Chinese Reconciliation Park

On a beautiful sunny afternoon, I decided an appropriate outing for mom and the kids might be to go over to Old Town in Tacoma.  Old Town is the area of Tacoma where I stayed when I came in March to look for a house.  It's a quaint little area of coffee houses, businesses and old houses with a paved path running all along the water.  My intent was to walk toward the restaurants and along the water, but instead we turned right and walked into the "Chinese Reconciliation Park". 

So here's some history for you that I bet you didn't get in high school history...on November 3, 1885 Tacoma's leaders and "a large crowd" expelled all the Chinese from their homes in the city and banned them from returning.  That wasn't very nice, now was it?  I guess there was a build up of anti-Chinese sentiment in the area and they thought the best thing to do would be to get rid of them.  Maybe these West Coast folks didn't get the whole message of the US being a melting pot.  No "tired and weak" aloud here (although most of the railroads around the West were built by Chinese immigrants so I'm guessing they weren't too weak, but maybe tired from a long day of hard labor...)

Anyways, about 10 years ago a group of Tacoma citizens realized this was wrong and so raised the funds to dedicate a park to the Chinese.  It's just a small place sandwiched between the railroad lines and the water and includes a "ting" (a pavilion).  This structure has an interesting story since it was donated to the park by the city of Fuzhou in China and shipped from there along with three master craftsmen in 2010 to reconstruct it.  Grammie thought it needed a fresh coat of paint and some landscaping.