New York City has at least nine Chinatowns and Metropolitan New York has at least twelve. The big three are Manhattan, Flushing and Sunset Park. Flushing Chinatown is now New York City’s biggest.
Chinese from the Caribbean are Latin in Cuba, Puerto Rico. Spanish Chinese restaurants and bodegas are a legacy of this.
Even the Jíbaro, the iconic Puerto Rican peasant farmer, has Chinese mixed in. After building the Transcontinental Railroad through the California mountains, Chinese immigrants moved to Manhattan, or to the Caribbean where they built the railroads there.
Manhattan Chinatown Features
New York International Children’s Film Festival (NYICFF) 2024
MANHATTAN, BROOKLYN, STATEN ISLAND, and WESTCHESTER
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Lunar New Year NYC 2024 Celebrate the Year of the Dragon
East Asian Diaspora Communities 🇨🇳🇰🇭🇰🇷🇰🇵🇯🇵🇲🇳🇵🇭🇸🇬🇹🇼🇹🇭🇺🇸
Continue Reading Lunar New Year NYC 2024 Celebrate the Year of the Dragon
Manhattan Chinatown News
January 2023
The Lunar New Year Firecracker Ceremony and Cultural Festival 2023 is a firecracker lighting ceremony with Chinese dance, culture, and food; at Sara D. Roosevelt Park at Grand in the Lower East Side / Manhattan Chinatown; on Sunday, January 22, 2023 from 11am – 3:30pm. FREE! 🇨🇳🇰🇭🇰🇷🇰🇵🇯🇵🇲🇳🇵🇭🇸🇬🇹🇼🇹🇭🇺🇸
February 2023
The 25th Lunar New Year Parade NYC 2023 has dragons dancing through Manhattan Chinatown to the Lower East Side on Sunday, February 12, 2023 at 1pm. FREE! 🇨🇳🇰🇭🇰🇷🇰🇵🇯🇵🇲🇳🇵🇭🇸🇬🇹🇼🇹🇭🇺🇸
About Manhattan Chinatown
Manhattan Chinatown around Mott St and Canal St was founded by Cantonese-speaking families from around Guanzhou (Hong Kong). These Chinese American families are mostly descended from the people who built the Transcontinental Railroad (1863-1869).
In the 1980s and 90s Manhattan Chinatown expanded east of the Bowery with Fuzhounese-speaking immigrants. That section is now called Little Fuzhou.Fuzhou is a coast city farther north opposite Taiwan.
Pregones are street vendor selling songs. You hear them all across the Latin world. In Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, one man has wandered the streets selling lilies for years singing “Azucena, Azucena” (Lilies, Lilies).
What is now an English children’s song “Hot Cross Buns, Hot Cross Buns, One a Penny, Two a Penny, Hot Cross Buns,” is an example of pregones in the Anglo world. People everywhere do the same things.
In New York City the push cart vendors used to sing pregones as they made their rounds. But the only place we know of where you can still hear a pregones on the street is at the vegetable markets on Mott St below Hester St in Manhattan Chinatown.
Good fresh fish and vegetables are expensive in New York City. Chinatown has the freshest fish we know of in Manhattan and it’s not expensive.
Visit Manhattan Chinatown
Subways
- Canal St (N)(Q)(R)(W) at Broadway
- Canal St (4)(5)(6) at Lafayette
- Canal St (J)(Z) at Centre
- East Broadway (F) at Essex/Rutgers St
