The Sunset Connection - Perspectives from SF's Sunset Neighborhood

More Than Chinatown: Lily Wong on Uplifting Chinese American Stories in the Sunset

• Jessica J. Ho • Season 1 • Episode 7

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What does it mean to grow up Chinese American? And how do the stories of Chinese families in the Sunset District resonate with communities everywhere?

In this episode, Jessica sits down with Lily Wong, Director of Community Engagement at Wah Mei School and Director of the Sunset Chinese Cultural District, to explore the stories that don’t always make the headlines.

Together, they dive into:

  • How Wah Mei became a pioneering bilingual, bicultural preschool in the Sunset District
  • How the Sunset Chinese Cultural District was born during a moment of crisis. Website: https://sfsccd.org/en/ 
  • What it means to find belonging across cultures, generations, and neighborhoods
  • How murals, street festivals, and everyday victories are weaving new roots for the future

Along the way, Lily shares personal memories of growing up in the Mission District, witnessing neighborhood change, and reconnecting with her heritage in powerful new ways.

🌟 Plus: Stick around for a fun round of Sunset District trivia! (Spoiler: Lily wins… kind of.)

Whether you grew up in San Francisco, are part of an immigrant family, or simply love stories about neighborhoods and community pride, this episode is for you.

Come for the ideas and perspectives, and stay for the heart, history, and hope.

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The Sunset Connection — exploring the stories and histories that connect us.

Jessica Ho:

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Sunset Connection. I'm your host, jessica Ho, and today we're joined by Lily Wong, along with her very adorable dog, percy. We'll be talking about her leadership at Wah Mei, a legacy bilingual child care center in the Sunset, and her work directing the Sunset Chinese Cultural District. But first let's kick things off with a quick Realty Rundown on what's happening in the Sunset District real estate market. Rundown on what's happening in the Sunset District real estate market. Hi everyone, it's Jess and welcome back to this week's Realty Rundown, where I break down what's really happening in San Francisco real estate and what it means for you.

Jessica Ho:

Today I want to step back and take a look at the bigger picture because, if you're thinking about buying, selling or just trying to make sense of the market, the last few years have been a lot. I spent some time digging through the numbers and here's the story they tell. San Francisco's market has peaked twice in the last 20 years, once in 2005 and again in 2022. 2022 was the real peak. Average home prices hit around $1.85 million and homes were selling almost immediately. Since late 2022, the market has cooled and today, in 2025, inventory is extremely low fewer than 1000 active listings across the entire city. Homes are still selling, but only about half are going over asking price. Single family homes are holding their value better than condos, and condos are staying on the market longer, facing more price reductions and giving buyers more room to negotiate. Recent tariffs have actually increased the value for fixing up your home, preparing it to sell, or the cost of fixing up your house once you buy it, if you're buying a fixer. Tariffs on imported materials like lumber, steel and appliances have increased and it's unclear how much higher they will go, given the uncertainty of the tariff wars. So this is different for different people and, remember, each district in San Francisco has its own trends. Each neighborhood in San Francisco is different, so it's super important to have an individualized, tailored plan that works best for you, whether you're buying or selling, or if you're interested in investing.

Jessica Ho:

In summary, things that you should take away from this are that single family homes are still commanding strong prices, especially on the west side. Condos are struggling fewer selling over asking. This is not a new situation, but it still continues and inventory is extremely tight, especially for single family homes. Interest rates remain high around six or 7% and they are not coming down anytime soon, but refinancing options may come later. So, even if you find something that you really love right now, it may make sense to buy the property now and then refinance later when interest rates go down. Also, renovation and construction costs are up significantly due to tariffs and it's unclear how they will change in the future, and this will change the math for both buyers and sellers.

Jessica Ho:

So, whether you're buying or selling or investing, everyone needs an individualized, tailored plan and strategy to make sure you get the best deal, because what's best for you is different for the next person. And, as always, if you need personalized advice or assistance, please feel free to reach out. Even if I can't help you directly, I'll make sure you're connected to someone who can. All right, and that's it for this edition of the Realty Rundown. Now back to the show. Lily is a first-generation San Francisco native and immigrant from Hong Kong. She holds dual advanced degrees in dispute resolution and public policy and has spent over 20 years advocating for marginalized communities. Her career spans organizations like the Asian Law Caucus, chinese for Affirmative Action, ucsf and more, and today she's helping lead cultural preservation and community building here in the Sunset District. Lily, can you tell me a little?

Lily Wong:

bit about where you grew up. Yeah, so my family immigrated to the US, to San Francisco, when I was two. So I like to say that I'm still an SF native because I was here since I was two and went through SFUSD. Our family first landed in more of the like TL Union Square area around Mason Street and then we were fortunate to get a house in the Mission. So that was where I grew up and that's where I saw a lot of displacement and families being pushed out because of different development projects and different things that are happening to the mission. So that's actually the perspective that I bring into the sunset, because the sunset hasn't experienced this level of development.

Jessica Ho:

Yeah, what did you learn from growing up in the mission, seeing the development of, you know, more gentrified areas and what it did to the community that existed there prior?

Lily Wong:

Yeah, so the mission has changed a lot. I think that there's still a strong Latina population out there, but there's also just been a lot more well-off people. And it's kind of created this dichotomy in the mission, right, like there's some areas that are really catered towards more wealthy people and people with more disposable income, and then there's also areas where it's still like just very, very working class and it's people who are able to just hang on and stay there, right.

Jessica Ho:

Growing up like. What was your interaction with the Sunset District? What did you think about the Sunset when you were a kid?

Lily Wong:

Yeah, so I did grow up on the east side. So I grew up in the Mission. My elementary school and middle school were out in the mission. But when I got to high school I got into Lowell, so I became a Lowell student and that was like my first intro into the sunset. It was definitely foggier, like I'm going to say, like in the mission I would wear like t-shirts and, you know, maybe just like a windbreaker and it'd be totally fine.

Lily Wong:

But throughout high school I'd be like bundled up. You know it's all sunny in the mission. When I'm leaving and people are looking at me like I'm crazy, and then I get out to the sunset and I'm like yes, this was worth it. They needed my layers. I had a larger population of Asian classmates. A lot of my friends even now had grown up in the sunset. It was really cool to just see a different side of the city and start hanging out in the sunset, right like at Stonestown, because that's where a lot of Lowell kids go. It's like right next to the school, heading out to Lakeshore, but also just like kind of exploring further up towards, like Terravelle, noriega, etc.

Jessica Ho:

Did you know about the Sunset Chinese Culture District when you first started at Wa Mei, or did that come later?

Lily Wong:

So I actually knew Ben Wong, who's the executive director at Wa Mei. He had talked to me a little bit about his work in the Sunset and kind of like started to pique my interest. This was before the cultural district started, so it was just kind of reading through it and seeing like the history of the Chinese in the sunset and being able to tie like my own story and a lot of the stories that I knew of my friends growing up to that like the Chinese in the sunset stories yeah, I remember seeing that in Ortega library when I was working for Katie in 2018 and I was just thinking like wow, wow, like this is when my grandmother came to the Sunset District and bought a house, right, and that was something that really helped her establish her roots here in the Sunset District.

Lily Wong:

A lot of times the Chinese families that come out to the Sunset or anywhere in the US they kind of go because there's familiarity, right. So my family actually landed in the mission because we had our like family, distant family that sponsored us, that lived in the mission. So they lived literally like walking distance from my house growing up and I think my parents looked into that area because there was familiarity, right. I could see that also being similar to Chinese people in the sunset, because I know a lot of folks whose families live like right next door to each other or nearby each other, right so that as property became available they're like you should move in, like we should live closer together.

Lily Wong:

Chinese folks experienced living in San Francisco before World War II and before redlining policies were lifted, that they were basically forced a push-pull into Chinatown, right. Right, like they were forced to be in Chinatown. But if they stepped outside of Chinatown there's risks, right. So when you are able to buy houses and settle elsewhere, you kind of want to move towards areas that you still feel safe and I think the sunset had that community of it felt safe. It's, you know, single family homes that they can actually grow their families in, but also like a lot of Chinese people were moving out here at the time, so you start feeling more safety in numbers.

Jessica Ho:

It is interesting, right Like, because now that the sunset is where the Sunset Chinese Cultural District lives, which is the only Chinese cultural district in San Francisco, even though Chinatown and, arguably, richmond were considered like Chinatown number one and Chinatown number two, like, do you ever think about that? Like, why was it the Sunset?

Lily Wong:

I think the story that we're trying to uplift, like we were talking about before, it's very. It connects to a wider audience, people even if they don't live in the sunset, and I remember one of our MYEEP interns who's now on what's a?

Lily Wong:

MYEEP intern, the Mayor's Youth Employment and Education Program. They're a job training program for high school students. We got a high school student placed with us that grew up in the sunset. He was very active in dragon boat, um, and he was like I'm active in dragon boat because I feel like that was a way to connect back to my chinese culture, right? Um. But since then he's continued to connect with hua mei, continued to connect with the cultural district, um, learning more about the history of the chinese in the sunset, um, and I love that for him because it connects like the stories that he's less familiar with. Like you don't usually learn this kind of history in school. You learn it like either you do your own research or you're lucky to have, like a professor or somebody in college that has that right. To me, he's an example of the kind of folks that we want to start supporting. We want to have a wider audience. Know the history of the sunset. Know the history of Chinese people that you know.

Lily Wong:

Yes, a lot of us landed in Chinatown. Yes, a lot of our parents, grandparents, everybody seeks services in Chinatown. But I think it would be a disservice to our community if we only think about Chinatown, right. I think it's like, yes, chinatown and more. And you know we exist in other spaces and, I think, based on Chinese people needs. So you have grocery stores that are catered to us, you know, there's restaurants, there's construction supply companies for all the Chinese contractors, right, but nobody talks about those stories. It's just kind of a given that, oh, of course there's Chinese people there, of course there would be this, right. But the deeper, underlying, like why is that? Why did we move out here? Why did we have to create spaces for us? Right? Like, I think those are the kind of things that I'm excited to uplift and continue to dig into as we show and show off what the Chinese in the sunset are.

Jessica Ho:

Like to your point, it's not to exclude other Chinese immigrants that live in other places that have this similar experience, but to uplift our stories to see that there's a lot of similarities. Actually, whether you grew up in the Bronx, or like in New York, chinatown, or where you know DC, or even Idaho even Idaho, right, like, there's a lot of similarities I think that we don't talk about and I think, through the sense of the Chinese cultural district, it's a way to have a conversation about what does it mean to be Chinese and American? Because, like it was as, growing up as someone who was Chinese American, I felt like I was living in two separate, completely different worlds and to merge them together is an art form, because it's not easy when you have the eastern way of thinking that you were brought up with versus the western way of thinking that you're exposed to in school and you're like what? What's right, what's wrong, what's good, what's bad, I don't know, like everything's conflicting. So, like a lot of asian americans, I think, had to really figure out for themselves what was the right mode of being like, what did it mean to be Asian and American? And I think this, in the sense of Chinese cultural district really helps elevate that, that struggle and that story and that you know ambition and desire and drive to find our story in America.

Jessica Ho:

So tell me a little bit about Wa.

Lily Wong:

Mei. I love working at Wa Mei. So Wa Mei is originally known as preschool. It was founded 51 years ago. At this point we just celebrated our 50th last year. Congratulations, thank you, by Chinese activists.

Lily Wong:

This is after the Lao versus Nagle Supreme Court case that allowed for bilingual education. Supreme Court case that allowed for bilingual education. It actually was San Francisco parents that were suing the SFUSD, saying that if you're not teaching my child in a language that they understand, you're not. They're therefore not teaching my child. This case actually was won by appeals. So every single lower court sided with the school district until it went up to the Supreme Court and at the Supreme Court level they said actually you're right, like, if you're not teaching children in a language they understand, you're not teaching. So we were founded literally like right after the Supreme Court case happened. The intent was that we would end up being like a full school, but I think we ended up falling into the preschool age and having a really robust preschool like Chinese and English bilingual school. So Huamei is a legacy business in the Sunset and I think what makes Huamei special, like at least our preschool side we have a ton of teachers that are super dedicated to the kids. We have teachers who've been there literally for the kid, their parents, so parents that bring their children here they're like oh, it's like, my preschool teacher is still here.

Lily Wong:

Wah Mei itself it prides itself not only as a bilingual education but also bicultural, and I think that that's something that's always missing in community conversations. People talk about translating things all the time. Right, but I think as people who are in between the Eastern and Western world, you know that there's things that if you say it in English, it's not easily translatable into Chinese or vice versa, because of cultural context. And since then, you know, we expanded to after-school programs, so we have an extended learning program that has, like summer camps, before and after-school programs, and winter camps and spring camps, and then, of course, my department, our efforts are really just to connect and uplift the wider Sunset community. Still rooted in Wah Mei culture is the kids we can only serve during our program hours. Right Outside our program hours there's so many things that can affect their ability to stay and thrive and their family's ability to like, help them grow, and so that's kind of the approach that our team takes to our work. Is, if I were to think about this, like how does it affect a young person? How does it affect the kid? That's in our program when we talk about housing, when we talk about supporting small businesses, when we talk about just connecting resources and the different organizations in the Sunset, like our end goal is to make sure that our Sunset community can thrive.

Lily Wong:

Interestingly, we have a huge mix of folks. So we have some folks that are more immigrant Chinese and they want their kids to learn English better the majority of our original population. Since then we've also had a lot of Chinese Americans. They feel like they lost their language, so they want their kids to be exposed and know Chinese. And then we have a population of folks that their families don't speak Chinese at all, that their families don't speak Chinese at all and they just their kid maybe, was in a program before that had Chinese immersion or, you know, they're just interested in it. And we have kids literally they don't speak any Chinese at home but at Wa Mei they'll come in, they'll be like and like. It's so cute and it's great because it's just. It's that language learning capacity. Especially when you're young. You can absorb it so much faster, right? So these kids will be able to hopefully speak Chinese as they grow up.

Jessica Ho:

Is it very common in America to have these types of bilingual education schools and institutions, or is it very specific to San Francisco?

Lily Wong:

San Francisco has been a lot more focused on like immersion programs and having a lot of different schools that teach more than one language right. So there's Chinese immersion, there's Japanese immersion, there's Spanish immersion. So it's a really cool thing in San Francisco to have that opportunity for the young folks.

Jessica Ho:

So how did the idea for the Sunset Chinese Cultural District come about?

Lily Wong:

So this is again before my time, before I started at Wah Mei, but I tried to learn the history of it. So at the time Supervisor Marr was interested in having something like the Sunset Chinese Cultural District. It was during the pandemic, so the community in the Sunset were kind of hit on multiple levels from this pandemic. Uplifting like how when it's convenient, the Chinese community is immediately othered. Right, we've seen this happen again and again in the past. It's happening again now, still happening now. Yes.

Lily Wong:

So with the pandemic, with the xenophobia against Chinese people right, because at the time people in the federal government attacked Chinese and blamed us for the COVID-19 pandemic, which is wholly unfair. And then just the disconnect that the neighbors felt with each other. Right, like it's one thing to have single family homes, but because we weren't supposed to leave our homes for the safety of our family and others, that it created a bigger sense of disconnect in the community. And all three of those kind of came together in this like interest in having something like the Sunset Chinese Cultural District. So the cultural districts it's basically a city program, again funded by Proposition E, and it's a placemaking and placekeeping program. So it essentially is identified in the geographic region somewhere in San Francisco. So there's 10 total cultural districts citywide Each of our cultural districts. We meet monthly together to get updates from the city, to work with each other etc.

Jessica Ho:

That's great. What major accomplishments has SCCD achieved since its founding?

Lily Wong:

The biggest achievement that just happened this week is the passage of our CHESS report and it's basically a report that all cultural districts are required to do and update every three to five years and it's a reflection and it's a snapshot of our community. So it includes, like, the history of the Chinese in the Sunset, like where we came from, it includes information about the cultural districts and also what the city is doing to support the Sunset community as a whole. But, most importantly, it includes community identified strategies that this community wanted to see to better support and better stabilize our Sunset community. It starts from regular folks saying I need this, I think that we need more housing, I think we need to support our small businesses, we need whatever it may be like, we need art, we need places to identify our sunset community right. We take those and start developing it into more like policy style strategies and go back to the community and check in with them and see, like you know, are we on the right path? Is this a reflection of what you want? And from there we negotiated and worked with the city on like what makes sense, what's feasible, what's not. So this report ends up being a true collaboration between the community and the city on like what makes sense, what's feasible, what's not. So this report ends up being a true collaboration between the community and the city, but with the community voice at its roots. So we just brought that report to the Land Use and Transportation Committee. At the Board of Supervisors it was passed unanimously. We thank our supervisor, joel Engardio, for introducing the legislation, as well as supervisors Connie Chan and Cheyenne Chen, who both wanted to co-sponsor it, and I think that that's very powerful, that our Chinese representatives that don't represent the sunset but represent other parts of the city read it, looked at it, identify with it and want to co-sponsor that.

Lily Wong:

Other major accomplishments that we've had is like bringing back the sunsetset Autumn Moon Festival. Right, it had happened for like 20 something years, had a pause during a pandemic and we're like we should take ownership of this. We should have this happen. We started the Chinese the Sunset Lunar New Year Festival, so that's been happening every year since we were founded and we have the Together on Terravel mural. So if you're ever on Terravel and 22nd kind of kitty corner from the Parkside Library, you'll see this amazing mural. You'll see a lot of familiar faces. If you're active in the community there's different people that you know you're going to look and see like. Oh, I know that Like it goes from Lisa, who's the head of one of the Chinese dance groups, so her face is like right in the front. And it includes Romania, who owns Tabitha's Cafe up the block.

Lily Wong:

It's a real reflection of our community, the values of the Parkside community, as well as the people of it, and all of those iconic pieces were also brought from community. We did a survey, we talked to folks, yeah, so we partnered with Twin Wall Murals. They are two women that also grew up in San Francisco. I think they went to SOTA, the School of the Arts in San Francisco, and as they were painting and I went by a couple of times, there were so many people who just stopped by and just like looked at the progress. And I got so many many like.

Lily Wong:

I heard so many people that were just like oh, it's an amazing like mural, it's so gorgeous. You know, like the property owner appreciated the mural, the neighbors around were like we love this mural because when you look at the mural it's amazing, but when you see, like, the pieces that our artists were able to embed of the community, it's even more amazing. Right, like one nugget for everybody to look for is if you go to the mural, you look at the kids that are drawing things on the ground, you see that they have kids drawings. At our first block party, we had kids draw what they would want to see on the mural and we actually kept their photos. So those photos are recreations of what the kids drew. For us it's amazing.

Jessica Ho:

So what's next for Hua Mei and the Sunset Chinese Cultural District now that the chess has been passed?

Lily Wong:

So I would be remiss if I didn't plug our Hua Mei 51st Gala that is happening on May 14th at Harborview Restaurant Amazing food. The Harborview family is part of the WaMae family as well. Their children went through WaMae.

Jessica Ho:

No way.

Lily Wong:

Oh, I didn't know that. We love them. They're amazing. So plug for Harborview in general. That's a big thing for WaMae, Our cultural district, is working on new art. That's going to happen on Irving Street and this is going to be at the 2550 Irving affordable housing site. So we're really excited about that and the ability to do that. And then, of course, our Autumn Moon Festival. It feels like to me that's our one big thing, because we close down City Street.

Lily Wong:

On Irving Street we do a big stage. We have performers, we have resources, vendors. We typically don't sell food at those events because we want you to go down to Irving Street and like go to the restaurants there. There's a lot of really good restaurants. There are so many good ones there. Go shopping there. There's a lot of grocery stores out there. That's going to happen in October. We always have things happening. Feel free to go to our website sfscccdorg. If you read Chinese, if you read English, it should be fully bilingual. We actually hand translate that, so it's not like a Google Translate. There's a human being that actually did all those translations. So it matches more with when we say earlier bilingual and bicultural. That's what we mean. Our website is a reflection of that.

Jessica Ho:

All right, so we're going to move into trivia. I have three easy questions here for you. First, who was among the earliest Chinese residents in the Sunset District? A Sui Wing, lee, b Wong, kim Ark, c Cheng Ah Mi or D Lu Hing?

Lily Wong:

I think it's A. Isn't that one of the businesses Cui?

Jessica Ho:

Wing Li. Yes, that is correct. They were recognized as one of the pioneering Chinese residents in the Sunset District. What was the first Chinese-owned business in the Sunset District and when did it open? Lee's Laundry, 1947. Sunset Garden Cafe 1953, wa Mei Preschool 1974, or Peking Restaurant 1980.

Lily Wong:

I want to say Wa Mei, but I know that it's the laundry and I believe that they were right off Irving Street.

Jessica Ho:

That is correct. Yes, lee's Laundry, established in 1947, was one of the first Chinese-owned businesses in the Sunset District. When did Chinese Americans become the majority in the Sunset District? A Late 1970s, b Mid-1990s, C Early 2000s or D 2010?

Lily Wong:

I thought it was around the 1980s actually. So I think that in the 1980s we reached 50% at that census.

Jessica Ho:

The answer is early 2000s. Oh yes, by the early 2000s, chinese Americans had become the largest ethnic group in the Sunset District. And I learned something new Two out of three. Still, you know. According to Wait, wait, don't tell me rules, you still win.

Lily Wong:

Yeah, but according to Lowell student rules, I lost.

Jessica Ho:

That's fair. All right, lily, thank you so much for sharing your work and your vision for a more inclusive, culturally rich Sunset District. Thank you, percy, for being our honorary co-host today, and to our listeners, thanks for tuning in. Whether you're raising a family, organizing your block or just taking a walk, remember this neighborhood is ours to shape. Until next time, keep building, keep connecting and keep imagining a better San Francisco. Thanks, that's all, folks.

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