Neighborhoods

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Chinatown

Chinatown is Manhattan's largest ethnic neighborhood, housing half of the city's 300,000 Chinese residents. Chinatown has pushed its boundaries over the years into Little Italy and is now moving into the fringes of the Lower East Side. Mott Street and Canal is the area's center, and along surrounding streets such as Pell, Bayard, and Bowery.

New Yorkers find an abundant choice of restaurants, groceries, fresh fish markets, and tea and rice shops. Chinatown is a popular tourist attraction, and its main businesses are restaurants and garment factories.

Confucius Plaza at Bowery and Division Streets is an apartment complex built in the 1970s that is still considered the choicest housing in Chinatown. The housing projects that run along the East River are inhabited today mostly by Fujianese Chinese.

A steady stream of immigrants has brought new prosperity and some new construction to the area. Today, Chinatown is a thriving marketplace with souvenir shops and restaurants that draw pedestrians and tourists day and night.