Chinatown was a tight-knit community whose residents were familiar with one another. Parents allowed their children, who were highly cherished (especially since there were so few of them due to the early lack of women and families), to roam the streets without supervision during the day. The sense that all of Chinatown was a children's playground was deftly captured by the photographer Arnold Genthe, who considered Chinese children some of his favorite subjects.

However, the day was not filled only by play. Chinese culture considers education one of life's most important assets and Chinatown's children were schooled in a wide array of subjects. Their textbooks cover not only the traditional areas of mathematics, grammar, and social studies, but Russian literature and Confucian philosophy, among other topics. Instructors included Chinese scholars and teachers as well as Protestant missionaries who sought to convert the Chinese to Christianity through educational assimilation.

Being segregated from the rest of San Francisco did not mean that Chinatown was isolated from the rest of the world. There was a constant stream of communication to mainland China and other parts of the United States. Separated families and friends wrote to each other on a consistent basis, and their letters relate the difficulty of loved ones spending a great deal of time apart. Chinese-language newspapers provided another means of communication, keeping people informed of happenings in California and around the globe. A number of dailies competed for the Chinese reading public, but the Chung Sai Yat Po was the oldest and most prominent. One of its editors, Ng Poon Chew, who ran the paper during the early 1900s, was even known as "The Chinese Mark Twain." Ng was a celebrated orator, and spoke on the famed Chatauqua, New York, public-speaking circuit.

The use of print media was not restricted to newspapers. Theatres printed daily programs of their nightly offerings, with photographs accompanying descriptions of plays and actors. The Chinese of San Francisco had a passion for the theatre. Local players as well as stars from China performed for packed houses with audiences consisting of both Chinese and adventurous outsiders. Other cultural activities included literary societies, poetry clubs, and art collectives, many of which published or exhibited their collective works.