Manhattan's Chinatown, centred on Mott, Canal, and Bayard Streets, has been the city's main Chinese immigrant neighbourhood since the 1870s and remains one of the densest concentrations of Chinese residents outside Asia, even as Flushing in Queens has grown to rival it. Herbal medicine shops, fishmongers laying out the day's catch on the sidewalk, and bakeries selling egg tarts and roast pork buns line the narrow streets.
Canal Street is the neighbourhood's chaotic main commercial strip, lined with souvenir stalls and counterfeit-goods vendors alongside genuine seafood and produce markets. The Museum of Chinese in America, a few blocks north, documents the history of Chinese immigration to the city and country. Chinatown borders Little Italy to the north and the Lower East Side to the east, and the boundaries between all three have blurred considerably as Chinatown has expanded over the past half-century.