Frédéric Lagrange A festive fire escape in New York's Chinatown.
Whenever she travels, Bonnie Tsui seeks out the one neighborhood where she feels most at home. PLUS an address book for Chinatowns around the globe.
Some people unpack when they first arrive in a city. Me, I look for Chinatown. It started, I suppose, with my grandparents. Traveling halfway around the world from Hong Kong, they settled in New York's Chinatown in 1960. Even after moving to another Chinese enclave in Flushing, Queens, they kept going back, like clockwork, to their old neighborhood. Every morning they would take the Q26 bus and the No. 7 subway train to the 6 train to Canal Street, where my grandfather worked in a fortune cookie factory and my grandmother was a seamstress. Every night they'd bring home fresh vegetables bought from street vendors they'd come to know. I picture a set of footprints marking a path from Queens down to Lower Manhattan, traceable on a map of the New York City transit system. The shuffle of morning commuters, the push of crowds at the Canal Street station, and the sound of Chinese being spoken everywhere are virtually the same today.
When we were in elementary school, my brother, Andy, and I began to join these pilgrimages to Chinatown. Together with our two cousins, we went on produce-focused missions—following our mothers and grandparents past fragrant piles of almost-ripe persimmons, Asian pears, and giant oranges stacked on outdoor stalls next to neat green bunches of Chinese broccoli, bok choy, and long, willowy scallions. Other times, we ended up at a local restaurant taken over entirely by our family for a wedding banquet or a christening. My memories of Chinatown are steeped in pungent tastes and smells: the jasmine tea served at every meal; the salty flavors of the shark's fin soup that was ladled out at eight-course dinners attended by people we didn't know. We banged on water glasses with our chopsticks so the newlyweds would kiss, and clamored for our mothers to break the bird's nest, a fried-noodle basket filled with scallops, squid, and delicate straw mushrooms. Great-aunts would suddenly appear in clouds of flowery perfume—"You remember me, don't you?You've gotten so big now!"—brandishing long, red-painted fingernails that reached out eagerly to seize our cheeks.
Out on the streets, we stuck together, sidestepping dark, smelly puddles and eyeing strangers warily, but eagerly poking fingers at tanks of lobsters or plastic kiddie pools of tiny turtles imported from Hong Kong. The Chinatown of my childhood wasn't exactly the stuff of a Polanski film noir; any mystery it held for us had nothing to do with some inexplicable "Forget it, Jake...it's Chinatown" idea lurking beneath the surface. Rather, it had to do with the attraction of the great unknown of the World Out There, the unlimited possibilities of which are felt by children everywhere.
It took 15 years for me to discover other Chinatowns in that world outside. In college, I lived in Sydney, where neighborhoods often melt into one another without warning, and I discovered its Chinatown by accident. In that cosmopolitan, outdoorsy city on the other side of the globe, where every day back home was night and the seasons were flipped around, I ached for something recognizable. And it came on a hot February day as I straggled home from my job at the Sydney Morning Herald and ducked into a dimly lit corner grocery for a breath of cool air.
Fans whirred, kicking up a jumbled aroma of dried salted plums and orange peels, candied ginger and dehydrated shiitake mushrooms. I ran my hand along plump displays of rounded grapefruits, nubby lychees, and ripe, squishy mangoes. The checkout girl clipped her fingernails—a steady click, click, click—and the stock boys sat in the back of the store, their voices rising and falling in Cantonese lament: "It's really hot outside." "Too hot." "Ahh...drink some water and stop your big complaining." Up at the counter, my eyes finally adjusted enough to reveal that, contrary to what my other senses were telling me, I was not, in fact, at home, in New York City.
There in Sydney, the Central Business District had given way to narrow, crowded alleys lined with bakeries alongside butcher shops with big glass windows that showcased swinging slabs of roast pork. It was almost, but not quite, the neighborhood I knew, a bit like a small-scale stage set for a film about my Chinatown. There were differences—shiny "New Asia" shopping malls straight from Hong Kong and Singapore, for example, and flyers advertising the popular sport of dragon-boat racing—but the essence of place was the same. Somewhere between New York and Sydney, Chinatown had ceased to belong to the foreign category of the World Out There. It had joined the long list of life's known quantities, like a book I'd read over and over again, or a brand of shampoo I always took along on my travels. Being there offered comfort, a familiar ground on which to get oriented.
I continued to travel and find enclaves of Chinese culture. In Buenos Aires, I made my way to the four-block stretch that is the Chinese neighborhood and stumbled into a charming little shop that displayed neat shelves lined with food products labeled in Spanish, English, and Chinese. In that beautifully crumbling Latin American city where I was an alien, the Chinese proprietor and I nodded to each other in acknowledgment. During a summer spent in Greece, after weeks of spanakopita and feta-topped salads in Athens, a Greek friend took me to a local Chinese restaurant. The kitchen workers watched curiously as I shoveled down bowl after bowl of luxuriously plain white rice (my mother's longtime nickname for me: fan tung, or "rice bucket"). And on a rain-sodden day in Vancouver, British Columbia, Chinatown was where I sought shelter, in a quiet tea bar and bookshop with a pot of jasmine tea.
These days, I find myself exploring another Chinatown, in San Francisco. I've passed through the city's historic Chinatown Gateway, climbed up the steep hills to Stockton Street, looked in the souvenir-shop windows, contemplated where to get a perfect steamed lotus-seed bun. In the city's Sunset neighborhood, a new wave of Asian immigrants has settled, a mix of Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese. A lively, functional community resides along Irving Street, a mile-long stretch of monolithic Chinese supermarkets, 99-cent clearance centers, bubble-tea shops, and low-key but surprisingly wonderful places to eat.
Across San Francisco Bay, in Oakland, Chinatown blends right into the city's downtown, stretching across several blocks to touch the Old Oakland Farmers' Market, where Asian herbs and squash are sold alongside freshly baked bread and cut flowers. Despite the fusion, and perhaps even because of it, the neighborhood retains its distinct flavor as a working quarter, a place where people share the comings and goings of daily life. In a pastry shop on Franklin Street, a woman behind the counter hands over a roast-pork bun, along with a comment on how big a customer's six-year-old daughter has gotten. The little girl freezes, then retreats hurriedly behind her father's leg.
I could say that my nostalgia for the past is what spurs me to seek out Chinatown wherever I go, but I think that's only part of it. I don't go there for the same reasons my grandparents did; I grew up around the fringes of the neighborhood, and the insularity and security of their community never existed for me. They sought out Chinatown for the comfort of a place where people still spoke the same language they did, where they could simply feel at ease. In a still-strange country, it was a sort of homecoming. Hong Kong and China were places I would travel to, not from.
Though it's nice every once in a while to hear Cantonese and eat food that I know well—rice porridge and egg custard when I want to be reminded of my mom, soy sauce chicken when I think of my grandfather—my fascination with Chinatowns around the globe has more to do with being able to see how other Chinese communities integrate. In the thriving Chinatowns of Boston, San Francisco, and Vancouver, I find unlikely intersections of the new and the familiar. Recently, I heard about the emergence of a modern breed of Chinatown in Las Vegas's exurban sprawl—the master-planned "Chinatown Plaza" shopping mall as destination. A 21st-century enterprise that seems far from its roots, it apparently manages to maintain some of the intimate qualities of the traditional immigrant neighborhood. Chinese residents drive in from miles around to buy fresh produce at an oversize Asian supermarket, gossip at the hair salon, and browse in the only Chinese bookstore in Nevada.
I've never been to Vegas, but when I do go, you'll find me at the mall.
BONNIE TSUI is a former editor at Travel + Leisure. She is writing a book about Chinatowns around the world.
NEW YORK CITY
Perfectly roasted Peking duck—the finest on the block—is the eponymous specialty of Peking Duck House (28 Mott St.; 212/227-1810; dinner for two $65), a neighborhood standout. At the other end of the spectrum, affordable lunch deals and speedy service at the original Sweet 'n' Tart Café (76 Mott St.; 212/334-8088; lunch for two $16), a tiny subterranean dive, keep customers coming in droves for wonton soup and egg noodles. At Chinatown Ice Cream Factory (65 Bayard St.; 212/608-4170), you'll find exotic flavors like ginger, red bean, lychee, mango, and green tea. A dollar goes a long way at Fay Da Bakery (83 Mott St.; 212/791-3884), one of the city's best spots for hot barbecued-pork buns, fluffy coconut-cream pastries, and strawberry-mousse confections.
BOSTON
A small neighborhood restaurant with a loyal following, Peach Farm (4 Tyler St.; 617/482-3332; dinner for two $30) serves excellent seafood—try the clams in black bean sauce or steamed New England blackfish with ginger and scallions. East Ocean City (27 Beach St.; 617/542-2504; dinner for two $30) has a lively late-night scene and dishes such as whole steamed chicken.
OAKLAND
For a midday snack, join the locals at Ruby King Bakery (718 Franklin St.; 510/835-2366), where sesame buns and sponge cakes are a steal at 60 cents apiece. Some of the freshest Asian produce can be found at the Old Oakland Farmers' Market, open every Friday from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., at Ninth Street.
SAN FRANCISCO
Open until 1 a.m., Go Go Café & Restaurant (1830 Irving St.; 415/661-4289; dinner for two $20) comforts hungry night owls with hot rice porridge and fried bread. The Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Co. (56 Ross Alley; 415/781-3956), open since 1962, turns out 10,000 cookies a day—they're still made with traditional machines and folded by hand.
SYDNEY
The meditative Chinese Garden of Friendship (Darling Harbour; 61-2/9281-6863; www.chinesegarden.com.au; admission $4.50), designed by Sydney's sister city, Guangzhou, is one of the few traditional public gardens outside of China, complete with waterfalls, bridges, and pavilions (be sure to stop at the tea-house). Fiery food abounds at Red Chilli Sichuan Restaurant (3/51 Dixon St., entrance on Little Hay St.; 61-2/9211-8122; dinner for two $50); the chef's specialties are stir-fried fresh lobster and crab.
VICTORIA, B.C.
A tranquil shop with an in-house spa located in Canada's oldest Chinatown, Silk Road Aromatherapy & Tea Co. (1624 Government St.; 250/704-2688; www.silkroadtea.com) offers tea tastings and workshops in tea-blending techniques. A big neon lantern signals the entrance to Don Mee Seafood Restaurant (538 Fisgard St.; 250/383-1032; dim sum for two $24), a Victoria institution since 1923 and the best place to enjoy an extensive dim sum lunch.
