Movement runs the gamut, from the crick-in-the neck tourist whose mid-stride stops exasperate, to the deliberately controlled and uncontrollable New Yorker. Narrow streets, bustling with shoppers, sight-seers and restaurant seekers snake their cracked and cobbled way in and out of Mott Street, the dragon incarnate.

There are people everywhere, curb to curb and even in the street, the perfume of the East beckoning as the rotting garbage repels. They skirt the haphazard heaps as the ever present cats’ eyes gleam expectantly from nearby basement steps. Crouched and calculating, they wait to pounce, for with the onset of evening they must share their feast with the fat scuttling roaches - alas, creatures with territorial rights.

Tourists elbow each other from shop to shop for closer glimpses of carved ivory, jade and onyx, silk pajamas and myriad articles of gift junk jumbled together in dubious splendor.

The old buildings so filled with life, lean companionably against each other for support. Not so surprising, they do date back to New York’s earliest architecture. Tired and used they stand a formidable army of dog-eared dominoes, sandwiched to exclude the sun. Armored in iron fretwork, bound by fire escapes and buttressed by banisters, they appear a patchwork quilt dimly aglow midst the rust and decay. Doors are everywhere, and a thousand windows look across to contemplate each other through grimy glassy eyes.

Chinatown, the ubiquitous Oriental’s habitat of the east, teems with the humanity of all races. Almost, it seems, the big city rose up to shake impatiently free of its irksome clinging hordes and lo they landed between Mott and Pell Streets. Add a few hundred tourists who replenish themselves hourly, and you have what is, on any day, an absolute madhouse.
The ear-splitting whine of a police car forces traffic to seek whichever curb or sidewalk is available. People stop expectantly hoping to witness New York’s finest in action. An old man stoops to wash his hands at an open hydrant whose spill sweeps before it a stream of candy wrappers and cigarette butts, delicately dries himself on his trousers and moves on. Con Edison, always busy, sections off its own square of city, hangs its sign, and "dig they must." Telephones housed within brightly painted pagoda booths-only in New York!.

Chinatown is its people. The old oriental, suited in black, sparse mustache and straggling whiskers. His woman, conservative to the extreme, hair pulled back to tightly sculpt the head, also in black, make their unobtrusive way, ignoring the aliens, in and out of the markets, bags threatening to overflow. Their children, in miniature, but very 90’s in dress, run and play, shout and cry, adding to the turmoil. If any city has its own smell, Chinatown’s, a city within a city, is unique. The tempting aromas of heavily spiced chicken,, spareribs and shrimp issue from the many restaurants and fish markets. Cooked ducks, chickens and suckling pigs darkly glistening with freshly painted sauces hang suspended from hooks luring the hungry in to buy, Enjoyed there or at home, either way you know you are tasting the best there is in Chinese food anywhere.

Windows overflow their shelves with strange green vegetables, fresh water chestnuts, bean sprouts and pea pods, an Epicurean and gastronomic delight.

Streamers, decoratively written in large Chinese characters advertising the latest movie or the current politician running for assemblyman are strung from building to building to bridge the street. Wing Fat, Mandarin Inn, Hop Kee, are some of the restaurant signs to light your way at night. How incongruous to see a Carvel or a Baskin Robbins!

Of course, Chinatown is a paradox. Perhaps the days of the hatchet man are on the wane, but do not for a moment doubt that beneath the placid surface still runs the unrest of its people. Yet, the lure endures. The staccato sing-song sound of a foreign tongue walks hand in hand with the smart-ass slang of its modern teen, and like an altar whose golden Buddha sits in indifferent splendor, the worshippers will come.

SoHoART