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Chinatown

The third largest Chinatown in the U.S., this Boston neighborhood greets visitors with a traditional paifang gateway. Sip tea or eat noodles at a family restaurant before walking through bamboo gardens and shopping at local importers. Chinese New Year and the August Moon Festival offer colorful annual parades.

History

The neighborhood now known as Chinatown was first reclaimed from the harbor in the 1830s. Early Boston setters filled in South Cove with landfill and debris, extending the city out beyond Beach Street—once a waterfront street. When the railroad and commercial wharves provided merchants with good access to the neighborhood, garment factories and warehouses moved into the district along with their low-paid workforce. From the 1840’s onwards immigrants provided cheap, skilled labor in the factories.

Although located far from the Pacific coast, Boston’s Chinatown is the third largest in the U.S. In the narrow streets like Ping On Alley, the first Chinese immigrants set up tents in the 1870’s and 1880’s. The Chinese established laundries and restaurants along Harrison Avenue. As more members of the Chinese community acquired wealth, some buildings were renovated in a more Asian style that included Chinese motifs.

Chinatown is now one of the city’s most densely populated areas and the neighborhood thrums with the life of Chinese restaurants, markets, and gardens. In more recent years immigrants from other Asian countries, such as Vietnam and Cambodia, have given the neighborhood a wider Pacific influence.

Major Attractions

Visitors will enter Chinatown through the main gateway on Beach Street. The large white and green gate is called a paifang. Built in a traditional style with two stone lions guarding the entrance, the gate is emblazoned with proverbs. The Taiwanese government gifted the archway in 1982. Beach Street also hints at the history of the neighborhood, which sits on the old shoreline (now filled-in) of South Cove.

Visitors can watch men playing chess near the Chinatown gateway before walking through the neighborhood’s narrow streets to find restaurants, teahouses, and shops. While dining on dim sum (usually served until 3pm) is a favorite in Chinatown, visitors can also sip green tea or purchase whole poultry. Vegetable markets attract a busy street crowd while Chinese herbalists shops sell everything from birds’ nests to sea creatures. Craft shops display silks, hats, and other made-in-China goods that have been imported to Boston. The neighborhood’s streets, where newspaper boxes distribute papers printed in Chinese, include Oxford Street and Ping On Alley.

Chinatown Park is the neighborhood’s newest green space and is part of the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway—the former I-93 highway that has been converted into a string of parks since the Big Dig tunneled the roadway under the city. The Chinatown gardens include bamboos, azaleas, willows, large rocks, and running water. Visitors can find the park on the eastern edge of Chinatown at Essex Street and Surface Road, close to the neighboring downtown Financial District. Chinatown also abuts the transit-hub of Downtown Crossing and the Theater District, where visitors can catch live local theater performances and musicals.

Extensive Chinese New Year celebrations bring parades and music to the streets of Chinatown. Celebrated on the first day of the year on the Chinese calendar, the festivities are also known as the Chinese Lunar New Year and usually fall in late January or early February. Another lunar festival celebrated in Chinatown is the August Moon Festival. During the entrancing festival, children parade through Boston streets with lanterns.

Getting There

Close to the Financial District, the Theater District, Boston Common, Downtown Crossing, and the Seaport District, Chinatown offers a convenient and central location. Subway stops near the neighborhood include Chinatown Station on the Orange Line or Boylston Street Station on the Green Line. The surface Silver Line buses also stop in the neighborhood.

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