Chinatown, New York City

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Canal Street is the main place giving the name to ChinaTown. I don't know whether all people there are Chinese or from other Asian countries, however they only sell fake itemes and imitations.
If you want the cheapest loosy T-Shirt with I Love NY, that's the place. If you want any imitation of famous brand, that's the place. Don't forget that they might arrest you if you come back to Europe with fake brands.
Everybody is selling the same fake items, there is no typical shop, better or worse.

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Chinatown, with its roughly 100,000 Chinese-Americans, is the largest concentration of Chinese in the entire Western Hemisphere! This area, founded in the late 1870s, is a great place to try Asian restaurants, pick up some fruit or fish at the Chinese markets, or find some unique gifts. The main shopping areas are along Canal Street, while the side streets certainly offer some interesting spots to eat, shop, and sightsee, including the area's numerous Buddhist temples.

Also close by is the Little Italy neighborhood which is centered on Mulberry Street.

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Walk down Broadway from Soho...shop for jeans or shoes along the way...there are good deals to be had. Suddenly, there you are! Canal Street. Chinatown. Don't worry, you'll know when you get there, suddenly everything changes. It is another world, one filled with hundreds of tiny shops and street hawkers. There are fresh vegetable shops and meat shops, fish stores, strange herbs from the orient. There are purses, jewelry, scarves, belts. Feel free to bargain. Every few steps you will be accosted by someone offering to sell you name brand purses and perfumes at discount prices. I think thy want you to follow them somewhere private to show you their wares. I did not do this but I still got some killer Christmas gifts at unbelievable prices.

I am glad I went here, so i could say i had been and experienced this. It was fascinated to see a ring-fenced chinese community like this. There are similar, albeit smaller, korean and japenese communities nearby.

If you arent in chinese food, there is not much to do apart from admire this cultural curiosity.

A word of warning - whilst most of the inhabitants get on with their lives, me and my friend were accosted by a group of chinese fellows asking for our opinions on the Iraq situation and got very threatening - this was in the afternoon. if this happens, just ignore and keep walking, they turned their attention elsewhere

There are actually 3 Chinatowns in NYC! One in lower Manhattan, another in Queens and another in Brooklyn.

The Brooklyn Chinatown is pretty much residential and not of much interest. (I haven't visited but that is what I heard)

The Manhattan one - the other posters have described it - its interesting, it's historic, it's dirty (but has cleaned up a lot in recent years), it's touristy with touristy traps (ugh), it's generally inexpensive and while the restaurant tastes tend toward Cantonese style and "chinese cooking according to American taste", there are many authentic restaurants from Huan, Vietnamese, etc. But you have to dig for them. I doubt if you see the authentic ones if you're on a tour bus - I see where they stop [heh].

The Queens Chinatown (last stop of # 7 train in Queens and by many buses) is expanding rapidly, horizontally and well as vertically. Restaurants and stores abound. Since the stores don't cater much to tourists, you can find a lot more Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Malaysian, Vietnamese, etc restaurants with authentic food that is not "watered down"/"MSGed"/otherwise rendered for supposed tastes. You easily find stores selling imported furniture, books, DVDS, CDS, art, jewelry, and doodads well beyond what you would find in Manhattan's Chinatown, since most of the customers are from the native lands. Well, you might have problems finding those silly non-authentic souvenirs - you know the junk only the tourists buy - and fake name brand is not as prevalent as in Manhattan. If you're tired of this type of cooking, go a bit North and you're in little India. A little further there is a nice Botanic Garden.

So if you consider "Chow Mein" the perfect Chinese food and like to play with paper umbrellas, "Chinese finger trap" toys, don't mind the stereotypes and like fake Guccis, the Manhattan Chinatown is more than enough for you. If you want authentic tastes and doodads, do visit Flushing (or take the time to explore the Manhattan one in depth).

This little museum is a partly restored tenement building. A lot of work still needs to be done, but it is amazing!

No fancy reconstruction, displays or anything of the kind. The building is still rather run down, but this just reinforces the feeling of what life must have been like in 1863. It is focused on researching and retelling the stories of the original occupants of the building: a wife whose husband disapears and must make ends meet by sewing, an Irish immigrant family of 6 that live in just two rooms (a parlour/kitchen and a bedroom, with only one window), a Lithuanian family and so on.

It is dark, crowded and hot - just imagine how it must have been with children running around, a central bathroom, smoke and soot - and over 7000 people lived in this building over its 70 years of existance! At the same time, it was an improvement for many families: some children were able to go to school for the first time.

The visit is a guided tour, with very small groups (10 people at the most, Spanish guides available), with a very knowledgeable guide. If you can't visit it, drop by their wonderful site: www.tenement.org, where all the stories are told, lots of great pictures and research material.

Chinatown, known to the Chinese as Zhongguocheng or Tangrenjie, is one of the most interesting districts of New York City. New York's Chinatown, as with other American Chinatowns, was created with the arrival of Chinese immigrants, who gathered together and tried to retain their culture. New York's Chinatown is one of the largest in the United States; however, San Francisco's is larger and better, and Vancouver's might be (I've never been to Vancouver). Chinatown used to be the place where you could buy Chinese goods, watch elderly men play Chinese Chess or Go, eat egg custard, or get your fortune told; today, many Chinese supermarkets are springing up around the East Coast, causing many of Chinatown's shops to run out of business. More and more, Chinatown's shops are selling goods aimed at tourists- fake handbags, watches, and clothes. Chinatown should be visited before it looses any more of its charm.

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I love Chinatown. It so festive, but very crowded. People dont care if they bump into you, and the smell of fish is terrible, so learn to breath out of your mouth! Shopping here is so much fun. There are a few pastry shops here, that sell amazing almond cookies, baked fresh every day. As well as fortune cookies, and other tasty delights. Walk around and have fun taking pictures, maybe buy your self a samari sword!