Chinatown

Area: Baxter St. east to Park Row and New Bowery; south of Bayard St.

New York's Chinatown is trying to live down a myth; a myth kept alive
by the sight-seeing companies that pile tourists into Chinatown busses,
transport them to prepared points of interest, and frequently prime them
with tales of mystery and crime. The truth is (and the policemen on the
beat will verify it) that no safer district is to be found in New York City.
Yet guides have been known to warn tourists to "hold hands while walking
through the narrow streets."

Tourist trade, which supplies a small part of its income, is but a sec-
ondary concern of the Chinese quarter; for though its population is only
4,000 the district serves as "home town" for the 18,000 Chinese of New
York City and for the 30,000 in the metropolitan area. Laundrymen, res-
taurant workers, servants, shopkeepers, and professionals come here, espe-
cially on Sunday, to meet their friends, do their shopping, see a Chinese
movie, eat a holiday dinner, play fan-tan, or arrange a marriage or burial.

The first Chinese known to have visited New York was Pung-hua
Wing Chong, who arrived in 1807, the year the embargo on foreign trade
was established. Later he became known as John Jacob Astor's mandarin
because Astor got permission from President Jefferson to send out a ship,
despite the embargo, on the pretense of taking "this prominent man-
darin" home.

Historians differ as to the identity of the first Chinese resident of New
York City. Some say it was Quimbo Appo, who came to San Francisco in
1844 and arrived here a few years later; others state it was Ah Ken, a
Cantonese merchant who made his home on Mott Street in 1858. Still
others contend it was Lou Hoy Sing, a sailor who shook off his wanderlust
and settled in New York in 1862. (He married an Irish lass who bore
him two stalwart sons, one of whom became a policeman and the other
a truck driver.) From 1875 until shortly after the Chinese Exclusion Act
of 1882, Chinese migrated in large numbers to the city, displacing well-
to-do families in the neighborhood of Mott and Pell Streets. The colony
soon overflowed into Bayard and Canal Streets, and at its peak numbered
6,000 residents.

For many decades Chinatown kept intact the religious and cultural cus-
toms of old China. The younger generation, however, like that of other
immigrant groups, no longer adheres strictly to the traditional mores;