A more modern example, in Montville, Connecticut, was caused by the displacement of Chinese workers in New York's Manhattan Chinatown following the September 11th attacks in 2001.

[4][5] Oxford Dictionaries defines "Chinatown" as "... a district of any non-Asian town, especially a city or seaport, in which the population is predominantly of Chinese origin".

Today the district acts as a unifying factor for the Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Japanese, Filipino, Indian, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian, Nepalese and Thai communities of Cleveland.

In the late 19th century and early 20th century, a significant amount of Chinese emigration to North America originated from four counties called Sze Yup, located west of the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong province, making Toishanese a dominant variety of the Chinese language spoken in Chinatowns in Canada and the United States.

As conditions in China have improved in recent decades, many Chinatowns have lost their initial mission, which was to provide a transitional place into a new culture.

As net migration has slowed into them, the smaller Chinatowns have slowly decayed, often to the point of becoming purely historical and no longer serving as ethnic enclaves.

[13] In the Spanish Philippines, where the oldest surviving Chinatowns are located, the district where Chinese migrants (sangleyes) were required to live is called a parián, which were also often a marketplace for trade goods.

Most of them were established in the late 16th century to house Chinese migrants as part of the early Spanish colonial policy of ethnic segregation.

[17] Along the coastal areas of Southeast Asia, several Chinese settlements existed as early as the 16th century according to Zheng He and Tomé Pires' travel accounts.

Those in Nagasaki, Kobe, Kuwana, and Yokohama, Japan,[18] Binondo in Manila, Hoi An and Bao Vinh in central Vietnam[19] all existed in 1600.

[22] Many Chinese immigrants arrived in Liverpool in the late 1850s in the employ of the Blue Funnel Shipping Line, a cargo transport company established by Alfred Holt.

The commercial shipping line created strong trade links between the cities of Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Liverpool, mainly in the importation of silk, cotton, and tea.

Many Chinese found jobs working for large companies seeking a source of labor, most famously as part of the Central Pacific[29] on the Transcontinental Railroad.

[30] Other cities in North America where Chinatowns were founded in the mid-nineteenth century include almost every major settlement along the West Coast from San Diego to Victoria.

With the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation, many southern states such as Arkansas, Louisiana and Georgia began to hire Chinese for work in place of slave labor.

Racial tensions flared when lower-paid Chinese workers replaced white miners in many mountain-area Chinatowns, such as in Wyoming with the Rock Springs Massacre.

Gradually expanding, it reached a peak in the early 20th century, with Chinese business, mainly furniture workshops, occupying a block wide swath of the city, overlapping into the adjacent 'Little Lon' red light district.

However, with a recent huge influx of students from mainland China, it is now the center of a much larger area of noodle shops, travel agents, restaurants, and groceries.

By the late 1970s, refugees and exiles from the Vietnam War played a significant part in the redevelopment of Chinatowns in developed Western countries.

In 2001, the events of September 11 resulted in a mass migration of about 14,000 Chinese workers from Manhattan's Chinatown to Montville, Connecticut, due to the fall of the garment industry.

[3] Steady immigration from mainland China, both legal[41][42] and illegal,[43] has fueled Chinese-American population growth in the New York metropolitan area.

Its earliest appearance seems to have been in connection with the Chinese quarter of Singapore, which by 1844 was already being called "China Town" or "Chinatown" by the British colonial government.

One of the earliest American usages dates to 1855, when San Francisco newspaper The Daily Alta California described a "pitched battle on the streets of [SF's] Chinatown".

[57] Other Alta articles from the late 1850s make it clear that areas called "Chinatown" existed at that time in several other California cities, including Oroville and San Andres.

The Chinatown in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, (where 2 million ethnic Chinese comprise 30% of the population of Greater Kuala Lumpur[64]) while officially known as Petaling Street (Malay: Jalan Petaling), is referred to by Malaysian Chinese by its Cantonese name ci4 cong2 gaai1 (茨廠街, pinyin: Cíchǎng Jiē), literally "tapioca factory street", after a tapioca starch factory that once stood in the area.

Vietnamese language is prevalent in Chinatowns of Paris, Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia, Toronto, and Montreal as ethnic Chinese from Vietnam have set up shop in them.

The New York City metropolitan area is home to the largest ethnically Chinese population outside of Asia, comprising an estimated 893,697 uniracial individuals as of 2017,[66] including at least 12 Chinatowns – six[67] (or nine, including the emerging Chinatowns in Corona and Whitestone, Queens,[68] and East Harlem, Manhattan) in New York City proper, and one each in Nassau County, Long Island; Edison, New Jersey;[68] and Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey, not to mention fledgling ethnic Chinese enclaves emerging throughout the New York City metropolitan area.

[69][70][71] In Canada, The Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area is home to the 2nd largest ethnically Chinese population outside of Asia, comprising 694,970 individuals as of the 2021 Census.

Within the context of the last film "Chinatown" is used primarily as an extended metaphor for any situation in which an outside entity seeks to intervene without having the local knowledge required to understand the consequences of that intervention.

[82] Other notable Chinese Americans such as politician Gary Locke and NBA player Jeremy Lin grew up in suburbs with lesser connections to traditional Chinatowns.