a visit to Vancouver's Chinatown
 

i am planning a visit to vancouver's chinatown. any suggestion for when would be the best time to go? what major events are held in may? any festivals, best chinese resturants to eat at, etc.

Take a look at www.vancouverchinatown.ca/index.html

Hi Vancouvers china town is focused around 5 - 7 blocks. To note there is a fairly run down area around Hasting street. I wouldn't walk in this area alone at night and I'd stay out of the alleys. Many homeless and drug addicts have been displaced to here. This being said I love Chinatown. The grocery and produce stores are a real experience. The restaurants are great. Some are more upscale than others but the food is good through out.

wow! the american perception is that canada is much cleaner and safer than the united states is, but it sounds like vancouver has a lot of the same issues that many urban american cities observe.

In general Vancouver is very safe. This is probably the worst area. Unfortunately I think everywhere has pockets that are less safe than others. The realities of drug and alcohol addictions are world wide.

I believe the Chinatown Night Market starts mid-May. Basically a couple streets are shutdown and stalls are set up and various wares are sold (ranging from delicious foods to clothing to dvds). If you want some hearty Chinese wonton noodles, go to Hon's Wun-tun House. Quite cheap and quite filling. You can get yummy chicken meat steamed buns at New Town Bakery. Some of the restaurants there may not be on par with Western levels of cleanliness. If that is a concern, there is Floata, which does both dimsum and multi-course dinners. In terms if shops and places to visit, I'd recommend Dr. Sun Yat Sen's Garden - very pretty and tranquil. There are tons of kitchy trading shops where you can get cheap knockoffs of traditional Chinese dress like cheongsams, Chinese-printed purses, and I even recall one shop that sold tons of Mao paraphernalia like bags or clocks with his image on them.

Weasel
Please tell me the Holiday Inn on W.Broadway (Heather) is an ok neighborhood and not close to Hasting. I got it on Priceline so I have to take it. Thank you.

CD

The Holiday Inn at Heather is in a perfectly safe area. It is very close to Vancouver General Hospital. No problems there. The City hall is just a few blocks away. You aren't right downtown but there are buses right outside your door. Relax - it is a safe area.

Thank you Traveller, I feel better. :-)

On our first visit to Vancouver my wife and I decided to walk from Gastown over to Chinatown, as it appeared to be just a few blocks away on the map. Wow, talk about a jolt of big city reality. Homeless folks, drug addicts, drunks and a very seedy area. I told my wife keep your gaze forward and walk fast. Chinatown itself was fine, but it was a bit disconcerting to see this neighboring area on the edge of Chinatown, just across the street.

Curiosgeo, we have a similar experience wwhen we walked in the middle of the day from Chinatown to Gastown. When we arrived in gastown, I could not believe than 100 meters far from there is a so different world!

I may need the help of someone with specific knowledge of the history of Vancouver with this, but I speculate that the less desirable area adjacent to Chinatown was always there, and that Chinatown was a revitalization project within recent years to boost tourism. does this explain chinatown's close proximity to the delapitated area closeby?

Quite the opposite mireaux7. In fact, Chinatown in Vancouver is one of the oldest neighbourhoods in the city. It is not a flashy, shopping district but an architecturally and culturally rich neighbourhood - a relatively small area - home to Vancouver's pioneer community of the late 1800's. That is to say, it represents the first immigrants to Vancouver back over a 100 years ago, but is not reflective of all of Vancouver's Chinese community/culture - most of which exists outside of Chinatown.

This website explains it better:

http://www.vancouverchinatown.ca/heritage.html

I could write an entire book on this, and just searching in Google for "drug addicts" and "Vancouver" and "Downtown Eastside" will give you decades worth of studies, but here's a quick and dirty on the Downtown Eastside:

The Downtown Eastside, the area north of Chinatown and east of Gastown, is also a very old part of downtown Vancouver. However, Vancouver has only existed as a city since 1886 - it's 120 years old; relatively new. This was the area where the railroad terminated and many shops/warehouses opened up.

However, Vancouver's downtown shifted further west over the decades towards Granville Street/Burrard Street, leaving the Downtown Eastside behind vacant buildings, cheap hotels, seedy pubs, and the Port of Vancouver.

Being a port city, drugs are always coming into the city. In addition, Vancouver is one of the few cities where if you're Canadian and you're homeless, you're not going to freeze to death in the winter, so you get a lot of people migrating here for that reason alone.

The Downtown Eastside, with its cheap hotels, pawn shops, abandoned buildings and whatnot, made it the default place where drug addicts, prostitutes, and the homeless congregate. YET (and I emphasize this), while it is a sad sight, depressing and sketchy - this isn't a violent neighbourhood. Most Americans associate drug addicts and homeless with violent crime, but in Vancouver, this isn't the case. Property crime, yes, but violent crime (ie: shootings, muggings, etc) - no. While the downtown eastside can be sketchy and seedy, I would not fear it.

Finally, just my own take on things, Chinatown has certainly seen better days, and with exception to the night market that occurs in the summer months, it shuts down and becomes a ghost town in the evening. It's not particularly known for a great abundance of Chinese restaurants... but moreso for its colourful produce stands, seafood shops, butchers, dried good shops and its handful of trinket shops.

Ironically, it's been argued that the best Chinese restaurants aren't even in Vancouver, but are in the neighbouring city of Richmond, where over 50% of its population (we're talking hundreds of thousands of people) are of Chinese/Hong Kong descent.


All in all, if you do decide to go to Chinatown, keep in mind that you're visiting a neighbourhood that was founded by Vancouver's Chinese pioneers. As long as you recognize this, you'll probably appreciate a visit to Chinatown even more.

mireaux,

you seem slightly misled about the safety of Canada.

I myself wouldn't hesitate to walk alone right down Hastings and across Main with $100 bills hanging out of all 4 pockets at 3:00am... even though this is said to be "the poorest postal code in Canada" and "one of the worst neighborhoods in Canada".

I wouldn't be caught dead in many U.S. cities (let alone particular neighborhoods) doing the same thing.

(and it isn't because of the exchange rate either)

Canada simply IS "much cleaner and safer than the U.S. is".

Nowthen, about chinatown... I've always had the best times there on any sunny Saturday afternoon. Crowds of people just doing their thing and not harming a soul. The people-watching is unique.

northwest male..i totally agree with you on that. im willing to bet that the worst canadian city is better than the safest american city. all i was saying is that i had a perception that canada was safer than what i am being informed of, thats all.

"Canadians: UNARMED (north)americans WITH health care..." says it all.

"I myself wouldn't hesitate to walk alone right down Hastings and across Main with $100 bills hanging out of all 4 pockets at 3:00am..."

That *is* exaggerating, I imagine. Otherwise, at 3am, that's asking for trouble. Not violent trouble, but unpredictable crystal meth addict trouble.

In January this year the five of us (2 adults,3 teenagers) walked the short distance from Gastown to Chinatowm looking for Yum Cha. Half way we say two policemen patting down another gentleman and remove a plastic bag from his pocket. The officer not patting down, nodded and said hello as we passed and even the guy getting patted down smiled at me ! I love Canada!