Description
Chinatown is the dense, noisy, fragrant neighborhood of Lower Manhattan between Canal Street, the Bowery and Worth Street, with an estimated 90,000 to 100,000 residents. It is home to the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere: shop signs in Chinese, fish and vegetable stalls on the sidewalk, bakeries and noodle shops at every corner.
The best way to see it is to walk the streets: Mott Street, the main artery, with its restaurants, tea shops and grocery stores, then Mulberry, Pell and Bayard. On Canal Street the Chinese jewelers fill the stretch between Mott Street and the Bowery.
The Museum of Chinese in America has told the story of Chinese Americans since 1980. Not far, the Church of the Transfiguration, built in 1815, stands off Mott Street, a reminder of the neighborhood's earlier immigrant waves. The more than 300 Chinese restaurants are the other big attraction, dim sum especially.
The sharp bend of Doyers Street was called the "Bloody Angle": in 1994 police officials said more people had died violently there than at any other intersection in the United States. On this short curved street is also Nom Wah Tea Parlor, open since 1920.
The story of New York's Chinatown is usually told starting from one man. Around 1858 a Cantonese businessman, Ah Ken, arrived in the city; he is credited as the first Chinese immigrant to settle here for good. He opened a cigar shop on Park Row, and perhaps it was his boarding house on Mott Street that housed the first arrivals.
For decades it was almost only men: the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 kept families out, and in 1900 the census counted 7,028 Chinese men and just 142 women. The streets were ruled by the tongs, part mutual-aid societies, part gangs.
After 1965 new immigration laws filled the neighborhood again. Later waves from Fuzhou gave East Broadway a nickname, Fuzhou Street No. 1, and a "Little Fuzhou" of its own.
The best way to see it is to walk the streets: Mott Street, the main artery, with its restaurants, tea shops and grocery stores, then Mulberry, Pell and Bayard. On Canal Street the Chinese jewelers fill the stretch between Mott Street and the Bowery.
The Museum of Chinese in America has told the story of Chinese Americans since 1980. Not far, the Church of the Transfiguration, built in 1815, stands off Mott Street, a reminder of the neighborhood's earlier immigrant waves. The more than 300 Chinese restaurants are the other big attraction, dim sum especially.
The sharp bend of Doyers Street was called the "Bloody Angle": in 1994 police officials said more people had died violently there than at any other intersection in the United States. On this short curved street is also Nom Wah Tea Parlor, open since 1920.
The story of New York's Chinatown is usually told starting from one man. Around 1858 a Cantonese businessman, Ah Ken, arrived in the city; he is credited as the first Chinese immigrant to settle here for good. He opened a cigar shop on Park Row, and perhaps it was his boarding house on Mott Street that housed the first arrivals.
For decades it was almost only men: the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 kept families out, and in 1900 the census counted 7,028 Chinese men and just 142 women. The streets were ruled by the tongs, part mutual-aid societies, part gangs.
After 1965 new immigration laws filled the neighborhood again. Later waves from Fuzhou gave East Broadway a nickname, Fuzhou Street No. 1, and a "Little Fuzhou" of its own.