Show CHINATOWN A MASS OF RUINS famous sect on of san francisco falli prey to flames san francisco strange is the scene where san francisco s chinatown stood no heap of smoking ruin marks the site of the wooden war rens where slant eyed men of oia orient dwelt in thousands the Is pitted with deep holes and seared with dark passageways from whose depths come smoke wreaths all the wood has gone and the winds art streaking the ashes white men never knew the depth chinatown s underground city the talked of these subterranean runways and many of them had gone beneata the street levels two or three stories but now that chinatown has been un masked for the destroyed building were only a mask men from the hill side have looked on where its annei secrets lay in places they can se passages one hundred feet deep hundreds of fright crazed yellow men escaped from the flames carrying with them their opium pipes their money bags their silks and their child ren beside them ran the baggy women and some of them hobbled painfully but these were the men and women of the surface far beneath the street levels in those cellars and passage ways were other lives women who never saw the day from their darkened prisons and blinking jailers were caught like rats in a huge trap theli very bones were eaten by the flames and now there remains only the holes they pit the hillside like a mul of ground swallow nests show depths which the police knew the secrets of these burrow will never be known for into then the hungry fire first sifted its red coals obliterating everything except the earth itself |