By MARK HIGGINS
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Jimmy Mar remembers Chinatown in the old days, between the two world wars, when Chinese immigrants came to his dad's store on South King Street looking for a bed, a job, a home-cooked meal or passage back to China.

His father, Mar Fook Hing, was the shipping agent for the Blue Funnel Steamship Co., one of three lines that carried passengers and freight between Asia and Seattle.

To earn extra money, Mar says, his father ran an import/export business and rented cots to single men who slept side by side in a loft above the family store.

The International District hummed with activity. Chinese, Japanese and, later, Filipinos came to Seattle by the tens of thousands, dreaming of new wealth. Those who could opened restaurants, bakeries, laundries, barber shops and mercantile stores. The poorest worked in hotels and canneries and drove cabs, while a few ran gambling rooms and brothels.

Seattle and San Francisco became twin hubs of Asian American life on the West Coast.

Ninety years later, the Chinatown/International District still is a vibrant inner-city neighborhood, where vegetable markets spill out onto the sidewalks and barbecued ducks hang in shop windows next to strips of crispy pork.

Herbal medicine shops promising restored health vie for space and attention with florists, gift shops, noodle joints and a jumble of Korean, Vietnamese, Chinese and Japanese restaurants.

As an older generation of merchants slowly retire or die, new immigrant families, many from Southeast Asia, come to the International District. They come for the inexpensive housing and the chance to start a business, as the first wave of Japanese, Chinese and Filipino did decades earlier.

The old Chinese family associations and "tongs," once a powerful influence on the neighborhood and its affairs, have seen their clout diminish. But a new breed of business-minded Asians is banding together in a new business association.

While the street-level shops are bustling, some of the four- and five-story hotels and buildings are largely empty. Their streaked windows and faded signs advertising "chop suey" and "low rents" are a wistful reminder of bygone years.

Continued:

• Area's future mixes old buildings, new projects
• Little Saigon has blossomed over past decade
• Business association maintains pride