(March 31) Ontario’s Yangtze Restaurant, a landmark business on Euclid Avenue since 1961, has closed.
It was operated by the Gin family, whose matriarch Edna was still participating in food preparation at the age of 91 on the day of its closing, March 30.. Gin and her husband Ray opened the restaurant on April 22, 1961.
A quintessential Chinese restaurant with excellent pork and shrimp chop suey, it was appreciated by three generations of residents of the Inland Empire. It was located on the ground floor of the three-story Continental Hotel building at 126 N. Euclid Avenue, next to what had been a United Artists theatre in the 1960s.
Though it never lost its popularity with Chinese food aficionados, the restaurant never regained the position it once held as the premier such establishment in the Inland Empire after the Montclair Plaza opened in 1968, drawing away business from downtown Ontario.  Things worsened with the advent of the Ontario Mills, The Shoppes in Chino Hills and Victoria Gardens in Rancho Cucamonga.
The closing is the second disappointment for ethnic cuisine lovers in Ontario in two years. Ramon’s Cactus Patch, which was located at 647 West California Street, shuttered in April 2013.
Just as at the Yangtze, in the case of the Cactus Patch, its founder, Ramon Sanchez, who was then 99, was present at the closure.