Chinatown
Chinatown is a common term used to describe an ethnic enclave of Chinese people located outside of Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, typically situated in an urban area. Chinatowns can be found around the world, including in Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. The history of Chinatowns date back to the Tang dynasty in the 10th century, arising from the nation's important role in global trade.
Binondo in Manila, established in 1594, is recognized as the world's oldest standing Chinatown. Notable early examples outside Asia include San Francisco's Chinatown in the United States and Melbourne's Chinatown in Australia, which were founded in the early 1850s during the California and Victoria gold rushes, respectively. A more modern example, in Montville, Connecticut, was caused by the displacement of Chinese workers in New York's Manhattan Chinatown following the September 11th attacks in 2001.
Definition
defines "Chinatown" as "...a district of any non-Asian town, especially a city or seaport, in which the population is predominantly of Chinese origin". However, some Chinatowns may have little to do with China. Some "Vietnamese" enclaves are in fact a city's "second Chinatown", and some Chinatowns are in fact pan-Asian, meaning they could also be counted as a Koreatown or Little India. One example includes Asiatown in Cleveland, Ohio. It was initially referred to as a Chinatown but was subsequently renamed due to the influx of non-Chinese Asian Americans who opened businesses there. Today the district acts as a unifying factor for the Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Japanese, Filipino, Indian, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian, Nepalese and Thai communities of Cleveland.Further ambiguities with the term can include Chinese ethnoburbs which by definition are "...suburban ethnic clusters of residential areas and business districts in large metropolitan areas An article in The New York Times blurs the line further by categorizing very different Chinatowns such as Chinatown, Manhattan, which exists in an urban setting as "traditional"; Monterey Park's Chinatown, which exists in a "suburban" setting ; and Austin, Texas's Chinatown, which is in essence a "fabricated" Chinese-themed mall. This contrasts with narrower definitions, where the term only described Chinatown in a city setting.
History
populated predominantly by Chinese men and their native spouses have long existed throughout Southeast Asia. Emigration to other parts of the world from China accelerated in the 1860s with the signing of the Treaty of Peking, which opened China's borders to free movement. Early emigrants came primarily from the coastal provinces of Guangdong and Fujian in southeastern China – where the people generally speak Toishanese, Cantonese, Hakka, Teochew, and Hokkien. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, a significant amount of Chinese emigration to North America originated from four counties called Sze Yup, located west of the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong province, making Toishanese a dominant variety of the Chinese language spoken in Chinatowns in Canada and the United States.As conditions in China have improved in recent decades, many Chinatowns have lost their initial mission, which was to provide a transitional place into a new culture. As net migration has slowed in them, the smaller Chinatowns have slowly decayed, often to the point of becoming purely historical and no longer serving as ethnic enclaves.
In Asia
In the Spanish Philippines, where the oldest surviving Chinatowns are located, the district where Chinese migrants were required to live is called a parián, which were originally a marketplace for trade goods. Most of them were established in the late 16th century and became settlements of Chinese migrants due to the early Spanish colonial policy of ethnic segregation. There were numerous pariáns throughout the Philippines in various locations, the names of which still survive into modern district names. This include the Parián de Arroceros of Intramuros, Manila. The term was also carried into Latin America by Filipino migrants. The central market place of Mexico City selling imported goods from the Manila galleons in the 18th and early 19th centuries was called "Parián de Manila".Along the coastal areas of Southeast Asia, several Chinese settlements existed as early as the 16th century according to Zheng He and Tomé Pires' travel accounts. Melaka during the Portuguese colonial period, for instance, had a large Chinese population in Campo China. They settled down at port towns under the authority's approval for trading. After the European colonial powers seized and ruled the port towns in the 16th century, Chinese supported European traders and colonists, and created autonomous settlements.
Several Asian Chinatowns, although not yet called by that name, have a long history. Those in Nagasaki, Kobe, Kuwana, and Yokohama, Japan, Binondo in Manila, Hoi An and Bao Vinh in central Vietnam all existed in 1600. Glodok, the Chinese quarter of Jakarta, Indonesia, dates to 1740.
Chinese presence in India dates back to the 5th century CE, with the first recorded Chinese settler in Calcutta named Young Atchew around 1780. Chinatowns first appeared in the Indian cities of Kolkata, Mumbai, and Chennai.
The Chinatown centered on Yaowarat Road in Bangkok, Thailand, was founded at the same time as the city itself, in 1782.
Outside of Asia
Many Chinese immigrants arrived in Liverpool in the late 1850s in the employ of the Blue Funnel Shipping Line, a cargo transport company established by Alfred Holt. The commercial shipping line created strong trade links between the cities of Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Liverpool, mainly in the importation of silk, cotton, and tea. They settled near the docks in south Liverpool, this area was heavily bombed during World War II, causing the Chinese community moving to the current location Liverpool Chinatown on Nelson Street.The Chinatown in San Francisco is one of the largest in North America and the oldest north of Mexico. It served as a port of entry for early Chinese immigrants from the 1850s to the 1900s. The area was the one geographical region deeded by the city government and private property owners which allowed Chinese persons to inherit and inhabit dwellings within the city. Many Chinese found jobs working for large companies seeking a source of labor, most famously as part of the Central Pacific on the Transcontinental Railroad. Since it started in Omaha, that city had a notable Chinatown for almost a century. Other cities in North America where Chinatowns were founded in the mid-nineteenth century include almost every major settlement along the West Coast from San Diego to Victoria. Other early immigrants worked as mine workers or independent prospectors hoping to strike it rich during the 1849 Gold Rush.
Economic opportunity drove the building of further Chinatowns in the United States. The initial Chinatowns were built in the Western United States in states such as California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, Colorado and Arizona. As the transcontinental railroad was built, more Chinatowns started to appear in railroad towns such as St. Louis, Chicago, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and Butte, Montana. Chinatowns then subsequently emerged in many East Coast cities, including New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Providence and Baltimore. With the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation, many southern states such as Arkansas, Louisiana and Georgia began to hire Chinese for work in place of slave labor.
The history of Chinatowns was not always peaceful, especially when labor disputes arose. Racial tensions flared when lower-paid Chinese workers replaced white miners in many mountain-area Chinatowns, such as in Wyoming with the Rock Springs Massacre. Many of these frontier Chinatowns became extinct as American racism surged and the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed.
In Australia, the Victorian gold rush, which began in 1851, attracted Chinese prospectors from the Guangdong area. A community began to form in the eastern end of Little Bourke Street, Melbourne by the mid-1850s; the area is still the center of the Melbourne Chinatown, making it the oldest continuously occupied Chinatown in a western city. Gradually expanding, it reached a peak in the early 20th century, with Chinese business, mainly furniture workshops, occupying a block wide swath of the city, overlapping into the adjacent 'Little Lon' red light district. With restricted immigration it shrunk again, becoming a strip of Chinese restaurants by the late 1970s, when it was celebrated with decorative arches. However, with a recent huge influx of students from mainland China, it is now the center of a much larger area of noodle shops, travel agents, restaurants, and groceries. The Australian gold rushes also saw the development of a Chinatown in Sydney, at first around The Rocks, near the docks, but it has moved twice, first in the 1890s to the east side of the Haymarket area, near the new markets, then in the 1920s concentrating on the west side. Nowadays, Sydney's Chinatown is centered on Dixon Street.
Other Chinatowns in European capitals, including Paris and London, were established at the turn of the 20th century. The first Chinatown in London was located in the Limehouse area of the East End of London at the start of the 20th century. The Chinese population engaged in business which catered to the Chinese sailors who frequented the Docklands. The area acquired a bad reputation from exaggerated reports of opium dens and slum housing.
France received a large settlement of Chinese immigrant laborers, mostly from the city of Wenzhou in the Zhejiang province of China, as well as an influx of ethnic Chinese refugees from its former Indochina colony after the end of the Vietnam War. Significant Chinatowns sprung up in Belleville and the 13th arrondissement of Paris.