Chinatown

Located in between Leicester Square and Shaftesbury Avenue, is a self-contained jumble of shops, cafes and restaurants that makes up one of London`s most distinct and popular ethnic enclaves. Gerrard Street, Chinatown`s main drag, has been endowed with ersatz touches - telephone kiosks rigged out as pagodas and fake Oriental gates - and few of a London`s 80,000 Chinese actually live in the three small blocks of Chinatown. The Chinese New Year celebrations, instigated here in 1973, are a community-based affair, drawing in thousands of Chinese for the Sunday nearest to New Year`s Day (late Jan or early Feb). Huge papier-mache lions dance through the streets of London to a cacophony of fireworks devouring cabbages hung from the upper floors by strings pinned with money.

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