While most are still recovering from the New Year’s Eve celebrations, China is just getting started! With the Chinese New Year (otherwise known as the Spring Festival) just around the corner, here are the world’s best Chinatowns you need to visit!
San Francisco, USA
Welcome to Chinatown. © anieto2k
Spearheaded by the city’s Chinese-American incumbent mayor, Edwin Lee, San Francisco‘s large Chinese community means that the city has not only one, but four enviable Chinatown districts.
You’ll experience the microcosm of transnational life almost immediately when you pass the bilingual street signs at the bottom of Grant Avenue. This historic parade-like street was once infamous for its brothels, opium lounges and illegal activity, but today the historic street has cleaned up its attitude and become one of the most popular parts of town, Chinese or otherwise.
If Buddha key-rings and dragon fridge magnets don’t scratch your Asian itch though, head one block over to Stockton Street. It’s here on this bustling business hub where the real San Franciscans like to wine, dine and wander.
One of the more eccentric cultural offerings of San Francisco’s Chinatown is its new breed of ghost tours, which promise to guide fright-fans through the district’s supernatural side.
Then celebrate the Spring Festival in the city’s luscious Botanical Garden, or enjoying the sounds of the San Francisco Symphony’s Chinese New Year Concert and Imperial Dinner in the Davies Symphony Hall.
Melbourne, Australia
The dragon awakens in Melbourne’s Chinatown. © PreciousBytes
Often considered the longest continuous Chinese settlement in the Western World, Melbourne‘s Chinatown is steeped in a rich and beguiling history. Many travellers from the Quandong (formerly Canton) Province set their sails on the Colony of New South Wales in the mid 1850s, hoping to strike their fortune during the Victorian gold rush. Ever since, the Chinese-Australian community has grown to become one of the city’s most exciting spots, especially during the Spring Festival.
On top of the standardised festivities such as craft fairs, food markets and street-side Chinese Chess tournaments, Melbourne’s Chinatown unleashes the beast that is the Millenium Dai Loong Dragon. Watch this flying wonder come alive at the Dragon Awakening Ceremony on Little Bourke Street, with 200 people carrying the paper creature through the show-stopping parade.
If you need to take a break from all the festivities, visit the Chinese Museum on Cohen Place to learn more about this ever-thriving neighbourhood.
Extra tip: Head to Melbourne at start of February for the Golden Koala Film Festival, an annual celebration of Chinese cinema.
Bangkok, Thailand
Bangkok by night and lantern light. © hjjanisch
If you enter Bangkok‘s Chinatown from the north, you’re instantly struck by the fragrant aromas emanating from the Pak Klong Talad, a wholesale flower market stuffed with freshly picked, exotic Chinese-Thai flora, soundtracked by the chirps of fluttering birds that somewhat incongruously roam through this part of town.
But don’t be fooled by the serenity of this marketplace. Not only is Bangkok’s Chinatown district one of the oldest in the entire capital, it’s also one of its most flamboyant. Once you step through the decadent Chinese Gate on the eastern side of the Yaowarat Road you’re greeted with an almost infinite strip of neon-tinted shop fronts trading in gold, Qing dynasty memorabilia and ancient Chinese herbal remedies.
This main strip is absolutely chock-full of taxis and Tuk-Tuks most of the time, but during the Chinese New Year weekend celebrations the traffic is diverted to make way for the thousands of drummers, lion dancers and dragon parades that turn up to party.
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
A firecrackin’ Chinese New Year! © Christopher A. Dominic
Amsterdam‘s Chinatown has grown out of its original confines at the end of the Red Light District to become a noteworthy and attraction in itself.
Seek tranquility in the He Hua Temple on Zeedijk Street, one of the largest Buddhist religious centres in all of Europe, with brightly coloured walls filled with golden lettering from the Three Baskets scripture. Feeling hungry? Then head to the Toko Dun Yong on the corner of Stormsteeg, with an Asian supermarket on the ground floor, a hidden ramen bar upstairs and the Flavours of the Far East cooking studio where you can learn the tricks of the Chinese cooking trade.
At the neighbourhood’s centre is the Nieuwmarkt Square, where locals and visitors gather for an evening of typical Spring Festival song, dance and dragon celebrations, plus the addition of dazzling firecrackers that fit in with this young, but vibrant Chinatown.
London, UK
Enter the Dragon! © DaveOnFlickr
Don’t be fooled by the small stature of London‘s Chinatown. Sandwiched between the commercial bustle of Leicester Square and the palatial theatres of Shaftesbury Avenue, as you turn the corner into this lively neighbourhood you’ll see a side of the Big Smoke that is unlike anywhere else in the capital, providing a totally different kind of spectacle for all the senses.
Once you’ve peeled yourself away from the crispy roasted duck tempting you from almost every restaurant window (the unambitiously named London Chinatown restaurant being the best of bunch), there are plenty more aromas for your nose to explore, from the great Chinese sweet shops to the perfumed scents of the Jen Café on Newport Place, a Chinese tearoom that will provide a nice bit of calm away from the inevitably huge crowds. It’s also the perfect spot to watch the old sages playing the ancient Chinese board game known as Go from under the Gerrard Street pagoda.
London’s Chinese New Year celebrations are often argued to be the biggest, loudest and proudest outside of Asia, and always prove to be fantastic. Join the hundreds of thousands of people flocking to the streets to carry lanterns, paper dragons or dance until the sun comes up.
Yokohama, Japan
The glow of Yokohama’s Chinatown. © Cherrie 美桜
Tokyo might be the city that has a little bit of everything, but just one hour south of the ultra-modern capital in neighbouring Yokohama is where you’ll find a bit of old-timey Chinese charm.
There are hundreds of shops offering a mixture of Chinese trinkets (some touristy, but most brilliantly authentic), traditional acupressure massage parlours and shaman-like figures offering to read your fortune utilising the Four Pillars of Destiny (an ancient tradition known as ‘Bazi’).
But the real reason to come here is the grub. Well-travelled foodies say that the Yokohama Chinatown has the best food offerings of any Chinatown in the world – with every regional cuisine of the impossibly large country represented in just one mini-metropolis. Taste your way through the celebrations of the Spring Festival Traditional Performance this February in the beautiful Yamashita-cho Park.
Paris, France
The day at the red parade. © Rog01
Paris‘s civilian Chinese population is so vast that the French capital hosts a growing handful of distinct Chinatowns – or Quartier Chinois, as the locals would say.
The largest and most well-trodden is nestled in the 13th arrondissement, a neighbourhood whose oppressive high-rise residential buildings were shunned by native Parisians in the 1970s, and thus made affordable to Chinese and other Asian expatriates fleeing their native continent during the Vietnam War. Since then the motivated community has transformed the drab ghost town into a buzzing hive of activity, featuring world-class dim sum restaurants like the Chine Massena, shop windows stocked with the most delicious Chinese pastries, and a kooky Buddhist temple tucked inside a drab inner city car park.
The best Chinese Quarter in Paris can be found in the 3rd arondissement’s liberal Le Marais District is a great spot to explore. A place where exquisite regal and Gothic architecture is matched with a communal Chinese sensibility, this contrast really comes to life during the New Year celebration, featuring men in red silk uniform (symbolising wealth, joy and good fortune) roving through the pretty Parisian streets flaunting giant paper lanterns, all before competing in martial arts tournaments.
The neighbourhood’s individual Spring Festival parades are held on different days, meaning that you get to experience the big, loud and fire-cracking inauguration of the Year of the Monkey twice!
