The interest of such views as this one (which is also part travelogue, and therefore a kind of proto-documentary and partly topical in that records a specific event)is in attempting to see their importance in cinema-history and in the evolution of the "narrative" film in its broadest sense (documentaries are of course also a kind of narrative).Forget for a moment the simplistic formula that imagines the period 1895-1906 as largely a matter of "one-minute actualities" (simply "attractions") which were then largely replaced by story-films which would then develop (1911-1914) into full-length photoplays. This view sets up all manner of false dichotomies and obscures the way in which things really developed.Yes, early films were one minute long and remained so for many years because of the conservatism of the film-producers (businessmen first and foremost) in the face of the uncertainties of distribution. They could not be sure that exhibitors would be prepared to show longer films and were therefore unprepared to risk the expense of making them.From the beginning, however, the actual film-makers (the cameramen and early "directors") were keen to make longer subjects and it was in the realm of the composed views and topicalities that this was most easily achieved and it was these films (not the film of show-stars and the prurient little gags) that were in reality most important in pioneering more narrative structures as well as honing camera skills and editing techniques.From the very beginning, the Lumières had been making what were in effect films series (the Coronation of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia being the first example) and, as soon as they had sufficiently mobile cameras to do so, the US companies began to follow suit. Mutoscope's first series of films covering the McKinley election campaign in 1896-7 were specifically designed to beat off the challenge from the Lumières, then enjoying a great success in the US, by offering a "programme" of specifically American views which also had a strongly topical importance (especially as McKinley was very deliberately running what was called a "front porch" campaign and was not therefore touring the country as his rival did.The importance of the Canadian James Henry White in the development of what one might call "the documentary series" has received very little attention but White brought a spirit of adventure to the Edison Company that it had previously lacked and which caused its repertoire to seem feeble by comparison with the Lumières who were quite literally traversing the globe. It was White who first took the Edison camera on tour around the country (and as far as Mexico), shooting series of linked films in the different areas he visited.This film is a case in point. It is not just a one-minute actuality. It is part of a whole series of films, dubbed by Edison the "Southern Pacific Company Series", following the train route in question. Both Edison and Mutoscope had important commercial links with the railroad companies (and with the powerful coal industry that lay behind them). Arriving in San Francisco, White coincided with California's Golden Jubilee and Mining Fair (CGJ) and these scenes in Chinatown shot on the 29th January were part of those celebrations.It is certainly true that the US cameramen lacked the skill of their French counterparts and seem as a result to have been very cavalier in their use of celluloid in a manner that would have driven Louis Lumière up the wall. How many films White shot in San Francisco is unknown but another scene of the Chinatown procession is sometimes known by the title Chinese Procession No. 13 (!!).Writing of a slightly later period (1900-1903), film historian Charles Musser (Before the Nickelodeon) gives a very interesting account of the way such documentary series were increasingly being packaged and sold as complete programmes (with dissolves between the films) and also of how they were increasingly using a whole team of cameramen.One has to read Musser slightly against the grain because, excellent historian though he is, he focuses all his attention on his principal subject (and the subject of his original research), Edwin S. Porter, but it is clear that, at this stage, Porter (newly employed by Edison in 1900) was just one of a team of cameramen. He (in collaboration with actor George Fleming)certainly played an important role where the studio-based photoplays were concerned but was still feeling his way at this stage (largely making trick films in imitation of the French or British and voyeuristic comedies in imitation of those being churned out by Mutoscope). In the area of location filming, it is fairly clear that it was White who was in charge (especially for major projects such as filming the Paris Exposition of 1900 or the US Pan-American Exposition of 1901, the latter turning out to be more dramatic than anybody had imagined thanks to the anarchist Leon Czolgosz.Musser emphasises how the filming of these documentary series now involved the use of two or more cameras and were frequently producing multiple-shot films as well as using dissolves to link the different films together into what, more and more, could be described without exaggeration as documentaries while White's role had become more and more clearly that of a director. It was indeed under White's direction that Porter, still a neophyte, would learn many of his camera-skills (the famous night-time panorama shot at the Pan-American Exposition for instance or the 1901 reconstruction of a sea-rescue,Life Rescue at Long Branch) which would in turn stand him in good stead as a director of photoplays.