Why You Should Visit Every Chinatown

I love my Chinatown.

I really mean it when I say this. Chinatown is a place that only very lucky cities have. For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, the New York Chinatown is a densely populated neighborhood, filled with a variety of foods stalls, shops, and bubble tea cafes. At first visit, Chinatown might be unsettling to you. The streets are always crowded, the area is very loud and sometimes, it doesn’t smell like a bouquet of roses. But once you look past that, Chinatown is truly an otherworldly place. I seriously don’t feel like I’m in New York anymore when I enter Chinatown. Usually, I go to Chinatown to eat whatever they have to offer. Usually, my family and I go for hotpot, spicy soup or Szechuan cuisine. Either way, we always go home with filled bellies and me fanning my mouth from the spice of some of the certain dishes. To cool down, I usually drink bubble tea too, which is slowly becoming one of my favorite drinks. At first, I thought it was really weird. Why drink and chew something at the same time? But gradually, I learned that bubble tea is an acquired taste for some, and I started to like it more and more.  With our drinks, we will often walk around, either around the street, observing the foods being sold and the things up for sale, or we’ll go to a mall and window shop. Often though, we pick up fruits from Chinese groceries, as their fruits are really cheap and of good quality. After the day is done, we end up home, usually skipping dinner because Chinese food is that filling.

Every Chinatown holds a cultural value that a single restaurant or shop can’t capture alone.