Barrio Chino

This guide to Barrio Chino in Buenos Aires starts at a stone ball wedged under a lion's paw at the base of an eleven-meter archway on Arribeños street, worn smooth by thousands of hands, and traces the small rituals that grew up around it. You'll hear how the arch arrived from China in pieces in 2009 after two rejected designs, why workers added a pair of feng shui guardian lions at its base, and what the custom is at the Chong Kuan Buddhist temple two blocks away. The guide also goes back to the 1980s, when homesick Taiwanese families ran a folding-table weekend market just to sell vegetables and watch Chinese films together.