The Organic City is a thesis project created by the combined efforts of Seamus Byrne and Sarah Mattern, graduate students at Cal State East Bay. The organicness of the Web site's title comes from the idea the Web site grows organically as Oaklanders add to it. People are encouraged to type in their own Oakland stories to add to the archive. You can browse by neighborhood (by clicking on dots on an Oakland map) and find out what stories your neighbors are telling, or write your own! It's a fascinating site to peruse and a wonderful snapshot of Oakland's constantly morphing individuality.

So how can you find Wong's Chinatown tour? Once you get to the site, click on "Find a Story," then look at the far right and click on "Author Directory," then scroll down to "William Wong" and click that.

Videotaping the tour was fun, Wong said.

"I knew that each segment would be about a minute, so I needed to concentrate on giving a succinct narrative," he said.

As we all know that Web entries are permanent, Wong's tour will last and provide a new way for scholars to learn Chinatown's history.

"As for historians using this technology, I am cool with that," Wong said. "I am well aware that serious scholars may look down on the 'short-hand' versions of history that some journalists and social historians engage . . . But these shortened and simplified versions of history serve a valuable purpose -- they convey historical messages in more easily digestible and more accessible forms to a mass audience that may not have the time or tolerance for delving into thick, heavily footnoted historical books."

As someone who takes history seriously, he added: "There's no question that primary-source research and scholarship are the very foundations of historical knowledge, but there is room for other forms of delivering a historical message, like Web sites and photo books, that have value as well."

Besides checking out Wong's tour on The Organic City, also check out his photo book "Oakland's Chinatown" (Arcadia 2004).