Barrio Chino de La Habana

This guide to Barrio Chino de La Habana traces how a neighborhood that once held ten thousand residents across ten city blocks grew from a small food stand opened in eighteen fifty-eight by indentured laborers shipped from southern China. It follows the wave of wealthier immigrants who arrived from California between eighteen sixty and eighteen seventy-five, and the groceries, laundries and pharmacies that multiplied until the district ran its own informal chamber of commerce, functioning almost like a private stock exchange. Stand under the Ming-style archway at Dragones and Amistad, roughly sixty two feet across, and look down the blocks it still guards.