Barrio Chino de La Habana
Ming-style stone archway marking the entrance to a once-thriving Chinese merchant quarter.
Location
About this audio guide
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.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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