Chinatown

Brilliant reds, yellows and golds abound on the main streets here, colouring the Asian-inspired architecture. On the back streets, however, closely clustered buildings turn inward, while the air is filled with a criss-cross of colourful banners and red lanterns, creating a distinctly unwelcoming, almost claustrophobic feeling for outsiders.
Some men sit at a card table playing mahjong, watching newcomers with discerning eyes, as an old woman plucks her laundry of a line from a third-story window. Somewhere a cat hisses as steam rolls through the narrow alleyways, hiding the true nature of things.
Here, out of sight of the broader public, Kung-Fu legends and wise Taoist monks fight haunting spirits and malevolent terracotta soldiers. Across the street, a famous dumpling shop tended by a family happy to sate people's endless appetites awaits the coming crowds, while a mysterious old man smiles and waves from the door of his store of 'eastern antiques'.
Chinatown and its shadows also play host to the Triads and the Asian street gangs from which they draw their numbers. Many a tourist has stumbled down a wrong turn, or just found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time, never to be seen or heard from again.