Vancouver's Chinatown is one of the largest and oldest Chinese neighborhoods in North America, owing to the influx of workers from China to build the transcontinental railroad. The Chinatown Theater, built in 1898, became a place of recreation and entertainment for the Chinese community at that time. In 1947, due to changes in Canadian law, family members of Chinese immigrants were allowed to enter the country. Chinatown could not accommodate all the visitors, many of them settled in the nearby areas - Strathcone and Richmond.
At the corner of Taylor and Pender streets - on the border of "East" and "West" - there are front gates to Chinatown, symbolizing the convergence of cultures. On Shanghai Alley there is a monument of friendship between the twin cities of Vancouver and Chuangzhou - a copy of an old bell from the Western Han Dynasty. On Pender Street, the Chinese diaspora built one of the narrowest buildings in the world in 1913, listed in the Guinness Book of Records. It is worth looking into the Chinese garden of the Ming Dynasty - the famous Sun Yangsen Garden with pagodas, a pond with turtles and carps, water lilies and lilies.