Although this neighborhood, perfectly packed into a few easily navigable streets, has no sites per se, it's a nice area for lunch or for shopping for quirky knickknacks. The main thoroughfare, Rue de la Gauchetière, between Blvd St-Laurent and Rue Jeanne-Mance, is enlivened with Taiwanese bubble-tea parlors, Hong Kong–style bakeries and Vietnamese soup restaurants. The public square, Place Sun-Yat-Sen, attracts teens, crowds of elderly Chinese and the occasional gaggle of Falun Gong practitioners.
Newspapers first recognised this as a quartier chinois in 1902. It started as a mostly Cantonese community of people who had worked on building the Canadian Pacific Railway, but who had faced racism and fled British Columbia. Expo '67 helped the area become a tourist attraction, which continues to the present day with a revamping of the temple at Place Sun-Yat-Sen and the painting of a mural on Blvd René-Lévesque Ouest at the corner with Blvd Saint-Laurent.
