Chinatown, San Francisco

The Chinatown (Chinese: 唐人街; pinyin: tángrénjiē; Jyutping: tong4 jan4 gaai1), centered on Grant Avenue and Stockton Street in San Francisco, California, is the oldest Chinatown in North America and one of the largest Chinese enclaves outside Asia. It is also the oldest and largest of the four notable Chinese enclaves within San Francisco. Since its establishment in the early 1850s, it has been important and influential in the history and culture of ethnic Chinese immigrants in North America. Chinatown is an enclave that has retained its own customs, languages, places of worship, social clubs, and identity.

The Chinatown district is primarily Cantonese and Taishanese-speaking, both dialects originating in southern China. Most Chinatown residents have origins in Guangdong Province and Hong Kong; albeit there are some Mandarin-speaking residents from Taiwan and central and Northern China, but lesser in comparison to Cantonese-speaking people, despite Cantonese being a minority language amongst people in China and ethnically Chinese people in Asia.

There are two hospitals, several parks and squares, numerous churches, a post office, and other infrastructure. Recent immigrants, many of whom are elderly, opt to live in Chinatown because of the availability of affordable housing and their familiarity with the culture. Due to a combination of factors, some more broad-based related to difficult circumstances for San Francisco itself, while other factors are more specific to this neighborhood, San Francisco's Chinatown faces a struggle for survival.