A ceremonial gate opens onto red brick buildings with recessed balconies, and a narrow alley lined with shop signs runs behind them.
What Chinatown looks like
A red and gold ceremonial gate crosses Fisgard Street, its tiled roof curling up at the corners and two carved stone lions set at the base of the posts. It dates from 1981 and stands about eleven metres tall. The brick corner building just past it has a zigzag of exterior iron fire escapes up its face, with a red striped awning and a grocery window at street level.
Behind the storefronts, runs through the block between Fisgard Street and Pandora Avenue. It narrows to less than a metre at its tightest point, brick walls close enough on both sides that two people cannot pass side by side. Shop signs and strings of small round lights hang overhead the length of it, and the paving is plain concrete.
Farther along Fisgard Street, a two storey red brick row has round arched window openings under painted stone lintels, awnings over the shops below and a paper lantern strung from the cornice. At the Government Street corner, a cream painted building stacks three rows of recessed cast iron balconies under a scrolled pediment dated 1905. Street lamps along the block are built in a Chinese style, with small upturned tile roofs over the lamp housing and red painted posts.
A few doors east, a narrow white glazed brick building rises three storeys with an open iron staircase zigzagging across its whole upper facade. Red lacquered columns and arched openings front a recessed balcony below its roofline pediment, with a lower sign covered building attached alongside it.
Shot in Chinatown
Bird on a Wire's 1990 motorcycle chase runs down Fan Tan Alley, with a related scene shot nearby at Bastion Square. The chase covers the length of the narrow brick passage between Fisgard Street and Pandora Avenue.
Bird on a Wire, 1990
Fan Tan Alley
A motorcycle chase runs the length of the alley's narrow brick passage in the film, the camera following it down the block. The alley connects Fisgard Street to Pandora Avenue and is unchanged in width since. Street View
What Chinatown can double for
Ross Alley in San Francisco, California
Ross Alley is a narrow brick alley of almost the same scale behind Chinatown storefronts. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Big Trouble in Little China and The Karate Kid Part II have all used it for tight alley shots. Modern signage and a steady run of pedestrians need controlling in a wide shot, and the alley's slight slope shows up the moment the camera tilts toward the far end. Try searching narrow brick alley now.
Pender Street in Vancouver, British Columbia
Pender Street repeats the same recessed balcony storefronts in Chinatown's brick buildings from the 1880s through the 1920s, stacked three and four storeys over narrow street level shops. Vancouver's blocks run a storey taller in places, and the modern towers past the end of the street need framing out of anything wide. Try searching recessed balcony storefronts now.
Old Town in Portland, Oregon
Portland's own ceremonial Chinatown gate stands at a similar scale on a street of century old brick buildings, close enough in height and colour that the two could be mistaken for each other in a wide shot. Its dragons and paintwork are brighter and newer than Victoria's weathered gate, and the wide traffic lanes past it need keeping out of frame to hold the illusion of a narrower street. Try searching ceremonial Chinatown gate now.
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