Generations of Chinese-Americans grew up in Chinese-language movie theaters which served as surrogate parents. Now the last of these theaters in San Francisco's Chinatown has shut down. PNS commentator Edward Liu, a lawyer and writer, offer his eulogy.

The last of the Chinese movie theaters in San Francisco's Chinatown folded this past week.

Hardly anyone noticed, except for die-hard sentimentalists like myself. In the Chinese movie theater, sometime ago, I vicariously experienced our immigration history. I learned to value the cultural lampposts which remind us of who we are and where we came from.

Sadly, the cultural battle is lost. Finito, Yuan le, tapos na. Welcome to the new millennium of American pop culture, our new Global Hollywood. Our Chinatowns are dead, at least brain-dead.

It is sometimes not the movies that matter, but what we do inside the movie theaters. As an ethnic Chinese immigrant kid, who has not experienced urinating (with guilt, if any, suppressed) behind a hard wooden seat in a dark, nearly empty Chinese theater, while an aunt, a sister, or a mother remains glued to the drama on the screen, as the Chinese dialogue unfolds?

The Chinese theater was our escape from a hard existence, a safety valve from the banality, the suffocating crowd, the mean streets outside. It was our surrogate parent.

While our fathers and mothers put in brutal work days, we would hang out in the theaters. In its last days, the Great Star theater on Jackson street was not showing much in the way of cinematic feats or glimpses of Chinese life. There were no great revelations about the human spirit or the human condition.

In the recent past, Chinatown's theaters have been a hangout for teenage gangs, misfits, and social truants. Thanks to Hong Kong schlock, Kung Phooey overkill, and B-grade nudist flicks, the ethnic Chinese language movie industry is languishing in mediocrity after mediocrity.

Hong Kong movies these days are as Hongky as they can get. With the exuberance epitomized in Deng Xiaoping's slogan, "To Get Rich is Glorious," who has the time to sit through a slow movie which does not help us make our mortgage payment and pay for our SUV car loan?

Time is money. And an infinite number of activities will let one "max" productivity more than sitting in a Chinese movie theater. Plus who can beat a DTS Digital Stereo American Hollywood flick with Bruce Willis decombobulating the enemy?

Yep. Us old Chinese had better get used to the brave new world of Hollywood chic, Metreon theaters, lattes, and the digital cyberworld. As I pass by the padlocked, decrepit building that used to house the Great Star Theater I cannot help but think about a community that once was, but is no longer.

For me, the China that I knew only exists in the mind. It is no longer in Chinatown.