Las Vegas Chinatown: from single building to thriving enclave

A May 9 story in the Los Angeles Times opens with the question, "There's a Chinatown in Las Vegas?"

The story answers affirmatively, adding that "you'll find about 140 restaurants in a three-mile stretch to choose from".

Most Americans are aware of New York's and San Francisco's storied Chinatowns, but not as many are familiar with the sprawling up-and-comer west of the Las Vegas Strip, in the casino gambling capital of the US.

Similar to Houston's Chinatown, Las Vegas' is an agglomeration of strip malls. It runs along Spring Mountain Road, in an unincorporated part of the city, and yes, it does have a paifang (arch).

"When I told people I was going to Las Vegas to visit its Chinatown, the response I got was nearly the same each time: 'Las Vegas has a Chinatown?' " Bonnie Tsui wrote in her 2009 book American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, which won the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature.

In the early 1990s, James Chen, an immigrant from Taiwan, frequently visited Las Vegas from California but couldn't find any decent Chinese restaurants.

So Chen began to wonder what it would take to build a Chinatown in Las Vegas.

Chen and his partners acquired seven acres on Spring Mountain Road and built the Chinatown Plaza mall, which remains the neighborhood's anchor.

"One of the things I loved about Las Vegas Chinatown is that a motor-vehicle, strip-mall-centered area actually evolved into a real community," Tsui told China Daily this week. "It's almost like the reverse of what happened in older Chinatowns like San Francisco and New York, where the physical community of residents was always there along with the businesses that served them. In Vegas, there was a Chinese and Chinese-American population, but it was scattered.

"There was no physical place for people to gather until James Chen built the anchor Chinatown Plaza; other malls followed, and then the density of businesses on the Strip reached a tipping point that encouraged the malls to be gathering places," she said.

"During the time I was writing the book, I'd watch people come to get the Chinese-language paper, chat with friends, buy groceries, eat dim sum, drink boba tea."

Tsui said, "There were cultural celebrations during which young people and families gathered. The fact that they were coming by car and congregating in the parking lot didn't make it any less of a community."

In 1999, the area was designated Las Vegas' official Chinatown by Governor Kenny Guinn, although it is also considered pan-Asian.

"Try anything from Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese cuisine to various types of food, such as a platter of mouthwatering and scrumptious Hong Kong-style roast duck or succulent won ton noodles, a wonderful bowl of healthy Vietnamese pho noodle soup, fresh Japanese sushi, or a refreshing cup of cold Taiwanese boba tea on a scorching desert day," is how website lvchinatownplaza.com describes the restaurant choices.

The Joyful House, selected by Las Vegas Review-Journal readers as the city's best Chinese restaurant in 2014, and which thedailymeal.com voted the best Chinese takeout in the US, serves up traditional Hong Kong dishes.

"You'll see plates of roast duck, honey walnut shrimp, and salt and pepper pork chops exit the kitchen at breakneck speed. Rather than trying to intercept a startled waiter, get your 6-pound lobster to go," dailymeal says.

Then there is The Golden Tiki, open 24 hours, which a local CBS website listed as one of the city's iconic bars: "The d��cor features an animatronic skeleton, shrunken heads and the hull of a pirate ship with lights (and possibly ghosts) shining on the patrons."

If an area has growth potential, then real estate investment usually confirms that.

Fore Property, based in Las Vegas, broke ground in 2016 on "Lotus", a 295-unit luxury rental project at Spring Mountain Road and Valley View Boulevard, a mile west of the Strip. The $52 million development is expected to open next spring.

Chinese tourism to Las Vegas has almost quadrupled in the last decade. There were approximately 206,000 visitors in 2015, up from 188,000 in 2014.

Contact the writer at williamhennelly@chinadailyusa.com