Golden Gate Bridge at 50: Her Story. Her Secrets.

A KRON-TV special program commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco on May 27th 1987, presented by Sylvia Chase and Jim Paymar. Includes a detailed history of the bridge's construction using interviews, photographs and archival footage from the 1930s. Also features scenes from the bridge's opening on May 27th 1937, a report on how the bridge is America's most popular place to commit suicide and reflections on immigration from San Francisco State University's President Dr. Chia-Wei Woo, who arrived in San Francisco by ship from Shanghai (China) in 1955. He and local Asian Americans have set up cultural and student exchanges, in part to make amends for the indignities suffered by Chinese American immigrants who were placed in detention on Angel Island during the period 1909-40, some for up to 3 years. Woo suggests that: "The bridge is very symbolic of the gate that's opened to them. So that they can come here ... to learn ... but also learn about Americans. And so that bridge in a way is a gate. In another sense it's a bridge across the Pacific. I would sometimes like to refer to that as the new Silk Road for the Chinese." This program was written and produced by Ian Pearson.