Chinatown in New York

The biggest Chinatown in the United States

of America

Buildings• The housing stock of Chinatown is still mostly composed of cramped tenement

buildings, some of which are over 100 years old.

• It is still common in such buildings to have bathrooms in the hallways, to be shared among multiple apartments.

• A gigantic federally subsidized housing project, named Confucius Plaza was completed on the corner of Bowery and Division streets in 1967.

• A statue of Lin Zexu, a Fuzhou-based Chinese official who opposed the opium trade, is also located at the square; it faces uptown along East Broadway, now home to the bustling Fuzhou neighborhood and known locally as Fuzhou Street

Location

Here you can see Chinatown

•It borders in the North on the Lower East Side, Little Italy and Soho

•In the West on Tribeca

•In the South on Finalcial District

Economy

• Many of Chinatown work in an underground economy, where wages are below the mandated minimum wage and transactions are done in cash to avoid paying taxes.

• Canal Street, west of Broadway, is filled with Chinese street vendors selling imitation perfumes, watches, and hand-bags.

• Chinese green groceries and fish mongers are clustered around Mulberry Street, Canal Street (by Baxter Street) and all along East Broadway (especially by Catherine Street).

• Besides the more than 200 Chinese restaurants in the area for employment, there are still some factories. The proximity of the fashion industry has kept some garment work in the local area though most of the garment industry has moved to China.

Here you can see a shop with traditional herbal medicines.

History• In the 1970s, Little Italy was absorbed. The only true remaining remnant

of that ethnic enclave is Mulberry Street north of Canal, and the extent of the "neighborhood" is a number of Italian restaurants which cater mostly to tourists.

• In the 1990s, Chinese people began to move into some parts of the western Lower East Side, which 50 years earlier was populated by Eastern European Jews and 20 years earlier was occupied by Hispanics.

• Chinatown was greatly affected by theSemptember 11,2001 attacks. Being so physically close to Ground Zero, tourism and business has been very slow to return to the area.

• New and poorer immigrants cannot afford their rents and a process of relocation to the Queens Chinatown has started, many apartments particularly in the Lower East Side and Little Italy that used to be home for new chinese immigrants are being bought and renovated by Americans and/or wealthy Chinese-Americans.

Pictures

The End

That was a Presentation

of Ann Sophie and Katharina.