CHINATOWN NEW YORK CITY

Description

Essentials about Chinatown New York City in brief

A visit to Chinatown is like a trip to China. Anyone visiting the area between the Lower East Side and Tribeca neighborhoods will have the feeling that they have arrived not in Manhattan but in the Middle Kingdom. Chinatown is even more garish, colorful and noisy than the rest of Manhattan. There are Chinese characters everywhere, grocery stores full of Chinese goods, market stalls with medicinal plants and other exotic products, countless Chinese restaurants, large dragons, colorful fans and glittering lanterns – and even the telephone booths have the appearance of pagodas.

Characteristics of Chinatown New York City

With about 100,000 residents, Chinatown in Manhattan represents not only the largest, but also the culturally and politically most important Chinese community in the USA. Historically, the emergence of Chinatown can be traced back primarily to the Chinese migrant workers who were employed primarily in railroad construction and in the mines in the western United States. Many of them subsequently settled in New York City. Since the Chinese workers were not allowed to take their wives with them, Chinatown was for a long time a district dominated by bachelors and isolated from the rest of city life. Even today, a good half of Chinatown’s residents do not speak English.

Eating and drinking in Chinatown New York City

For New Yorkers and many tourists, Chinatown is a popular place to go for cheap Chinese food. The restaurants in Chinatown are among the most popular Asian cuisines in the city. Nowhere does the food taste as authentic or eat as cheaply as in Chinatown. In addition, the Chinese quarter is a popular shopping destination. Here you can actually find everything you could buy in an Asian supermarket. Especially food and souvenirs are bought with pleasure in Chinatown.

The sights of Chinatown New York City

China’s cultural-spiritual heritage is also still upheld in Chinatown. There are more than ten Buddhist temples in the small neighborhood. The Eastern States Buddhist Temple of America is the oldest Chinese temple on the East Coast of the USA.

If you want to experience the life of the locals of Chinatown live, you should go to Columbus Park. Here the inhabitants of Chinatown meet in the morning for Tai Chi and in the afternoon to play cards.

And if you want to learn in detail about the history of the Chinese in the USA, you should visit the Museum of Chinese in America. A very informative exhibition uses pictures, photos and videos to tell the story of American-Chinese history and the contact between the two cultures from 1850 to the present day.