Melbourne, Australia
Melbourne’s Chinatown - stretching between Little Bourke Street to Spring Street—is reportedly the oldest continuous Chinese settlement in the Western world and the oldest Chinatown in the Southern Hemisphere. Chinese immigrants settled here during the Victorian Gold Rush in the 1850s, and every Lunar New Year holds one of the world’s biggest dragon stalks, which requires 200 people to operate it. Don't miss seeing the dragon in the Chinese Museum in Cohen Place if visitors are visiting outside of the New Year’s celebrations. The stretch between Swanston and Springs streets is frantically busy on Sundays when a swathe of restaurants serve yum cha (dim sum). Aside from food, there are also several cool bars in Chinatown that are packed cheek-by-jowl on weekends.
Melbourne owes its deep-rooted Chinatown to the riches of the earth, with the first Chinese immigrants arriving in the fledgling city after gold was discovered in 1850. Consequently, Melbourne’s Chinatown is one of the oldest in the southern hemisphere, and also one of the best Chinatowns in the world. This Chinatown has been enriched by the city's cultural diversity; with Indonesian, Korean, Malaysian, Thai, and other southeast Asian eateries now peppering the district. It’s impossible to walk past the xiao long bao without stopping in for a bite; nibble the top from one of these silken pouches of steamed pork, suck out the juice and imagine yourself in the alleys of Old Shanghai.
