Chinatown

A Chinatown (Chinese: 唐人街/華埠/中國城, Cantonese jyutping: tong⁴yan⁴gaai¹, Yale: tohng yahn gāai, Mandarin Pinyin: Tángrénjiē/Huá Bù/Zhōngguó Chéng ) is historically any ethnic enclave of Chinese or Han people outside China, Taiwan and Singapore. Areas known as "Chinatown" exist throughout the world, including the Americas, Europe, Africa, Australasia and Asia.

Definition

The Oxford Dictionary defines "Chinatown" as "... a district of any non-Chinese town, especially a city or seaport, in which the population is predominantly of Chinese origin". However, according to a television station in Hawaii, that definition is not necessarily true, as they said Chinatowns nowadays have little to do with China. Even further, the line between Little Saigon and Chinatown is blurred as some "Vietnamese" enclaves are in fact some city's "second Chinatown", and some "Chinatowns" are in fact pan-Asian, meaning they could also be counted as Koreatown or Little India.

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 where the intended purpose is to be "... as isolated from the white population as Hispanics". A New York Times article blurs the line further by categorizing very different Chinatowns such as New York's Chinatown, which exists in an urban setting as "traditional", Monterey Park's Chinatown which exists in a "suburban" setting (and labeled as such), and Austin Texas's Chinatown, which is in essence a "Chinese themed mall", known as "fabricated". This contrasts with narrower definitions, where the term only described Chinatown in a city setting.

China

China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a sovereign state in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population of over 1.35 billion. The PRC is a one-party state governed by the Communist Party, with its seat of government in the capital city of Beijing. It exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces; five autonomous regions; four direct-controlled municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Chongqing); two mostly self-governing special administrative regions (Hong Kong and Macau); and claims sovereignty over Taiwan.

Covering approximately 9.6 million square kilometers, China is the world's second-largest country by land area, and either the third or fourth-largest by total area, depending on the method of measurement. China's landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes and the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts in the arid north to subtropical forests in the wetter south. The Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third- and sixth-longest in the world, run from the Tibetan Plateau to the densely populated eastern seaboard. China's coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometres (9,000 mi) long, and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East and South China Seas.

New York City

New York—often called New York City or the City of New York to distinguish it from the State of New York, of which it is a part—is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York metropolitan area, the premier gateway for legal immigration to the United States and one of the most populous urban agglomerations in the world. A global power city, New York exerts a significant impact upon commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and entertainment, its fast pace defining the term New York minute. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has been described as the cultural and financial capital of the world.

Situated on one of the world's largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, each of which is a separate county of New York State. The five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. With a census-estimated 2014 population of 8,491,079 distributed over a land area of just 305 square miles (790 km²), New York is the most densely populated major city in the United States. As many as 800 languages are spoken in New York, making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. By 2014 census estimates, the New York City metropolitan region remains by a significant margin the most populous in the United States, as defined by both the Metropolitan Statistical Area (20.1 million residents) and the Combined Statistical Area (23.6 million residents). In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product (GMP) of nearly US$1.39 trillion, while in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion, both ranking first nationally by a wide margin and behind the GDP of only twelve and eleven countries, respectively.

San Francisco

San Francisco (/sæn frənˈsɪskoʊ/), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Northern California and the only consolidated city-county in California. San Francisco encompasses a land area of about 46.9 square miles (121 km²) on the northern end of the San Francisco Peninsula, which makes it the smallest county in the state. It has a density of about 18,187 people per square mile (7,022 people per km²), making it the most densely settled large city (population greater than 200,000) in the state of California and the second-most densely populated major city in the United States after New York City. San Francisco is the fourth-most populous city in California, after Los Angeles, San Diego and San Jose, and the 13th-most populous city in the United States—with a Census-estimated 2014 population of 852,469. The city and its surrounding areas are known as the San Francisco Bay Area, and are a part of the larger OMB designated San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland combined statistical area, the fifth most populous in the nation with an estimated population of 8.6 million.

Pagoda Street

Pagoda Street (Chinese: 宝塔街) (bao ta jie)is a street located in Chinatown within the Outram Planning Area in Singapore. The road links New Bridge Road and South Bridge Road, but has since been converted to a pedestrian mall to Chinatown MRT Station at its New Bridge Road end.

The Chinatown Heritage Centre, located on Pagoda Street, provides an overview of the life of early Chinese settlers in Chinatown.

Etymology and history

Pagoda Street was named after the pagoda-like gopuram of Sri Mariamman Temple, the largest and oldest Hindu temple in Singapore, located on the South Bridge Road end of the street. This temple was originally built in 1827 of attap and wood. The present structure was erected in 1843 and has been altered and renovated several times since.

In the early days, Pagoda Street was known for its opium smoking dens. This street was probably one of the stations of the coolie trade between the 1850s and the 1880s. One well-known firm for the coolie trade here was Kwong Hup Yuen, previously Kian Seng Heng Bicycle Trader of 37 Pagoda Street but now a clothes shop, hence the Cantonese refer to this street as kwong hup yuan kai. By the turn of the twentieth century, many shophouses along the street became coolie lodging places. In 1901, for example, there were 12 coolie lodging houses located here.