This is the oldest Chinatown in North America and the densest neighbourhood west of Manhattan, and the walk through it is about leaving the obvious street for the working one. Start at the Dragon Gate at Grant and Bush, the green-tiled arch given to the city in 1970, and walk up Grant — the lanterns, the curved eaves, the balconies stacked overhead, the quarter dressed the way it has been since it rebuilt itself after the 1906 fire.
Then cut west to Stockton Street, where the neighbourhood actually shops: bok choy and bitter melon in crates on the sidewalk, live fish, the herb shops with their walls of little drawers. Duck into Ross Alley, the oldest in the quarter, where the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Company still folds them by hand. Waverly Place is two blocks of painted balconies with temples on the top floors; climb to Tin How if it's open, the oldest Chinese temple in the country.
End in Portsmouth Square, the neighbourhood's living room — xiangqi at every table, the play structure full. The Central Subway runs out from directly underneath.
