Chinatown

Like most major U.S. cities, Boston [1] has a bustling Chinatown, where Asian immigrants shop at crowded markets with the pungent smells of strange roots and dried fish, while restaurants with live-seafood tanks draw hungry tourists and residents from other neighborhoods. Also in the mix of a bewildering array of storefronts are shops selling discount cookware and electronic items, shiny red facades of Buddhist temples, and banks and businesses with Cantonese characters over the doorways.

The main drag of Boston’s Chinatown is Beach Street, the site every February of a colorful and loud Chinese New Year parade. At the foot of the street, the Chinatown Gate signals the official entrance to passing motorists. In recent years, Southeast Asian immigrants—particularly those from Vietnam—have outnumbered the ethnic Chinese, so that the corner cafés are more likely to be serving pho than chow mein.

Chinatown is also one of the few in Boston that stays up into the early morning hours. Top-name chefs often meet over sushi or egg rolls at back-alley restaurants long after their own eateries have closed. Restaurants in Chinatown have long had the reputation for being the only place that you can still get served alcohol after 2 a.m., the ridiculously early closing time of most bars in Boston. Night owls in the know ask for “cold tea” to get a discreet mug of beer—though you didn’t hear it from us.

For years, the residents of Chinatown have also had to fight off the bad reputation of an encroaching red-light district once known as the Combat Zone. Nowadays, the “zone” has all but disappeared, with only a pair of strip clubs and a few tired-looking XXX bookstores remaining on Washington Street.