# Chinatowns in your cities



## I'mBack (Jan 15, 2005)

Monkey said:


> These figures have no basis in statistics whatsoever. They're just boosterish community guestimates. London has more Chinese than Paris. It's obvious - just walk the streets and look around you. Britain has more Chinese restaurants than France several times over (we got stats on this recently at Euroscrapers....) and Britain gets almost as many Chinese students as the US - more than half of the EU's total. Deal with it....
> 
> And Tang Freres is the only half decent supermarket chain in Paris. Most of their stores are small and messy grocery stores - comparable, though inferior to, the Loon Fung or Woo Hong chains in the UK. And there is only one decent sized Tang Freres in Paris 13th. And just check out the suburban British supermarket chains such as Hoo Hing, See Woo, Wing Yip, Tai Sun, Hong Sing, Wing Tai, Duc Cung, Thong Heng or, best of all, the massive Oriental City in Colindale. They are entire shopping malls with full sized supermarkets - not just small grocery stores. Oriental City is a full on Chinatown with an amazing food court, loads of other shops and restaurants, and a stage for cultural events to boot.


:| Again it seems you cant accept Paris has a bigger chinatown than London (which apparently is not even the biggest in UK, as Manchester has the biggest one).

Oriental City in Colindale? Enjoy Chinagora in Paris! 

Btw, Tang-Freres and Paris Stores are the biggest chinese chain stores in Paris, but there are several other chinese stores as Sou-Quan (paris 5), Supermarche La Shunde,... and many smaller one which I really cant recall the names...

just visit Paris and ... dont forget to learn some Mandarin... it can be usefull to go around in some areas! 

Zai Tian!


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## I'mBack (Jan 15, 2005)

Monkey said:


> Yeah and along that entire 2km there are probably no more than 10 Chinese shops and restaurants. It's so low density and there are so many non-Chinese businesses and people inbetween that you'd barely realise it was a "Chinatown" at all.


:|

You are really proving you never been to paris 13eme! :laugh:

so there are "no more than 10 chinese shops and restaurants"? "Low density"? :laugh:








































.


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## Monkey (Oct 1, 2002)

I'mBack said:


> :| Again it seems you cant accept Paris has a bigger chinatown than London (which apparently is not even the biggest in UK, as Manchester has the biggest one).
> 
> Oriental City in Colindale? Enjoy Chinagora in Paris!
> 
> ...


Chinagora is the tackiest thing I have ever seen and it's not comparable to Oriental City. Paris doesn't even have a single proper Chinatwon and Manchester's is nowhere near as big as London's - neither is Paris 13th.


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## Monkey (Oct 1, 2002)

I'mBack said:


> :|
> 
> You are really proving you never been to paris 13eme! :laugh:
> 
> so there are "no more than 10 chinese shops and restaurants"? "Low density"? :laugh:


Yes extremely low density - much lower than any other Chinatown mentioned in this thread. You are struggling to show me three shops together because that's all there is. There is one intersection with about 10 restaurants (mostly Vietnamese) and that as good as it gets anywhere in Paris.


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## TalB (Jun 8, 2005)

NYC's Chinatown is the biggest in the US and is pretty authentic to China.


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## VansTripp (Sep 29, 2004)

TalB, I thought Chinatown in SF is biggest chinatown in the nation (USA).


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## I'mBack (Jan 15, 2005)

Monkey said:


> You are struggling to show me three shops together because that's all there is. There is one intersection with about 10 restaurants (mostly Vietnamese) and that as good as it gets anywhere in Paris.


again, you are not only prouving you dont know Paris 13eme Chinatown, but as well you need a pair of glasses to see some pics!! :laugh: 

The Paris 13eme chinatown maybe is not the most beautiful Chinatown in the World, but for sure it's the biggest in Europe: It's a Chinatown under all the meanings: the most of the activities located in there (rsts, shops, stores, pharmacies, PCs, .. ) are chinese-owned, and the "les Olympiades" complex (made of several high-rise buildings) are mostly inhabited by Asian people.....

but again for you it's not a "proper" chinatown just because there are no gates, nor tourists taking pics!?!
:laugh:

btw, why do you keep on bashing Paris? Just jealousy or what? :|


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## nathanh6686 (Jun 14, 2005)

According to wikipedia San Francisco's Chinatown is North America's largest


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## Monkey (Oct 1, 2002)

I'mBack said:


> again, you are not only prouving you dont know Paris 13eme Chinatown, but as well you need a pair of glasses to see some pics!! :laugh:
> 
> The Paris 13eme chinatown maybe is not the most beautiful Chinatown in the World, but for sure it's the biggest in Europe: It's a Chinatown under all the meanings: the most of the activities located in there (rsts, shops, stores, pharmacies, PCs, .. ) are chinese-owned, and the "les Olympiades" complex (made of several high-rise buildings) are mostly inhabited by Asian people.....
> 
> ...


What hypocrisy to accuse me of bashing Paris! Your main purpose on these forums is bashing London. I cannot even remember the last time I read a contribution of yours that wasn't finding some kind of angle against London.

And no Paris's Chinatown is not the largest in Europe. London's is. Paris's Chinatown sparwls with extremely low density over a large area but it has fewer shops, restaurants, supermarkets, and other businesses than that dense, colourful, and stimulating Chinatown in London's Soho. Paris's so-called "Chinatown" is so vapid you barely realise you're there at all.


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## pottebaum (Sep 11, 2004)

nathanh6686 said:


> According to wikipedia San Francisco's Chinatown is North America's largest


Only in area, I think. New York's has a larger population. The city itself has the largest Chinese population outside of East Asia.


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## TalB (Jun 8, 2005)

Since the 1980's, it surpassed San Francisco, and this was from Answers.com if you don't believe me.

"By the 1980s, it had surpassed San Francisco's Chinatown to become the largest enclave of Chinese immigrants in the Western hemisphere, but in the last few years it too has been outgrown by the lesser-known but larger community in nearby Flushing, Queens, New York."


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## United-States-of-America (Jul 19, 2005)

My neighborhood of Flushing, Queens:

























A typical chinese neighborhood. It has recently surpassed the size of the Chinatown in Manhattan to become the largest Chinese enclave in North America.


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## I'mBack (Jan 15, 2005)

Monkey said:


> What hypocrisy to accuse me of bashing Paris! Your main purpose on these forums is bashing London. I cannot even remember the last time I read a contribution of yours that wasn't finding some kind of angle against London.
> 
> And no Paris's Chinatown is not the largest in Europe. London's is. Paris's Chinatown sparwls with extremely low density over a large area but it has fewer shops, restaurants, supermarkets, and other businesses than that dense, colourful, and stimulating Chinatown in London's Soho.* Paris's so-called "Chinatown" is so vapid you barely realise you're there at all.*


:| Making more stories up? 
Just go over it and .... visit Paris Chinatown*s* (plural!) as you are making some claims without backing with some sources (as I actually did) and not knowing Paris Chinatowns at all :|
Who ever goes to Paris 13eme Chinatown realize it's a Chinatown, ....... and a big one! (yr last comment it's pure bashing or just .... ignorance as you dont know the place?)

:| Poor looser. I just leave you wanking yrself believing London has the best and the great of everything..... in yr small world :laugh: 







.


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## Manila-X (Jul 28, 2005)

New York's Chinatown reminds me of HK! Actually my favorite place there is the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory


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## RafflesCity (Sep 11, 2002)

The Mid-Autumn Festival got underway in Singapore's Chinatown yesterday, Sunday, 4th September.


Here are some pics by hyacinthus.

Celebratory fireworks





























Decorations


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

WANCH said:


> New York's Chinatown reminds me of HK! Actually my favorite place there is the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory


When I walked around New York's Chinatown last year, I didn't hear a lot of Mandarin or Cantonese. Instead, there were a lot of distinct regional dialects that I've never heard of before. I don't think there is a significant HK population in there at all. However, the writings are still in traditional Chinese.

Chinatown in Lower Manhattan is a big market, with a lot of shops whose products spew onto the streets. It's quite different from the typical HK markets although the bustling feeling is the same.


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## TalB (Jun 8, 2005)

Sunset Pk in Brooklyn is home to NYC's thrid Chinatown, and it goes along 8th Ave between 42nd/62nd Sts.


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## York Transit (Mar 13, 2005)

hkskyline said:


> *1 of Toronto's Suburban Chinatowns *


LMAO...that isn't a Chinatown! Those are Chinese strip malls/plazas/malls which are everywhere in the suburbs. Scarborough...Richmond Hill...Markham etc...


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

^ Of course it is. It's a concentration of Chinese in the suburban areas, just as any Chinatown in the traditional core areas have large concentrations of Chinese living there. Only the urban setting is different, but the essence of a Chinatown is still there.


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## Jaye101 (Feb 16, 2005)

TORONTO




JayeTheOnly said:


> Toronto's Chinatown is huge, but we dont have any gates.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## PhilippeMtl (Aug 17, 2005)

Montreal Chinatown, small but great!

Montreal chinese population: 52 110.
Montreal asian population: 173 560
Montreal asian area: Pie-IX, downtown, Brossard, Saint-Laurent

Rue Saint-Laurent gate:










Other gate (Rue de la Gauchetière):


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## rousseau (Nov 4, 2005)

NewYorker1 said:


> A typical chinese neighborhood. It has recently surpassed the size of the Chinatown in Manhattan to become the largest Chinese enclave in North America.


Bigger than Markham, a Chinese ethnoburb of Toronto? I'd be curious to see some numbers.


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## TalB (Jun 8, 2005)

Don't forget that NYC is pretty much the only city in the world to have more than one Chinatown. ^^


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## UrbanSophist (Aug 4, 2005)

^ Chicago has two that I'm aware of.


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## Jules (Jun 27, 2004)

Our's is so small though, you can walk from one side to the other in no time.


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## pottebaum (Sep 11, 2004)

^Yeah, although they're both growing pretty quickly. I don't think either will really follow the format of Chinatowns like the ones in New York and SF, but they still have a lot to offer.


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## Metropolitan (Sep 21, 2004)

Paris is with no doubt the main "chinese" city in Europe. This is well-known in the European Chinese communauty. The first chinese communauty is born in France after the world war 1. Indeed 140,000 chinese people have been recruited in the French army and a significant portion of them stayed in France after the conflict.

The arrival of chinese in Paris have been continuous since then. Very silently, France has discovered in the beginning of the 70's that it was hosting a Chinatown in the 13th arrondissement. Most of the migrants who arrived in that part of Paris came from former French Indochina : Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos. The chinese community initially hosted in those countries arrived massively in France because of the conflicts of the region in the 60's and 70's (Viet Nam war, red Khmer's dictatorship in Cambodia, etc...). Today, 80% of the population is Asian in the area between the Avenue d'Italie and the Avenue d'Ivry.

Since the liberalization of the Chinese economy, new migrants, from mainland China itself, arrived massively in Paris as it was the place in Europe where a chinese communauty was already existing. Paris is with no doubt the favourite European destination for Chinese migrants since then.

Because of the economical prosperity of the Chinese communauty, Chinese territories have been expanded over Paris region. When the 13th arrondissement in Paris remains mainly South East Asian and Cantonese (with a large part of Chinese people which were initially in South East Asia), Belleville is today a Mandarin speaking genuine chinatown. The 3rd arrondissement hosts a chinese community mainly from economical reason, working in the textile industry. Finally, suburbs such as Noisiel, Bussy Saint-Georges and Lognes are real suburban "chinatowns". 40% of residents in Lognes are Chinese official immigrants, a figure which of course doesn't count French people from Chinese roots.

In 2000, the Chinese _migrant_ communauty in Paris was estimated at about 450,000 people (estimation coming from the granted long-term visas). The population from Chinese roots, including French citizens and bi-nationals, should be about 1 million people.

Mainly due to its economical success, the chinese communauty is today the first immigrating communauty in France, far ahead of African or North African communauties.

If English speaking people are surprized about this, it's because it's not in the French culture to say about someone : "oh look at him, he's different !". It's culturally not well-seen to exhibit ethnical differences for many historical reasons. That's why you'll never find any touristic "Chinese Gate" on the Avenue de Choisy. But don't trust superficial appearances, Chinese people may live in towers and suburban houses, they are still there. And the Chinagora has been built exclusively by private funds coming from the French chinese community.


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## Tubeman (Sep 12, 2002)

A page on London's original Chinatown, Limehouse (Shanghai) and Poplar (Cantonese) in the East End. The settlement was established around 200 years ago but had largely disbanded or decamped to Soho by the 1970's;

Link


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## Metropolitan (Sep 21, 2004)

Tubeman said:


> A page on London's original Chinatown, Limehouse (Shanghai) and Poplar (Cantonese) in the East End. The settlement was established around 200 years ago but had largely disbanded or decamped to Soho by the 1970's;


Of course there was already a chinese communauty in Paris before ww1, but they weren't even 10,000 then. It's really after the ww1 that it became really significant.

Few pictures from Paris :


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## rousseau (Nov 4, 2005)

TalB said:


> Don't forget that NYC is pretty much the only city in the world to have more than one Chinatown. ^^


Not to get into a pissing match, because I've seen how these things go on this forum, but that's a pretty ignorant statement. Toronto has six separate Chinese business districts that I know of, along with numerous suburban strip malls that are made up mostly of Chinese shops and services. 

How many Chinese business districts does Los Angeles have?


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## bolyerly (Dec 17, 2005)

又看见轮子了，真是阴魂不散，还没搞完，比祥林嫂还烦，更何况根本就不是祥林嫂，以前就是一个无聊的骗钱东西，现在居然又跟宗教扯上关系，明明是巫术，还冒充宗教，这些骗子国内呆不下去，又跑到国外去哄那帮老外，真是无聊．


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## Justme (Sep 11, 2002)

Some more photo's of London's Chinatown.


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## samsonyuen (Sep 23, 2003)

Toronto: There are plans underway to build arches in the Spadina/Dundas Chinatown. 

Chicago: Where is the second Chinatown of which you speak? Do you mean the small cluster of Chinese shops in the NW suburbs? The main one disappoints me. 

LA: Lots of stuff outside of the Chinatown, like the suburb of Alhambra and Monterrey Park (mostly Taiwanese, I believe)


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## silly thing (Aug 9, 2004)

hey why singapore needs a chinatown?


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## Nicolás (Dec 17, 2005)

Which European Cities have chinatowns? :? :? :?

Are there only London, Paris and Milan?


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## Tubeman (Sep 12, 2002)

Inlandsvägen said:


> Which European Cities have chinatowns? :? :? :?
> 
> Are there only London, Paris and Milan?


No, also Liverpool:










...Manchester:


















...And Birmingham:


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## pricemazda (Feb 14, 2004)

Manchester has one.


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## WeasteDevil (Nov 6, 2004)

Always found it strange that London's Chinese Arch is so unimpressive. Was it even built in China?


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## WeasteDevil (Nov 6, 2004)

An article (rather long) about the Chinese and the UK, especially Manchester:

http://www.china-britain.org/resources_globalization.htm


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## Isan (Jul 9, 2004)

*CHINA TOWN @ Bangkok*

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Yaowarat


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## Skybean (Jun 16, 2004)

Great thread. I wish there wasn't so much arguing and bickering though. 

About 20 years ago, downtown Toronto's Chinatowns consisted of predominantly Cantonese-speaking Chinese but today this is likely not the case, with Vietnamese, Filipino and Mandarin-speaking Chinese more noticeable in the area. You will find more Cantonese speakers in Markham, Richmond Hill and in areas of Scarborough. Along Highway 7 in particular, there are clusters of Chinese malls and numerous restaurants. The food is pretty good and offers some of the delights of Hong Kong. 
*
The 6 "Chinatowns" of Toronto*
--Downtown Chinatown (Spadina and Dundas)
--Chinatown East (Broadview Avenue and Gerrard Street)
--Scarborough (Agincourt)
--Chinatown West - Mississauga
--Richmond Hill
--Markham

A bit of history: http://www.thingsasian.com/goto_article/article.1490.html

In the downtown area, there are two significant "Chinatowns"


















*Markham*
Supposedly "North America's Largest Asian Indoor Mall", Pacific Mall









According to Statistics Canada, in 2001, a total of 409,500 Chinese lived in the Greater Toronto area — which includes Toronto and Peel, York, Halton and Durham regions (5 million total population).

In Toronto city, 259,710 or 10.6 per cent of population (2.48 Million) were Chinese in 2001


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## Marathoner (Oct 1, 2005)

What about Vancouver? 
I heard that 1/3 of the population is Chinese. Is it right?


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## touchring (Mar 25, 2005)

silly thing said:


> hey why singapore needs a chinatown?


Singapore is not part of China, and was formerly part of a Javanese kingdom and subsequently a Malay Kingdom until the British bought over. Chinese people that migrated to Singapore stayed in Chinatown 2 centuries ago.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

Marathoner said:


> What about Vancouver?
> I heard that 1/3 of the population is Chinese. Is it right?


*Vancouver CMA 2001*
Total Population : 1,986,965 
Chinese : 342,665 

*Richmond *
Total Population : 164,345 
Chinese : 64,270


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## streetscapeer (Apr 30, 2004)

I've been to New York's, Boston's London's, Paris's, Toronto's and Philadelphia's

..so far New York's was by far the best and most vibrant I've been to


































NY's is simply an amazing microcosm....I really want to go to SF's


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## samsonyuen (Sep 23, 2003)

I agree, SF, NY, and Sydney were the best Chinatowns I've been to (alongside Toronto, LA, Chicago, London, Singapore, Montreal, Ottawa, Boston, and Washington's.)

Beside Pacific Mall's 500k square feet, is another 500k square feet in Market Village. I wish they'd just connect them or something!


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## TalB (Jun 8, 2005)

Believe it or not, neither of NYC's three Chinatowns have an arch.


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## Jaye101 (Feb 16, 2005)

samsonyuen said:


> I agree, SF, NY, and Sydney were the best Chinatowns I've been to (alongside Toronto, LA, Chicago, London, Singapore, Montreal, Ottawa, Boston, and Washington's.)
> 
> Beside Pacific Mall's 500k square feet, is another 500k square feet in Market Village. I wish they'd just connect them or something!


And The Landmark Asian mall proposal in Scarborough, alonge with some condos... (Does anyone have an update?)


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## Manila-X (Jul 28, 2005)

touchring said:


> Singapore is not part of China, and was formerly part of a Javanese kingdom and subsequently a Malay Kingdom until the British bought over. Chinese people that migrated to Singapore stayed in Chinatown 2 centuries ago.


But Singapore's majority is still Chinese and is the only country where overseas Chinese compose the majority 

If the Malays and Indians have their own community, why can't the Chinese


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## Huhu (Jun 5, 2004)

Marathoner said:


> What about Vancouver?
> I heard that 1/3 of the population is Chinese. Is it right?


Richmond has a few large malls that cater to Chinese/East Asian tastes. The biggest are Aberdeen Centre, Yaohan Centre, and Parker Place. They are all clustered together on No. 3 Road, the major shopping district in Richmond.

Aberdeen is actually quite beautiful after being rebuilt recently, although it looks a little bare as it hasn't filled up with stores yet.


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## Manila-X (Jul 28, 2005)

Huhu said:


> Richmond has a few large malls that cater to Chinese/East Asian tastes. The biggest are Aberdeen Centre, Yaohan Centre, and Parker Place. They are all clustered together on No. 3 Road, the major shopping district in Richmond.
> 
> Aberdeen is actually quite beautiful after being rebuilt recently, although it looks a little bare as it hasn't filled up with stores yet.


This mall reminds me alot of HK malls


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## Huhu (Jun 5, 2004)

WANCH said:


> This mall reminds me alot of HK malls


Well it should since it was designed by Fairchild Group with that in mind. 

Richmond is also host to the wildly succesful Richmond Night Market. Started off as a primarily Chinese event in 2000, it now reflects the multicultural makeup of the city. Vancouver's Chinatown has also started its own night market as well.










www.richmondnightmarket.com


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## Manila-X (Jul 28, 2005)

By the way, what's the majority of Richmond's Chinese Community? Are they mostly from HK?


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## Huhu (Jun 5, 2004)

WANCH said:


> By the way, what's the majority of Richmond's Chinese Community? Are they mostly from HK?


Probably, but there is a large Taiwanese segment as well as an increasing number of mainlanders.


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## Manila-X (Jul 28, 2005)

Huhu said:


> Probably, but there is a large Taiwanese segment as well as an increasing number of mainlanders.


A little off topic but when I was in LA, most of the Chinese community I've met are from Taiwan or are Mandarin speaking.

Anyway, from what I know, Great Britain, Canada and Australia are some of top destinations for HK chinese immigration


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## Huhu (Jun 5, 2004)

Vancouver is also home to the beautiful Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden. Built in the style of a traditional Ming Dynasty "Scholar's Garden," it is small compared to similar gardens in Asia but a rarity on this side of the Pacific.


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## Manila-X (Jul 28, 2005)

The garden looks really nice during winter!


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## carfentanyl (May 14, 2003)

Inlandsvägen said:


> Which European Cities have chinatowns? :? :? :?
> 
> Are there only London, Paris and Milan?


In the Netherlands, Amsterdam, Rotterdam en Den Haag (The Hague) have Chinatowns, but they're pretty small. Almost too small to call them 'towns'. 

Rotterdam's seems to be the largest and is steadily growing. Funny thing is that around 1920 Rotterdam's Chinatown was the largest in Europe, mainly because of Rotterdam's huge seaport. Then end of the 20's most Chinese were kicked out of the country unfortunately, otherwise Rotterdam's might be still the biggest of Europe.

Sister Ping, Europe's top snakehead and responsible for the death of 58 Chinese people in a transport was also based in Rotterdam. She has smuggled an estimated 200.000 people into the EU.

Also Brussels en Antwerpen in Belgium have 'Chinatowns' that I know of.


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## sukh (Sep 30, 2004)

Marathoner said:


> What about Vancouver?



Yes, i am surprised it has not been mentioned yet. The third largest chinatown in North America.



























































































In Richmond, a suburb of Vancouver there are many chinese districts as well.


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## muckie (Mar 14, 2006)

Sao Paulo has the biggest japanese community outside of Japan
fact
the known neighbourhood is called the Bairro da Liberdade.


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## micro (Mar 13, 2005)

superman987 said:


> Wikipedia states that Toronto's is the largest in North America and Vancouver is 2. I find it really hard to believe there both bigger than SF's and New York's.
> 
> 
> Does anyone know Toronto's, Vancouver's, SF and NY's chinese population numbers?


So maybe NY has more Chinese people than Toronto but in NY they are spread around different districts.


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## alesmarv (Mar 31, 2006)

..


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## Taller Better (Aug 27, 2005)

One I am still interested in seeing is Sydney... any pix out there? Thanks!


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## bayviews (Mar 3, 2006)

True, comparing North American Chinese populations, Toronto & Vancouver in Canada have higher Chinese percentages. However, NYC, SF Bay Area, & LA in US have the largest Chinese populations. Here's the actual data from the most recent decenial censuses. 

“BIG FIVE” NORTH AMERICAN CHINESE POPULATION CENTERS

Metropolitan Area

1.	New York USA CMSA= 526,037
2.	San Francisco Bay Area USA= CMSA 513,851
3.	Los Angeles USA CMSA= 473,634
4.	Toronto Canada CMA= 409,530
5.	Vancouver Canada CMA= 342,665

CMSA=US 2000 Census 
CMA=Canada 2001 Census


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## Taller Better (Aug 27, 2005)

^^ Again there is probably the age old difference of what is considered a 
metropolitan area in Canada, and what is considered a metropolitan area in 
the USA.


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## Avatar (Sep 11, 2002)

Some shots of Sydney's inner city Chinatown.
http://www.chinatown.com.au/eng/


























There are also satellite Chinatowns that have emerged in the past two decades in several Sydney suburbs such as Ashfield, Cabramatta, Chatswood and Hurstville. But Sydney's Chinatown still remains a major focus for the Chinese Australian community.


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## Taller Better (Aug 27, 2005)

Thanks Avatar!


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## KGB (Sep 12, 2002)

"Metropolitan Area

1. New York USA CMSA= 526,037
2. San Francisco Bay Area USA= CMSA 513,851
3. Los Angeles USA CMSA= 473,634
4. Toronto Canada CMA= 409,530
5. Vancouver Canada CMA= 342,665

CMSA=US 2000 Census
CMA=Canada 2001 Census"




Ah...but the Toronto CMA is a much smaller deliniation than an american CMSA. And just the GTA + Hamilton's chinese population in the 2001 census was actually 422,000. Toronto gets something like 20,000 chinese immigrants per year, so it could actually be around 100,000 more at the moment.

I guess we will find out, as there is a new census next month.






KGB


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## EtherealMist (Jul 26, 2005)

Boston has a chinatown, sorry I dont have any pics though


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## bitoy (Mar 22, 2006)

Portland, OR Chinatown

But most businesses are moving now to 82nd Ave. and making them to a smaller Chinatown.



Beijing and Shanghai has no Chinatowns -- :tongue4:


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## Manila-X (Jul 28, 2005)

tsinoy said:


> Beijing and Shanghai has no Chinatowns -- :tongue4:


They do, the whole city itself


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## vincebjs (Sep 11, 2002)

The number of Chinese living in the Paris area cannot possibly be as high as 450,000. That makes it more proportionately Chinese than L.A. and NYC! A number of 450,000 would be equivalent to Toronto's level in 1991.

They must obviously have grouped in everyone from Asia into the category. I think they do that in Latin America too, where asiatico/asiatique = chino/chinois.

Even that is tenuous, because statistics show that only 300,000 "Chinese" live in all of France.


I am surprised at how few Chinese there are in the UK, only 247,403, less than the number in the City of Toronto (pop. 2.5 million) not counting the metro area.


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## eklips (Mar 29, 2005)

vincebjs said:


> The number of Chinese living in the Paris area cannot possibly be as high as 450,000. That makes it more proportionately Chinese than L.A. and NYC! A number of 450,000 would be equivalent to Toronto's level in 1991.
> 
> They must obviously have grouped in everyone from Asia into the category. I think they do that in Latin America too, where asiatico/asiatique = chino/chinois.
> 
> ...



450 000 seems a lot just for chineses, but it seems to low for all east asians, the vietnamiese (as well as cambodgian and laosian) community is also very important here


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## Manila-X (Jul 28, 2005)

virtual said:


> 450 000 seems a lot just for chineses, but it seems to low for all east asians, the vietnamiese (as well as cambodgian and laosian) community is also very important here


Of course they are cause they're former French colonies


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## bayviews (Mar 3, 2006)

Here once again the misinformation & inaccuracies that emerge when population estimates get co-mingled with official census data. 

Yes, the official census data is somewhat outdated & understated. But the unofficial estimates end up being, more often than not, wildly exagerated & inflated. Yes, there is significant Chinese ancestry population around Paris, largely from Southeast Asia. But it cannot number anything close to 450,000. 

And since when has the French census started counting ethnicity & race? Remember that officially, the French government recognizes only one ethnicity in France. French. This issue came up during the riots in the (officially non-existant) Arab & African communities last fall. 

I think the French census tracks birthplaces. But doubt that there is any published data that covers anything beyond first-generation.


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## alesmarv (Mar 31, 2006)

France has only *300,000 * Chinese in the whole country acording to all the statistic I found, however im sure there are many Vietnames, Japanes, Thai, etc.
UK has only *247,000 * Chinese in its entire country. "_At the last UK census in 2001, there were 247,403 Chinese people living in the UK - 0.4% of the total population, or 5.3% of the minority ethnic population._"

I have been both to London and Paris and from what I saw there are barly any Chinese, almost non existant(mind you I come from a city that is a fraction of the size of Paris and London and the Chinese population is almost greater then both countries combined)

America - 2.4 million
Canada - 1.2 million


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## kenbrown (Mar 29, 2006)

alesmarv said:


> I have been both to London and Paris and from what I saw there are barly any Chinese, almost non existant


Well, a quarter of a million isn't exactly "non-existent", and the rather dodgy UK census data probably hides quite a few people of partial Hong Kong or Malayan descent who don't think of themselves as Chinese but might appear to be so to Americans, but on the whole, yes, its true. There are nowhere near as many Chinese people in Britain as in North America. Gosh. Woever said there were? Like, er, so what? 

The Soho Chinatown was very artificial when it was created, a deliberate tourist ploy with some urban regeneration thrown in. Loads of Chinese restaurants in an area that not many Chinese people lived in or visited. (Most Chinese people in Britain don't live in visibly Chinese districts, but scattered all round living in the same sort of places that everyone else does.) But it seems to have somehow become real in the last few years - Chinese visitors to London started going there. The big difference in Chinese people in London now over 15 years ago is that there are a great many more who aren't Hong Kong or Cantonese, and who aren't immigrants or refugees. You see far more Chinese visitors, people on business, tourists, students than you used to. presumably because of the huge growth in the Chinese economy. These people go to Soho and have made it a Chinese-seeming place in a way that it wasn't before.



Tubeman said:


> A page on London's original Chinatown, Limehouse (Shanghai) and Poplar (Cantonese) in the East End. The settlement was established around 200 years ago but had largely disbanded or decamped to Soho by the 1970's;
> 
> Link


I'm glad someone mentioned that. It was London's original "Chinatown", though it wasn't called that till the 20th century, in fact probably the westerrn world's original Chinatown, though always very small. There are still a few older Chinese restaurants round there - or there where when I worked at Canary Wharf in the 1990 - though when we say "old" we mean 1950s not 19th century.


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## vincebjs (Sep 11, 2002)

The reason i thought there would be more chinese people in London was because there are so many of them in Toronto. I was thinking that they were looking to either Britain or some Commonwealth country to settle in. Why did they all come to Canada and not the UK?


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## Taller Better (Aug 27, 2005)

^^ At one point before Hong Kong went back to China, Britain changed the
Hong Kong/British passports so that they could no longer be used for immigration
to the UK. That slowed down immigration a lot.


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## Monkey (Oct 1, 2002)

alesmarv said:


> France has only *300,000 * Chinese in the whole country acording to all the statistic I found, however im sure there are many Vietnames, Japanes, Thai, etc.
> UK has only *247,000 * Chinese in its entire country. "_At the last UK census in 2001, there were 247,403 Chinese people living in the UK - 0.4% of the total population, or 5.3% of the minority ethnic population._"
> 
> I have been both to London and Paris and from what I saw there are barly any Chinese, almost non existant (mind you I come from a city that is a fraction of the size of Paris and London and the Chinese population is almost greater then both countries combined)
> ...


Sorry that's nonsense. There are loads of Chinese in London and quite a lot in Paris too. There are more than 10,000 Chinese restaurants in Britain. Despite Indian cuisine being more famous in Britain, Chinese has been Britain's most popular restaurant cuisine for decades. Also Chinese tourists are free to visit EU countries (unlike the US) and this bolsters the numbers you see on the street. As for the census figures.....


1) The census figures are dated.

2) The census forms are not returned by people with poor English such as recent Chinese immigrants (especially illegals). Most Chinese workers in Chinatown restaurants are unregistered and therefore uncounted illegals.

3) Illegal Chinese immigrants in Europe often come to public attention only when a tragic incident strikes (such as the truck suffocating 50 illegal Chinese trying to get into the UK or the cockleshell Chinese who were drowned).

4) There are almost as many Chinese students in the UK as the entire US (5 x more per capita) and they rarely return census forms.


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## alesmarv (Mar 31, 2006)

..


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## Monkey (Oct 1, 2002)

alesmarv said:


> #1,#2,#3,#4 all apply to Canada and US as well, so if the figures are wrong for Britain then they are also logicly wrong for America and Canada. And as far as #4 goes I dont know about the US but I know Canada as has alot of Chinese studets, and I would asume there are more than in Britain. And no exchange students, visitors and ilegals are not counted as part of the census and they shouldent be.
> 
> Anyways we all saw the census figures I have to asume their acurate, i mean if they say the number is 250,000 im going to asume its atleast within a 100,000 acurate.
> 
> By the way if you have such a hard time believing these figures than why dont you come visit Toronto or Vancouver, see I was suprised that those figures were as low as they were for those two cities.


I disagree. 1, 2, 3, and 4 to not apply to the same extent to the US and Canada. There is a busy overland route for people smuggling Chinese into Europe (a reinvention of the old Silk Road?  ). This is not possible across the Pacific! And like I said the number of Chinese students in the UK alone is almost as large as the entire US (some 5 x more per capita) and several times higher than Canada's too. My ex-grilfriend's university (City) was overwhelmingly Chinese. Some private professional colleges in London have almost 100% Chinese students! I am specifically pointing out the sour fact that students do NOT count for as much in the US or Canada as Europe (esp UK). And Europe also gets more Chinese tourists too. So far Chinese tour groups are not permitted to visit the US. They are also much less interested in visiting Canada than Europe. The EU also trades more than the US with China and SE Asia so the business ties are stronger too. There are far more flights between European and E/SE Asian cities than to US cities. There are more flights between London and Hong Kong/China alone than between all US and all Chinese cities combined! I am not claiming that European resident populations of E/SE Asians are as large as in American cities but they are significiant and many of the people of E/SE Asian descent you see on the street are not residents and do not fill out census forms. Even so every major British city has a Chinatown. London has several and they are springing up across Europe too. However only about half the Chinese faces in London (and they are everywhere....) are permenant residents.


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## KGB (Sep 12, 2002)

I dunno about all this heresay about uncounted illegals and students and chinese in the UK who are more likely to not return census forms than in other places (especially when there are more chinese in those places).


Let's talk about real numbers.....


Between 1980 and 2000 nearly 800,000 Chinese immigrants landed in Canada ( 797,635 to be excact). 

Plus, the following immigrants arrived from China since then.....

2001....40,328
2002....33,237
2003....36,116
2004....36 410


And since this about cities, about 40% of all chinese immigrants come to Toronto 






KGB


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## alesmarv (Mar 31, 2006)

..


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## dhuwman (Oct 6, 2005)

Reading some of the posts here reminds me of some old joke from my Korean friend.

One of my Korean friends visited the UK and was asked where he was from. He said he's Korean. The next day, the guy who asked him where he was from introduced my friend to some of his colleagues, saying something like this: "Meet this Chinese guy". My friend jumped in saying "Oh I'm not Chinese, I'm Korean" but the guy was like "What's the difference? Chinese, Korean, Japanese... they're all the same." :jk:


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## Monkey (Oct 1, 2002)

^ Hardly typical! There are tens of thousands of Koreans in London too.


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## alesmarv (Mar 31, 2006)

..


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## Monkey (Oct 1, 2002)

^ How do Chinese illegals enter the US and Canada? I can understand that people might overstay on their visas but I cannot see how they can "enter" illegally as you suggest. How could there be any equivalent of the Eurasian people smuggling route into North America? Also does the number of Chinese students count ethnic Chinese or just students from the PRC? The 70,000 figure you give for the UK is from the PRC Embassy in London. That means 70,000 from the PRC only. It doesn't even include Hong Kong let alone Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia etc.


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## alesmarv (Mar 31, 2006)

..


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## Monkey (Oct 1, 2002)

^ Once again the figures are PRC only and not ethnic Chinese. What about Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia? There are hundreds of flights every week from these destinations to London operated by the world's most profitable airlines (they are not flying fresh air around....). London-Hong Kong for instance is by far the busiest West to E/SE Asian city pair.


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## alesmarv (Mar 31, 2006)

..


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## alesmarv (Mar 31, 2006)

..


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## Monkey (Oct 1, 2002)

^ You seem to be ignorant. Singapore is ~80% ethnic Chinese and Malaysia is ~30% ethnic Chinese. There are some Indian and Malay students from these countries in the UK but the majority of Singaporean and Malaysian students in the UK are ethnic Chinese. Both countries have retained strong links with Britain and Straits Chinese form a significant proportion of Chinese in the UK (esp legal, students, business, and tourists).

From China you only have to cross one border to get to Europe (Russia). Many other borders are porous and easy to cross for traffickers paying bribes. Once inside the EU's Schengen zone there are no border checks or controls whatsoever.

And yes I have been to the US several times thank you along with some 50 other countries on every habited continent. I have also been all over E/SE Asia (I go there two or three times a year - will be in Japan again in two weeks....) and I certainly do know the difference between Vietnamese and Chinese having been to both countries (to China four times) although of course there are ethnic Chinese in Vietnam as well. Where have you been in China or E/SE Asia? How many times? From your ignorance of Straits Chinese I would guess little if at all. Sorry but I really don't think you're going to win a travel contest against me....


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## Monkey (Oct 1, 2002)

alesmarv said:


> Guess what there are thousands of Chinese restaurants in Czech republic also, yet there are almost no Chinese people in the country. They are all run by Vietnames and Czechs and passed of as Chinese restaurants even thoe they have nothing to do with real Chinese food. By the way theres probably that many Chinese restaurants just in Vancouver and Toronto, im not kiding go look it up or something, especialy Richmond. And remeber that Korean, Japanies, Thai, Vietnames, Malaysian, etc are not Chinese restaurants, see when I went to London the people seemed to group everyone in to one category, Chinese.


Christ I can't believe the things you are saying here! I'm sorry but I really doubt there are more Chinese restaurants in Canada than the UK simply because the total population of Canada (and therefore the total number of restaurants) is much smaller. Vancouver probably doesn't have 10,000 restaurants in total!! Chinese is THE most popular restaurant cuisine in the UK - marginally ahead of Indian. There will at least one Chinese takeaway or restaurant in every small town, village, and suburb. It was the first foreign cusines to gain widespread popularity in Britain (Chinese in the 50s, Indian and Italian from the 60s). None of the Chinese restaurants here are run by anyone other than Chinese. There is a Vietnamese population in Britain too but they are much smaller in numbers than Chinese. And I am certainly not counting in any other kind of E/SE Asians with Chinese. Once again, from your ignorance of Straits Chinese, I think it's clearly you with the fundamental knowledge deficit!!


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## Taller Better (Aug 27, 2005)

Monkey said:


> Christ I can't believe the things you are saying here! I'm sorry but I really doubt there are more Chinese restaurants in Canada than the UK simply because the total population of Canada (and therefore the total number of restaurants) is much smaller. Vancouver probably doesn't have 10,000 restaurants in total!! Chinese is THE most popular restaurant cuisine in the UK - marginally ahead of Indian. There will at least one Chinese takeaway or restaurant in every small town, village, and suburb. It was the first foreign cusines to gain widespread popularity in Britain (Chinese in the 50s, Indian and Italian from the 60s). None of the Chinese restaurants here are run by anyone other than Chinese. There is a Vietnamese population in Britain too but they are much smaller in numbers than Chinese. And I am certainly not counting in any other kind of E/SE Asians with Chinese. Once again, from your ignorance of Straits Chinese, I think it's clearly you with the fundamental knowledge deficit!!


Monkey, why do you have so much difficulty grasping the enormity of
the Chinese population in Canada (and the number of restaurants)? 
We invite you to visit our country, as most of us have visited Britain,
and you may be very surprised what you see! "Seeing is believing".


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## Monkey (Oct 1, 2002)

^ I suspect Vancouver doesn't have 10,000 restaurants in total - let alone 10,000 Chinese restaurants in Richmond alone (!!). Come on the numbers don't stack up. To get some perspective there are just 960 McDonalds outlets in the whole of Canada. And I doubt I will be blown away by the "enormity" of the Chinese population in Canada having been several times to China itself (pop 1.3bn).  I wouldn't be surprised if even San Francisco/Bay Area has a larger Chinese population than Toronto or Vancouver and I have seen plenty of that (my sister is married to a Chinese/Filipino and they live in SF). And thanks for the invite but Canada is not at the top of my travel list right now.


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## jon jon (May 5, 2005)

"Don't forget that NYC is pretty much the only city in the world to have more than one Chinatown."

Toronto has lots of Chinatowns (3 in the greater downtown area alone). Whoever told you NYC is the only place with more than one Chinatown is a liar.


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## Monkey (Oct 1, 2002)

^ Loads of cities have more than one Chinatown.


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## eklips (Mar 29, 2005)

Paris has more than three china towns


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## KGB (Sep 12, 2002)

"and 50% come to Vancouver"


No...Toronto gets the largest number of chinese...Vancouver gets the second largest....around 30%


And I think we've gone a tad off topic.






KGB


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## RafflesCity (Sep 11, 2002)

Some pics from Singapore...a majority-Chinese city with a Chinatown


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## KGB (Sep 12, 2002)

I think I am still suffering some ill effects from the seizure I had after seeing that orange and green building. Man, you guys build some fugly towers over there...what accounts for that kind of design anyway???????????

Anyway, chinatowns in chinese cities sound wacky in itself.






KGB


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## Monkey (Oct 1, 2002)

^ I see only one fugly tower that appears in several of the photos. Singapore has a lot of beautiful scrapers and perhaps the best "cluster" style skyline in the world. The spruced up colourful shop houses in the Singapore Chinatown are very attractive. KL and Penang should do the same with theirs.


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## Taller Better (Aug 27, 2005)

I think that the old adage "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is true here.


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## murphy54 (Apr 12, 2006)

my major city has no chinatown


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## SuperWario (May 18, 2005)

Some good photos in this thread.

I went to Chinatown in New York once.It smelt bad the whole time I was there.I ended up eating at Mc Donalds to get away from all the strange food and smells.

While I thought it was like walking around in another country,I was happy to get out and back into normal streets with steakhouses and hardware strores.(ya'll know what I mean)


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## bayviews (Mar 3, 2006)

San Francisco's Chinatown, the oldest in America, is the traditional hub for the Bay Area’s huge and diverse Chinese community. It numbers 514,000, the second-largest in North America. Or for that matter, anywhere outside of Asia! Only New York City among non-Asian metropolitan areas boasts a larger Chinese population. Chinese represent the largest of the many distinctive Asian groups in the Bay Area: Filipinos, Vietnamese, Asian Indians, Japanese, Koreans, Cambodians, Laotians, Pakistanis and others. Altogether, Asians comprise 20% of the Bay Area’s 7 million residents. 

SF’s Chinatown has gradually expanded from its traditional boundaries to cover an area of roughly one square mile that is home to over 60,000 residents. While Grant Street is the traditional tourist spine, Stockton Street is the primary Chinese commercial center, a great place to find he best bargains on the freshest produce & seafood. If you can elbow your way through the dense crowds! 

These days, in addition to its role as a commercial, cultural, political & tourist center, SF’s Chinatown serves primary gateway for recent immigrants, particularly the elderly and the poor. In the blocks around the Ping Yuen housing development on Pacific Avenue, 84% of the over three thousand residents are immigrant. 

Overall, Chinese comprise 20% of SF’s 776,000 residents. The majority of the city’s Chinese live outside Chinatown. From Chinatown, Chinese Americans have moved generally counterclockwise into North Beach and the Tenderloin, home to many refugees from Southeast Asia. The Richmond district, in western SF, has become the biggest of the city’s “New Chinatowns”, with the Sunset district, south of Golden Gate Park, a close second. Over the past decade, many Chinese have moved into other SF districts: the Portola, Visitation Valley, Excelsior, Ingleside, San Bruno Avenue, the traditionally Latino Mission district, & Bayview, the city’s largest African American neighborhood. And so SF’s Chinese have created a residential “donut" that virtually circles the whole city. 

And well over two-thirds of the Bay Area’s over half million Chinese live outside SF. Oakland, where the Chinese Americans serve on the 8-member city council, boasts a bustling traditional Chinatown adjacent to downtown that has expanded south along International Boulevard into the San Antonio district. Significant numbers of Chinese live in nearly all the major Bay Area suburbs from Richmond, where 60% of the shoppers at the 99 Ranch Market in the Pacific East Shopping Center are Chinese from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Shanghai & other mainland to Milpitas, where most of the public school students are Asian, and where Milpitas Square is the largest of the Bay Area’s many Asian shopping centers. In Fremont, the Bay Area’s most populous suburb with 203,000 people, Asians comprise 37% of the population, with 54% being Chinese and another 6% being ethnic Taiwanese. Belmont, Moraga, & Hillsborough and other upscale suburbs have attracted many affluent Chinese over the past decade. 

Bay Area Chinese are Longtime Americans and are mainstreamed in all sectors. The era when Chinese Americans were associated just associated with restaurants and laundries are long gong. Professionals have gone into engineering, technology, medicine, and law. And Chinese comprise a significant share of Bay Area postal workers, transit workers, police officers, & other public sector occupations. The Bay Area is home to noted Chinese American writers like Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan. At the University of California at Berkeley campus, Asians comprise the largest chunk of the student enrollment with Chinese comprising the largest group. The late Chang-Lin Tien, a Wuhan, China native educated in Shanghai and Taiwan, served as the first Asian American chancellor at UC-Berkeley during the 1990s. 

In San Francisco, three of the seven members of the city’s Board of Education, including the president, Eric Mar, are Chinese Americans. San Francisco has had two Chinese American police chiefs over the past decade. Heather Fong, SF’s current police chief, is the first big city Asian American female police chief anywhere in North America. Chinese political clout is spreading around the suburban Bay Area. Wilma Chan, first elected to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors from Oakland, later elected to the California State Assembly, has become a statewide political powerbroker. Chinese have been gaining political clout in the South Bay. Cupertino, where Asians comprise half the population, & Sunnyvale, one-third Asian, have both elected Chinese American mayors in recent years. 

The economic & technical ties between the various Chinas & the Bay Area are strong. There have been strong connections between the Guangdong Province in the Pearl River Delta of South China and the Bay Area for 150 years. Cantonese immigrant miners helped to spark the Bay Area’s first economic boom, the Gold Rush era. And over the past couple of decades, Bay Area Chinese have helped to re-connect China to the rest of the world with investment & know-how. Tens of thousands of Chinese Americans have ties to towns like Kaipong west of Hong Kong, & the investments travel back & forth. A triad of cultural & economic connections tie the Bay Area, together with China & other Asian countries, particularly Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Indonesia. 

Taiwanese & mainland Chinese engineering & technical talent have played a big role in the Silicon Valley boom since the 1980s. Chinese Americans like Jerry & Geoff Yang, founder of Yahoo, were among the leading innovators in the 1990s Internet boom. SF & Shanghai have been linked as sister cities for over 25 years. When SF Mayor Gavin Newsom took office in 2004, thanks to strong Chinese American support, his second trip was to Shanghai, Beijing & Hong Kong. Last year, a three hundred member delegation from Guangdong Province led by Governor Huang Hua Hua & Hong Kong Secretary Henry Tang made SF the only stop in the US. From Deng Xiaoping to Hu Jintao, China’s top leaders have made the Bay Area a major stop on their visits to the US. 

Sure, not to forget Chinese restaurants. Estimates very widely. But there are anywhere from seven hundred to three thousand Chinese restaurants in the Bay Area. From traditional Cantonese to Sichuan, Shanghai, Chinjiew, Taiwan, Mandarin, to others serving the Chinese flavors of Southeast Asian countries from Indonesia to Burma, there are Chinese restaurants for all tastes. On the San Mateo Peninsula & in the South Bay, there are even a pair of restaurants specializing in Chinese Muslim cuisines from the western regions. 

But really, there’s a lot more to Chinatowns & Chinese American communities than restaurants. 

There's lots more history too. This article from the SF Chronicle posted below provides more of the history of SF's Chinatown during & after the 1906 SF Quake. 


The Great Quake: 1906-2006 
Out of chaos came new Chinese America 
- Vanessa Hua, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, April 13, 2006 

Destroyed records meant more immigration. 
The earth dragon has awakened, Chinatown residents are said to have screamed as the 1906 earthquake and fire flattened their neighborhood and killed untold numbers. 
But San Francisco's Chinatown was already under siege. White leaders considered the Chinese an economic threat, filthy and dangerous, and were trying to push them out. The Chinese Exclusion Act, barring most Chinese from entering the United States since 1882, had slowed the flow of newcomers to a trickle of teachers, students and merchants. 
Yet when government buildings were destroyed a century ago, so were the birth and immigration records inside. Scores of Chinese recognized the serendipity, claiming citizenship and bringing in their children. 
In many cases, for a fee, they also brought in people who weren't their children. Hundreds of those friends and strangers, who came to be known as "paper sons," arrived in the Bay Area in the following decades, changing Chinese America forever. 
"In a strange way, we as Chinese Americans are indebted to that disaster," said Felicia Lowe, 60, a Bay Area documentary filmmaker whose father and grandfather were paper sons. "It was a gateway, an opening, a possibility to allow Chinese people to come here." 
And it all started with a neighborhood. 
At the turn of the century, Chinatown was a neighborhood of narrow streets and dilapidated Victorians -- the oldest part of San Francisco. Immigrants, most of them bachelors, had added balconies, displaying silk-and-bamboo lanterns and other touches of their homeland: potted flowers and plants, signs in Chinese, triangular yellow flags with a dragon to signify the merchant's rank. After the quake, the city's Reconstruction Committee wanted to move Chinatown 6 miles away to Hunters Point. 
"You have to understand, from the time the Chinese arrived (until) the earthquake, San Francisco City Hall was trying to get rid of them. Not to move them somewhere -- but to move them back to China," said historian Phil Choy, 79, an American-born son of a paper son. 
"People ask, 'Why didn't they count the Chinese?' " he said, referring to the fact that few, if any, deaths from the earthquake and fire were recorded in Chinatown, the city's densest area. " 'Why didn't they care?' " 
"This is why," he said, gesturing to a stack of musty leather-bound books in his study: reports to the Board of Supervisors and the California State Senate about the filthy conditions of the Chinese quarter. The alleged horrors included Chinese prostitution, white women living with Chinese men and white prostitution in Chinatown. 
But the effort to move Chinatown stalled when the Chinese government and white merchants warned that U.S.-China relations would suffer if Chinatown were pushed aside. 
Chinese merchants quickly staked their claim by rebuilding. They devised a plan to make Chinatown a valued asset of San Francisco -- a tourist spot. 
The architecture they chose was not authentic but a fanciful interpretation designed by white architects. Pagodas in the Far East are religious buildings, erected as memorials or shrines, for example, while in Chinatown they house shops. 
Today, tourists on Grant Avenue photograph the curved eaves and colorful tiled roofs and wander through atmospheric alleys and into temples heavy with incense and resounding with the cacophony of fake crickets, classical Chinese zither and Muzak. "It was a ingenious move, selling a fake China to those white folks who didn't know any better; and the Chinese community since survived with a degree of prosperity on its own despite intense racial prejudice and discrimination," said Marlon Hom, chairman of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University. 
To this day, the neighborhood remains chronically overcrowded and houses poor immigrants who lack the English fluency to venture beyond. About 60 percent of all housing units in Chinatown are still single rooms without a bathroom or kitchen, and most of the other 40 percent are rental apartments. 
Although the neighborhood's distinctive look protected it from redevelopment in the 1960s and 1970s -- a wave that transformed Filipino neighborhoods and Japantown -- Chinatown has missed out on the Bay Area's prosperity over the last half-century. 
Down narrow, dank Cooper Alley off Jackson Street, which was set aside a century ago for sick Chinese prostitutes, a small building built in 1908 is home to people like Qiang-guo Wang, 69, who rents a small room with his wife for $240 a month. 
"There isn't space to move around, but there isn't sufficient affordable housing," said Wang, a retired restaurant busboy. In 1992, the couple left behind a three-bedroom apartment in Guangzhou, China, to join their five children in California. Because they cannot drive or speak English, they moved to Chinatown. 
"Life is hard," Wang said. "I have to struggle for this." 
Suitcases and boxes teetered on the top bunk of his bed, and the moist, sweet smell of steamed rice hung in the air. Potted plants and flowers on the windowsill brightened the dilapidated room, much as they might have in 1906. 
Even after the quake, the Chinese population in San Francisco continued shrinking, partly because many Chinese residents moved to San Mateo, San Jose and the East Bay. 
But eventually, the effects of the earthquake and fire -- and the ingenuity of immigrants in Chinatown -- would begin to take hold. By 1930, the city's Chinese population climbed to 10,668, from 7,774 in 1920, as paper sons and daughters grew old enough to immigrate and be put to work. 
At Angel Island Immigration Station, where 175,000 Chinese immigrants were detained between 1910 and 1940, authorities interrogated immigrants and their purported American relatives separately, trying to catch them in a lie. How many windows are in the house? What direction did they face? How many houses are in your village? Has your alleged uncle ever been in the United States? What is the name of the burial place? 
Some real families were torn apart when immigrants could not answer all the questions, despite memorizing minute details about their false family and villages during their crossing. Those who survived the interrogation sank roots that today nourish tangled family trees. 
Mothers came in as grandmothers, sisters as aunts, brothers as uncles of their siblings. And real brothers would take separate fake names. For decades, many Chinese American families had two surnames: their real one, used in the Chinese community, and the name used in the official, white world. 
Filmmaker Lowe, who grew up in Oakland's Chinatown, realized after the birth of her first child that she knew little family history to pass on. 
"I tried to fill in the puzzle, the missing pieces. For so many years, I only got hints," Lowe said. "Sometimes I'd get a story that made sense, and sometimes, it was, 'Oh, never mind.' '' 
Inside the chilly barracks at Angel Island Immigration Station, Ying-Ying Guan stood still and silent, pondering poems that immigrants carved into the walls decades ago. 
"I can feel how lonely they are. They want to go, but they can't get out," said Guan, 19. A sliver of the bay glimmered through the window, with Richmond and Marin beyond on either side. 
A great-great grandfather on her mother's side worked on U.S. railroads in the late 1800s and sent money back to his village in southern China until he died here. His son, Guan's great-grandfather, attempted to immigrate in the 1930s but he was rejected. 
Guan immigrated from southern China with her parents in 1997. Now a freshman at UC Davis, she is learning about the laws targeting Chinese and their way of life, and how Chinese Americans appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court for their rights, easing the way for other immigrants. 
The paper-son practice ended, for the most part, after Congress repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943, when China was allied with the United States in World War II. 
In 1956, however, following a report that Communist spies could use fraudulent papers to enter the United States, Chinese who were here illegally were encouraged to confess in return for legal status. One man spilling his secret could implicate his whole family. 
Him Mark Lai, a San Francisco historian and retired mechanical engineer, had to sponsor his wife, Laura, after her uncle confessed. But gaining citizenship took a decade, during which time she could not leave the country. 
"We visited all the national parks," Lai said with a laugh. Born in 1925 in Chinatown, the eldest son of a paper son, he is the gregarious, unofficial dean of Chinese American history. 
Roughly 30,000 people participated in the confession program before it ended in 1965 with the passage of the Immigration Act, which allowed the large-scale migration of Chinese families for the first time, historians say. The legacy off these immigrants is in new satellite Chinatowns in the Richmond, Sunset and Visitacion Valley neighborhoods of San Francisco. One in five city residents is Chinese American. 
Among the Chinese Americans who moved to San Francisco and to suburbs across the East Bay and South Bay are political leaders and tech entrepreneurs, garment workers and home health aides, tenants and landlords. They are poor, middle-income and wealthy. They are the Bay Area. 
The Chinese Historical Society of America's "Earthquake: the Chinatown Story," which is being held at the Philip P. Choy Gallery at 965 Clay St., runs through Sept. 18.


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## Jaye101 (Feb 16, 2005)

^^ That is much too long to even attempt to read.


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## coldstar (Jan 14, 2003)

Tokyo/Osaka have no chinatowns at all. 
But instead, chinatowns in Yokohama/Kobe are decent and vibrant.
Especially, Yokohama's china town is really great. It's by far cleaner and more frienly and well-organized than the ones in NYC, and San Fran from my own experience.


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## coldstar (Jan 14, 2003)

Monkey said:


> No Yokohama's Chinatown is a lot more than one street. Kobe's is one street but Yokohama's covers a whole area. It has laods of gates and they're all on different streets. I have been to San Francisco's Chinatown several times and it's not as big. SF's main Chinatown is essentially three parallel N/S streets (Grant, Stockton, and as far down as Kenny - but there's relatively little on Kenny Street itself) and then a bunch of narrow E/W streets running across them.
> 
> Yokohama Chinatown:


right. 
San Frans chinatown is so small, dirty and lonely comapred to Yokohama's brilliant chinatown.


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## Æsahættr (Jul 9, 2004)

We don't have one here. *tear*


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## jlshyang (May 22, 2005)

Monkey said:


> ^ I see only one fugly tower that appears in several of the photos. Singapore has a lot of beautiful scrapers and perhaps the best "cluster" style skyline in the world. The spruced up colourful shop houses in the Singapore Chinatown are very attractive. KL and Penang should do the same with theirs.


I agree with you. I'd always hope that all of Penang's shophouses could be spruced up and maintained like those in Singapore. Unfortunately, we have far too many pre-war shophouses in Penang compared to Singapore. 

Lately, there have been alot of effort put in to spruce up the shophouses in Penang. Take for example, this one:


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## Flame (May 7, 2006)

its great checkin out all the different chinatown from around the world, some excellent pics 

but did you know the longest continuous chinese settlement in the western world is in melbourne australia!? thats basically due to the gold rush that we enjoyed during the 1850's http://www.melbournechinatown.com.au/history.html

enjoy


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## ChinaboyUSA (May 10, 2005)

SuperWario said:


> Some good photos in this thread.
> 
> I went to Chinatown in New York once.It smelt bad the whole time I was there.I ended up eating at Mc Donalds to get away from all the strange food and smells.
> 
> While I thought it was like walking around in another country,I was happy to get out and back into normal streets with steakhouses and hardware strores.(ya'll know what I mean)


You must be a wacky person who is scared of difference.
There are plenty of westerners order food in NYC Chinatown's restaurants, sometimes you need to wait by the queue.

It is true that the saniation condition need to be improved in NYC's Chinatown. This needs a comminity and local government's joint efforts.

There must be a misunderstanding about the Chinatown especially the Chinatown in western cities. Let's talk about the biggest one, in New York City, actually there are about more than three Chinese communities in the city, the Chinatown in Manhattan can be described as the oldest. Most of the people there are the oldest generations that came to the States long long time ago, they never moved to other part of the country, but worked in the shops or restaurants(the traditional industry) since they immigrated here.

But the new ones like Flushing, Elmhurst in Queens, 8th Ave area in Brooklyn is pretty different. There are more young people hang out there, new products and new faces from today's China. Well, the mojority of Chinese people are in China, so, what do you expect from the Chinatown can represent China, especially today's China. More new immigrants from China are living with local people in different areas in the city, thus what would I say about Chinatown here in NYC is, they may represent one side or history of China, but they are not China, they are the Chinese communities in the local places.


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## Taller Better (Aug 27, 2005)

Flame said:


> its great checkin out all the different chinatown from around the world, some excellent pics
> 
> but did you know the longest continuous chinese settlement in the western world is in melbourne australia!? thats basically due to the gold rush that we enjoyed during the 1850's http://www.melbournechinatown.com.au/history.html
> 
> enjoy


That was an interesting article, but it is pretty much a toss up where
the Chinese settled first, as they spread out to Australia, Canada and
the USA in the 1850's. They may have arrived in Australia 6 years before
arriving in Canada, but it is a pretty similar history.


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## yaowang101 (May 16, 2006)

How's Hamilton's Chinatown (if it's even big enough to mention).


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## PanaManiac (Mar 26, 2005)

*A Tale of (my) Two Cities...*

*I ran across this thread through a link from a similar newer thread from a different forum. Given that this is the 9th. page of this one, it's virtually impossible that someone did not post San Francisco's Chinatown already. I do/did not have the patience to confirm my suspicion. So if you've seen this one before on this thread, bare with me.

This was once (if not still) the largest chinese community outside of mainland China








Panama City's Chinatown is the smallest of the five I've seen (incl. Vancouver, Toronto and NYC)






*​


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## Karakuri (Dec 5, 2006)

Monkey said:


> I have been to China four times now. I have been dined at some of the top tables in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Beijing - always with Chinese friends. Recently *I even enjoyed a banquet in Hong Kong as a guest of Chow Yun Fat*!! Thank you but I know what Chinese food is and I know that Paris's is some of the least authetic I have ever had. Some places in London's Chinatown do cater for tourists but there are also some excellent dim sum places that are packed out with queues of Chinese and some excellent Chinese bakeries too. There are also a great profusion of Chinese supermarkets and grocery shops in Soho's Chinatown - another thing hard to find in Paris compared to London.


:lol: :lol: 
Well, say hello to your friend Jackie Chan for me next time you meet him ok? And please tell us about the night you spent with Michelle Yeoh last week.

Back to the subject: I've been to Paris's, SF's, LA, and Kobe's chinatowns, and I must say SF was the gretaest! :cheers: 
We have a little one in Lyon, but it's realy animated only for New Year (Chinese and not Chinese), Chistmas and Chinese celebrations.


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## patchay (Jan 2, 2006)

*KUALA LUMPUR's CHINATOWN*
known as Petaling Street or Jalan Petaling (in Malay)

*In the 1980s ...*










*In the 1990s ...*










*Today*


































About 30% of Malaysia's population are ethnic-Chinese (approx 7 million today). Interestingly, like most of Malaysia's big cities about 55% of Kuala Lumpur's population is of Malaysian Chinese (Wikipedia, 2007).


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## Ten (Aug 10, 2004)

BANGKOK's china town, Yaowarat street


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## Sen (Nov 13, 2004)

Huhu said:


> *Hint: The best Chinese and especially Taiwanese food will not be found in Chinatown. This is true for Vancouver but I'm sure it's similar in other cities as well. If you want to know the best food joints, you have to ask a local who knows what he/she's talking about.


Chinese cuisine is one of the most diverse cuisine in the world, but most Chinese restaurants here are Cantonese, some are Szechuan/Shanghainese, Northern cuisine is rare. 
Restaurants cater more to locals and tourists, the restaurants in suburbs cater to chinese customers. The restaurant I often go to in Chinatown is often 50% chinese customers and 50% other ethnicities, the ones I go to in Scarborough or Richmond Hill are always exclusively chinese customers lol.

but as far as Toronto is concerned, the best (Cantonese) Chinese restaurant is Lai Wah Heen in Metropolitian hotel, in downtown.


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## KGB (Sep 12, 2002)

> as far as Toronto is concerned, the best (Cantonese) Chinese restaurant is Lai Wah Heen in Metropolitian hotel, in downtown.



If you believe the hype (and the New York Times), it's the best dim sum on the continent. I don't indulge in high-end chinese food (have you seen the price of the bird's nest soup at Lai Wah Heen...jee-zuz...skip the soup and buy a new computer with the money instead), but I've heard plenty of foodies say that Toronto has the best chinese food this side of Hong Kong. New York foodies have two must-eat-at venues when in town...Lai Wah Heen and Chiado...both have a level of their respective cuisine you cannot get in new York.

Sen...I notice your location is Bay & Dundas...same location of Lai Wah Heen...coincinence?

Technically, this is still Chinatown...in fact, it's where Chinatown started....it just moved west a few blocks when almost all the original buildings were torn down to build City Hall, etc.





KGB


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## Metropolitan (Sep 21, 2004)

Huhu said:


> *Hint: The best Chinese and especially Taiwanese food will not be found in Chinatown. This is true for Vancouver but I'm sure it's similar in other cities as well. If you want to know the best food joints, you have to ask a local who knows what he/she's talking about.


This is also true over here in Paris. Actually, the most genuine Chinese food restaurants are located in the Belleville area, which is still a smaller Chinatown but far to be the best known and the largest one.

Chinese people living in the Belleville area are in general Mandarin speaker, as opposed to Chinese people living in the main Historical Chinatown (the 13th arrondissement) which is made more of minorities and Cantonese speakers(themselves either coming from Southern China or from the South East Asian Chinese diaspora). The food over there is less genuinely "Chinese", not only it's generally mixed with other Asian food, but also it is in general westernized.

There are also Chinese restaurants which are historical institutions in the upper class areas of Western Paris, far from any Chinatowns. Those serve very good food, but tends more towards "nouvelle cuisine". They don't propose genuine Chinese food, they are generally very expensive (especially for Chinese restaurants) and could even have stars in gastronomy restaurants guides. Anyway, we talk here about a totally different category of restaurants.


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## cinosanap (Aug 10, 2004)

The only Chinatown in my town was a council estate known for it's poor residents and anti-social behaviour. It got flattened for a hospital car park. :lol:
I have no idea why it was called Chinatown. :S

We have a few Chinese restaruants and take-aways around but only one has any refrence to China (China Gold) in it's name. Others are called things such as Michael's and Happy Days.

Wierd no?


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## Huhu (Jun 5, 2004)

Sen said:


> Chinese cuisine is one of the most diverse cuisine in the world, but most Chinese restaurants here are Cantonese, some are Szechuan/Shanghainese, Northern cuisine is rare.


In Vancouver there's been a diversification away from Cantonese food in recent years, although it's still dominant. Shanghainese and Taiwanese noodle houses are becoming increasingly popular; Taiwanese restaurants are quite popular with Chinese youths/foreign students. There's also the usual plague of bubble tea joints which sprout up everywhere like weeds. I've even found some restaurants specializing in northern fare opening up. They're surprisingly good! (or maybe I'm just sick of HK/Guangdong style food) kay:


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## Whiteeclipse (Mar 31, 2005)

I hear there is one Chinatown in India, does anyone have pictures?


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## coldstar (Jan 14, 2003)

Whiteeclipse said:


> I hear there is one Chinatown in India, does anyone have pictures?


Kolkata　has a chinatown, it is said to be only one in India, but it's too small.


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## Whiteeclipse (Mar 31, 2005)

coldstar said:


> Kolkata　has a chinatown, it is said to be only one in India, but it's too small.


I heard there were 20,000 Chinese there and now 2,000 but why such a big decline?


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## Whiteeclipse (Mar 31, 2005)

Are there Chinatowns in Bangladesh, Afghanistan or Pakistan?


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## FAAN (Jun 24, 2011)

In my town there is a Chinatown. But in my country cities such as Sao Paulo there is a large oriental population with 800,000 immigrants. The neighborhood is called ''Liberdade "

Some photos:


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## diablo234 (Aug 18, 2008)

Some more photos of Houston's new Chinatown. Like the other suburban orientated Chinatowns (like Richmond in Vancouver or Monterey Park in Los Angeles) this is pretty common of newer ethnic enclaves in the US and Canada as more wealthy immigrants tend to leave the older Chinatowns for the suburbs while the older inner city Chinatowns tend to be either stagnate or even decay as was the case in Houston's older Chinatown located just east of Downtown. Houston's Chinatown also has a huge Vietnamese community as well as you will notice in some of the photos.































































































































Photos from http://quickrpickr.com/ Quickr Pickr


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## diablo234 (Aug 18, 2008)

Another suburban orientated Chinatown in Richardson (just outside of Dallas).


Jeng Chi by ogrethegreat, on Flickr


DSC_0021 by ShinYiu, on Flickr


DSC_0018 by ShinYiu, on Flickr


DSC_0019 by ShinYiu, on Flickr


May's "Ice Cream"? by ogrethegreat, on Flickr


DSC_0015 by ShinYiu, on Flickr


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## Dimethyltryptamine (Aug 22, 2009)

They look very contrived :s I'm glad we have no Chinatown like that here lol


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## diablo234 (Aug 18, 2008)

Dimethyltryptamine said:


> They look very contrived :s I'm glad we have no Chinatown like that here lol


What exactly do you mean by contrived? 

It's not like those places just sprouted up out of nowhere.

Chinese and other asians still go there to shop, go to an authentic restaurant, etc and you can even arguably say they are more "authentic" than say the chinatown in San Francisco, etc because they are less touristy.


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## bayviews (Mar 3, 2006)

Speaking about the San Francisco's Chinatown, its more than just dim sum & chopsticks. Aside from being one of the oldest & largest Chinatowns outside Asia, its unique in that its probably one of the first Chinatown outside Asia that actually runs the whole city. 

Ed Lee, one of several Chinese Americans to run for mayor of San Francisco this past year won. Just across the Bay, Jean Quan is the first Chinese American mayor of Oakland. Albeit she's struggling to retain her position: 

In Mayoral Election, Chinese-Americans' Growing Power Is on Display; [National Desk]
Gerry Shih. New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: Nov 6, 2011. Copyright New York Times Company Nov 6, 2011

Five Chinese-Americans are among the candidates on the mayoral ballot in Tuesday's election. Ed Lee, interim mayor; David Chiu, president of the Board of Supervisors; Phil Ting, San Francisco's assessor-recorder; and Leland Yee, state senator, share their thoughts on the history and progress of the Chinese-American community in San Francisco.

Ed Lee

In January, Ed Lee became an instant icon for San Francisco's Chinese after the Board of Supervisors appointed him, the little-known city administrator, as interim mayor. He is the first Chinese-American to hold the city's highest office.

"I went to over 150 Chinese New Year events," Mr. Lee said, "and people attended in extraordinary numbers. Whether I was appointed or elected, it didn't make a difference."

Mr. Lee, 59, grew up in Seattle, one of six children of a restaurant owner with roots in the Taishan region of China. San Francisco had "laws on the books that prevented Chinese immigrants from voting, from owning property," he said. "There were physical and social restrictions -- and hurt -- placed on *******."

He added that even his mother and father "faced discrimination when we were growing up, getting cursed by his white customers."

Mr. Lee began his career as a tenants' rights lawyer and came to political maturity steeped in the world of Chinatown nonprofits. His opponents now accuse some of those groups of illegally helping his campaign.

"None of the nonprofits should be involved in political dealings," Mr. Lee said. "But if they're drawn into it, it's because of the political knives of candidates who want to make an association look bad."

Leland Yee

Leland Yee has been in the spotlight in the final weeks of the mayoral race for leveling a series of high-profile attacks against Ed Lee and Mr. Lee's supporters. Mr. Yee, a state senator, has also been criticized as running a negative campaign.

Recently, a group of the mayor's prominent supporters held a news conference to chastise Mr. Yee's campaign after he released a 53-page satirical biography of Mr. Lee that included accusations that Mr. Lee's supporters committed voter fraud and laundered money, allegations that Mr. Lee has distanced himself from.

But Mr. Yee, 63, the son of immigrants from the Taishan region who speaks Cantonese and who received his undergraduate degree from San Francisco State University, is unfazed. On the campaign trail he glides through Chinatown, the Richmond and the Excelsior with the familiarity of a veteran legislator who has a 21-year winning streak in local races.

"I've fought all my life to encourage the Chinese to vote," he said. "These issues that I've raised are about the integrity of the Chinese vote."

Mr. Yee said he had attracted criticism because he had not been willing to associate himself with "power brokers."

"You're not in one camp versus another," he said. "The only camp you're in is the people's camp."

David Chiu

David Chiu, president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, sees himself as part of a new wave of Asian-American leaders that includes his fellow candidates Phil Ting and Jeff Adachi. Freed from the language constraints that limited the career choices of their parents, Mr. Chiu and others in his generation took up civil rights work and eventually ended up in San Francisco politics.

The son of a doctor, Mr. Chiu, 42, grew up in Boston and entered Harvard as a pre-med student. He changed his concentration to government in his second year after protesting a hate crime on another Boston campus.

"With a lot of immigration patterns, the first generation goes into occupations and professions that they could easily break into," he said. "The second generation and their children, who are more assimilated, have more opportunities."

Mr. Chiu came to San Francisco in 1996 to work as a staff attorney at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, representing mostly Latino restaurant workers in the Mission.

"I represent a younger generation that grew up in an era when people of different backgrounds are comfortable interacting with each other," Mr. Chiu said. "It's reflective of a post-Obama era, where voters are finally able to look beyond the race of a candidate."

Phil Ting

Phil Ting, 42, the city's assessor-recorder, has brought a technical approach to the mayoral race. A self-described policy wonk with a degree from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, Mr. Ting has built his candidacy around Reset San Francisco, a social media platform for discussing government policy that has some 30,000 users.

"The 300 people who are making policy aren't enough," he said, adding that "we can leverage technology to include more voices without a huge amount of cost."

Mr. Ting, the son of immigrants from Jiangsu Province, in eastern China, grew up in Los Angeles. He experienced a political awakening at Berkeley in the early 1990s, restarting dormant activist groups that had been initiated by Jean Quan, now the mayor of Oakland, and Floyd Huen, her husband.

Mr. Ting worked at the Asian Law Caucus before joining government. While the Asian community's issues are "very much mainstream issues now," he said, a poor population of Asian immigrants forms the city's underbelly.

Those non-English-speaking immigrants "are limited in their opportunities in the United States, tend to be significantly lower income, and often elderly, and need rent control," he said. "They're the ones who need government most."


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## Dimethyltryptamine (Aug 22, 2009)

diablo234 said:


> What exactly do you mean by contrived?
> 
> It's not like those places just sprouted up out of nowhere.
> 
> Chinese and other asians still go there to shop, go to an authentic restaurant, etc and you can even arguably say they are more "authentic" than say the chinatown in San Francisco, etc because they are less touristy.


Contrived, as in, it comes across looking very artificial. It's not a case of being less 'touristy' (which is obviously is), and I don't doubt for a second that Chinese people shop there... it just looks so... suburban. 

Do Houston/Dallas have legit downtown or inner-city Chinatowns?

Anyway they don't have to be full of tourists to be Chinatown, I get that, but in comparison to other cities they just appear to lack the authenticity. 


----------

These aren't all Chinese only. Some area mix of Vietnamese, Chinese, African, Indian, etc.

Chinatown - Melbourne CBD (the typical Chinatown)
Victoria Road - Richmond, Melbourne
Leeds Street - Footscray, Melbourne
Hopkins Street - Footscray, Victoria


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## diablo234 (Aug 18, 2008)

Dimethyltryptamine said:


> Contrived, as in, it comes across looking very artificial. It's not a case of being less 'touristy' (which is obviously is), and I don't doubt for a second that Chinese people shop there... it just looks so... suburban.
> 
> Do Houston/Dallas have legit downtown or inner-city Chinatowns?


Who cares if it's suburban?

Many ethnic enclaves nowadays are located in the suburbs, look at the photos of Richmond, British Columbia or Toronto's many suburban Chinatowns that were posted earlier in this thread for proof, it does not make them any less vibrant or authentic than an inner city Chinatown especially when you cosidering the number of events held there (such as Chinese New Year).

Anyways Houston does or used have a Chinatown near downtown but most Chinese migrated to the "new" Chinatown long ago during the 80's and 90's, so there are few elements left standing today aside from a few leftover restaurants. That neighborhood has been redeveloped and is now occupied by a convention center, a few condominiums, and a new soccer stadium among other things and now goes by the name EaDo (or East Downtown).


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## city_thing (May 25, 2006)

cinosanap said:


> The only Chinatown in my town was a council estate known for it's poor residents and anti-social behaviour. It got flattened for a hospital car park. :lol:
> I have no idea why it was called Chinatown. :S
> 
> We have a few Chinese restaruants and take-aways around but only one has any refrence to China (China Gold) in it's name. Others are called things such as Michael's and Happy Days.
> ...


Britain does Indian food very well. But East Asian food there is absolutely terrible. The UK has basically no idea about it and the Chinatown in London is laughable.

I remember the Chinatown in Newcastle-upon-Tyne had maybe 3 or 4 Chinese restaurants and a token archway, and that to them was _Chinatown_.

Chinese food in the US, Canada and Australia is infinitely better. Australia and Canada seem to the have the 'more authentic suburban Chinatowns' in common. Certainly in Australia huge swathes of suburban areas are noted for substantial Chinese communities and the food there is always better than the dying touristy inner-city Chinatowns. 

Britain does Indian food excellently though.


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## bayviews (Mar 3, 2006)

diablo234 said:


> Who cares if it's suburban? East Downtown).


Even in areas like the NorCal Bay Area that have long-established Chinatowns, a large majority of Chinese within San Francisco have long since spread to other city & suburban neighborhoods. 

The Richmond and North Beach districts have become largely Chinese in recent decades & significant numbers of Chinese are moving to the Sunset, and Southeast parts of the city. The Chinese who stay in Chinatown tend to be recent immigrants, older &/or Cantonese, & lower income. 

And as in Texas, a large majority of Bay Area Chinese live outside the central cities like SF, Oakland & San Jose in mostly recently developed suburbs Bay Area suburbs. For example, Cupertino, a Silicon Valley suburb, is noted for having a large, affluent, largely Taiwanese Chinese population.


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## Dimethyltryptamine (Aug 22, 2009)

edit. nvm.


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## diablo234 (Aug 18, 2008)

Jonesy55 said:


> I guess it depends which ones, they are often a sort of 'business hub' for Chinese people in the wider area I think anyway, even if the numbers actually living in them aren't huge.


In the same way most Chinatowns in the US function as more of a business hub than an actual residential community, with the Chinatowns in New York and San Francisco being the exception.


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

Taller said:


> You would, suburbanist. Over the years it strikes me that you won't rest till every region of every city everywhere is exactly the same as the suburb you live in. Why this is so important to you, I will never have any idea. :dunno:


No, I do not want all places in the city to have the same density and street network I prefer. I have no problems with different areas having different regulations for buildings, height, setbacks and zoned uses.

What I want is to kill "cultural" and - especially and above everything else - "ethnic" major differences between neighborhoods. People can live in high-rises, ranch houses and everything in between, but the demographics should be more or less the same in regard of ethnicity, gender etc. - but not income of course.



SydneyCity said:


> Are the Chinatowns in Europe and the UK fake "touristy" type Chinatowns or do they have large numbers of Chinese residents?


This is a racist proposition. Is the same thing of calling a sushi high-end restaurant "fake" because its chef is not Japanese of from Japanese descent. Or arguing people who don't "look" Finnish should take part in Suomi typical dances.


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

Restless said:


> The ones in Paris have large numbers of residents but also feel dirty and unsafe.


The Chinatown in Milano, around this area 
, is similar: has many Chinese residents but is one of the most dangerous areas of Milano. From time to time a story about Chinese illegal immigrants living by the dozens in filthy basements in disgusting conditions, paying like € 100 for a bunk bed in a claustrophobic room shared with other 30 people, appears on local TV.

Local regulations prevent installation of "typical" Chinatown street furnishing.


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## El_Greco (Apr 1, 2005)

Suburbanist said:


> ..


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## gabrielbabb (Aug 11, 2006)

MEXICO CITY


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## SydneyCity (Nov 14, 2010)

Suburbanist said:


> This is a racist proposition. Is the same thing of calling a sushi high-end restaurant "fake" because its chef is not Japanese of from Japanese descent. Or arguing people who don't "look" Finnish should take part in Suomi typical dances.


Racist? I think you need to learn the meaning of "racist". The definition of a Chinatown, according to Wikipedia, is an ethnic enclave of Chinese people. 

Therefore, a fake Chinatown is a Chinatown that is not an ethnic enclave of Chinese people, merely a tourist district with a few Chinese restaurants.


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## Jonesy55 (Jul 30, 2004)

If they were at one time home to many Chinese residents but then as those residents have moved out they have transformed into more of a district for businesses serving the Chinese community in the wider region then that doesn't seem fake to me, its an organic progression of the area.


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## OtAkAw (Aug 5, 2004)

BringMe said:


> Ew those cables! if they romve them the city looks wonderful :cheers:


The city government simply does not have the budget to put them underground, sadly.


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## Restless (Oct 31, 2009)

Jonesy55 said:


> If they were at one time home to many Chinese residents but then as those residents have moved out they have transformed into more of a district for businesses serving the Chinese community in the wider region then that doesn't seem fake to me, its an organic progression of the area.


Chinese people do still go to the Chinatowns for shopping/eating, but they're definitely outnumbered by tourists and non-Chinese locals.

So you generally get a more vibrant and varied neighbourhood there.


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## Occit (Jul 24, 2005)

In venezuelan cities, you should mix with everybody or die. Here, there are a lot of chinese people, but i guess is the only country were, in the cities, chinese can't create a China Town... fortunately they have could mix among the rest.


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## IrishMan2010 (Aug 16, 2010)

There is no established Chinatown in Dublin, but what we call Chinatown is Parnell Street, East of O'Connell Street, there has been calls to establish the area as 'Chinatown Dublin' and I can see it happening in the next couple of years.


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## otelot (Jun 25, 2009)

Lima has the largest and oldest chinatown in Latin America. It is not only a neighborghood but also core of a chinese-peruvian culinary fusion known as 'chifa'.













































































































































































​


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## SydneyCity (Nov 14, 2010)

Are most of the Chinese in Lima immigrants or descendants (like the Japanese in Brazil)?


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## otelot (Jun 25, 2009)

SydneyCity said:


> Are most of the Chinese in Lima immigrants or descendants (like the Japanese in Brazil)?


They are descendants from *******. But there are inmmigrants too.


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## Taller Better (Aug 27, 2005)

Today had a bike ride through the old Chinatown here in downtown Toronto, and stopped for lunch. 



















Hmmmmm.... what shall I have? 




























or maybe.....










but I had my heart set on the shrimps sautéed in garlic. Should have asked for them 
very spicy, and then they would have been perfect. But, they were delicious:










Was tempted by the advertising, but too early for a beer:



















a bit more China town, and some of the many Vietnamese places there, too:


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## Sarcasticity (May 21, 2005)

I loved Toronto's chinatowen. Way cleaner than here in NYC. 

But generally speaking though, Chinatowns are quite dirty and gritty but definitely an exciting part of a city


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## mw123 (Oct 23, 2009)

Sydney's Chinatown 


IMG_8176 by mornnb, on Flickr


IMG_8138 by mornnb, on Flickr


IMG_8409 by mornnb, on Flickr


IMG_8377 by mornnb, on Flickr


P1240473 by The Food Pornographer, on Flickr


Sydney by Jshirleyquirk, on Flickr


Chinatown Markets by City of Sydney, on Flickr


Sydney Chinatown Markets by Christopher Chan, on Flickr


Paddys Markets Chinatown Sydney by neeravbhatt, on Flickr


Chinatown Markets by City of Sydney, on Flickr


That's Service by alexwain, on Flickr


P1240508 by The Food Pornographer, on Flickr


Little Hay Street by martin hopkins, on Flickr


Sunday Afternoon in Chinatown by burning_man, on Flickr


Sunday Afternoon in Chinatown by burning_man, on Flickr


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