Fan Tan Alley 2

While it's narrower at both ends Fan Tan Alley widens out in the the middle of the block. There are shop entrances on both sides.

Photographers love doors and this one in Fan Tan Alley has got to be the most photographed door in the city. It's got everything - color, texture, location (fractional address), nice lozenge-shaped panels and brass fittings. Fittingly, it's the entrance to a photographer's studio.

There are shops of all kinds but for me the most fascinating are those selling Chinese artifacts and curios. Here's one room of a favorite shop of mine that has about 7 or 8 similar rooms connecting to it in a winding maze that eventually leads to Fisgard Street. I could spend hours here (this shop also has some interesting artifacts from the history of Fan Tan Alley on display.

Fan Tan Alley

Our Chinatown has some interesting architectural features that include some very narrow passages between buildings. Fan Tan Alley runs right through the block from Fisgard Street to Pandora Street and is barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side. We'll have a closer look at it tomorrow.

The Classics

Good ole Fan Tan Alley, always an interesting place to explore and of course, take photographs. - Fern

Fan Tan Alley

This is one of my favorite spots in downtown Victoria. I always get my camera out and try to capture this interesting piece of the urban landscape, but alas, never to my complete satisfaction. Here is one of the many attempts!

Fan Tan Alley

Victoria's Chinatown has many echoes of the past. It contains within its small boundaries hidden inner areas behind the store fronts that face the streets. When this part of Victoria was being built in the nineteenth century the Chinese minority were still discriminated against. Like such minorities in other parts of the world, when they were mixing with the majority they had to behave in certain ways to avoid trouble. In the inner parts of Chinatown, however, they could, "...follow their customs, speak their dialects, and find pleasure, comfort, and companionship." These hidden inner areas, sometimes called Victoria's "Forbidden City," can now be freely accessed by anyone willing to venture down the two narrow alleys that lead within. The photo above is one of these alleys, called Fan Tan Alley. Fan Tan was a gambling game popular amongst Chinese immigrants and there were places where it could be played along this alley.

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The quote above comes from "The Forbidden City within Victoria," by David Chuenyan Lai. There is an interesting brief history of Victoria's Chinatown on the BC Archives website.