Book your hotel as early as possible before your planned trip. New York City hotels fill up quickly, but downtown hotels are your best bet when visiting Chinatown and they are not as busy as midtown hotels. Hotels in the Chinatown area include the Holiday Inn Downtown at 138 Lafayette Street; Clarion Solita Soho Hotel at 159 Grand Street; Manhattan Seaport Suites at 129 Front Street; Millennium Hotel at 55 Church Street; New York Marriott Financial Center Hotel at 85 West Street; Ritz-Carlton New York-Battery Park at 2 West Street and the Soho Grand at 310 West Broadway.
Tour Chinatown with the help of one of the many guided tours that are available. Tours include the Renaissance Tours for customized group tours for dining, shopping, history and special experiences; Chinatown Discovered for a walking food tour that lets you sample Asian delicacies and Experience Chinatown for a Saturday walking tour by the Museum of the Chinese in the Americas.
Go on a self-guided tour with help from the Chinatown Information Kiosk, where guides can provide you with travel information, tour suggestions and maps. The kiosk is located at Canal Street at Walker & Baxter. It is open every day at 10 a.m. and closes at 6 p.m., except on Saturday, when it closes at 7 p.m.
Look for shopping destinations that you won't see at home. Some recommendations include Jade Paradise, 85B Bayard Street, which specializes in jade jewelry from Burma; Jade Garden Arts & Crafts, 76 Mulberry Street, which stocks tasteful gift items like vases, pottery, tea ware, Chinese paintings and calligraphy and Dynasty Arts, 103 Mosco Street, which sells lacquered and hardwood tables, cabinets and trunks, stone Buddhas and more.
Enjoy the cuisine of Chinatown at the Tasty Dumpling at 54 Mulberry Street, which offers great dumpling deals; Dim Sum Go Go at 5 East Broadway, where you can order plates of dumplings, barbecued pork buns and other dim sum; Nom Wah Tea Parlor at 13 Doyers Street, the oldest tea parlor in Chinatown and Wo Hop Restaurant at 17 Mott Street, which offers quick and inexpensive meals.
Visit the Five Points, located at the lower end of Columbus Park. Five Points is the site of the city's first tenements built to accommodate the massive immigration of Germans and Irish in the 19th century and immortalized in Martin Scorsese's "Gangs of New York."
Visit two places of worship in Chinatown. At the Eastern States Buddhist Temple at 64 Mott Street you will see the amazing golden Buddhas. You also should visit the Church of the Transfiguration at Mott and Pell streets. Since the early 1800s, the Church of the Transfiguration has served each wave of immigrants who have settled in Chinatown including the Irish, the Italians and now the Chinese. Sermons there are delivered in Cantonese and English.
Enjoy the Museum of Chinese in the Americas, 70 Mulberry Street, at the corner of Bayard Street, which is one of the most important national archives of Chinese history in America. You can visit a variety of permanent exhibits, and the museum has special shows all year.
