Chinatown

Manhattan’s Chinatown is one of the oldest and largest ethnically Chinese settlements outside of Asia.  Located south of Greenwich Village between Little Italy and the Lower East Side, this vibrant working-class immigrant community contains many tightly-packed apartments, manufacturing for the fashion industry, and a huge variety of shops and restaurants.  Greengrocers and fishmongers sell their exotic wares from busy storefronts, and restaurateurs turn their goods into delicious feasts representing the best of Cantonese, Hunan, Mandarin, and Szechuan cuisine.  Other shops sell almost everything imaginable, from mundane consumer goods to Asian furniture and jewelry.  The Museum of Chinese in America offers an insightful look into the Chinese-American experience, from past discrimination in the face of the Chinese Exclusion Act, to contemporary cultural influence and leadership.

• The area that is now Chinatown was once home to significant organized crime in the 19th century, serving as the setting of Martin Scorsese’s 2002 historical film Gangs of New York
• The language in Chinatown is gradually changing – early waves of Chinese immigrants to New York spoke Cantonese but the more recent generations of immigrants speak Mandarin, a different dialect of Chinese.  Today both dialects are heard alongside English in Chinatown