East Meets West

Exactly when the Chinese first began settling in New Orleans is not known. A few Chinese residents appear in census schedules as early as 1850, and Chinese American tombs have been found in the St. Louis cemeteries dating as far back as 1848. However, the first major  Chinese migration to the city took place between 1868 and 1872 during Reconstruction, when Louisiana planters began hiring thousands of Cantonese-speaking laborers to work on their sugar and cotton plantations. The laborers were soon followed by Cantonese merchants, who established import-export businesses, originally to provision the laborers with tea, rice, traditional Chinese medicine, and other supplies. Nearly all of the laborers would flee from the low wages and poor working conditions on the plantations, abandoning the South entirely by the mid-1870s. But the merchants stayed, selling porcelain, silk clothing, lacquered furniture, jewelry, fireworks, and other East Asian luxuries to the local New Orleans market. Many other Chinese would follow, working in the seafood industry or establishing small laundries throughout the city.

In 1882, the Chinese Presbyterian Mission was founded at 215 South Liberty Street to minister to this growing Chinese population. The Chinese Mission provided scripture classes, as well as a Sunday worship and other spiritual services. However, it also provided secular services, including English-language classes and translation and immigration services, and it organized social events such as the annual Christmas and Chinese New Year celebrations. In the following years, benevolent associations such as the Chee Gung Tong and Bow Wong Wei established meeting halls near the Chinese Mission. By the 1890s, businesses serving the Chinese American community also appeared on the 1100 block of Tulane, such as the On Yick & Company grocery at 1107 Tulane Avenue and the Sun Wah Lung grocery at 1117 Tulane Avenue. These groceries sold tea, rice, noodles, dried shrimp, candied fruits, spices, traditional Chinese medicine, and other goods that could not be found in Western groceries.

Chinatown was also the site of shops and restaurants that served mostly non-Chinese patrons, such as the Yee Wah Jen restaurant at 156 South Basin Street (modern Elk Place), later renamed the Ben Hong Low restaurant. According to a 1911 Daily Picayune article, Yee Wah Jen was a segregated restaurant, with both white and Black sections, but the restaurant would seat everyone. Louis Armstrong, who grew up nearby in the “back o’ town” neighborhood in the 1910s, remembers dining at a Chinatown restaurant with his family. This restaurant was likely the Yee Wah Jen, which, according to Armstrong, served Americanized Chinese dishes like chop suey and yaka mein, alongside Creole dishes like red beans and rice.

The Sun Wah Lung grocery and many other Chinatown businesses were located in a single commercial property spanning the entire 1100 block of Tulane. During the Great Depression, the owner of that property wasn't collecting enough rent from the Chinese, so in the fall of 1937, he evicted all of his tenants and sold the property. The rest of the Chinatown businesses abandoned the neighborhood soon after. A few Chinatown businesses, including Sun Wah Lung and On Yick, moved to the 500 and 600 blocks of Bourbon Street, joining several Chinese American businesses that were already in the French Quarter and forming what the Times-Picayune described as a second Chinatown. Sun Wah Lung moved to 530–534 Bourbon, which was the site of other Chinese American businesses, a hostel for Chinese travelers, and a meeting hall for the On Leong Merchants Association. Founded in the Manhattan Chinatown in 1893, On Leong is a national benevolent association for Cantonese-speaking Chinese American businesspeople.  Like the earlier Chee Gung Tong and Bow Wong Wei Associations, it assisted local Chinese in translation and immigration issues, finding jobs and housing, and starting businesses. On Leong also organized events like the annual Chinese New Year and Mid-Autumn Festival celebrations.

Like the original Chinatown, the French Quarter was the site of Chinese restaurants and shops that served mostly non-Chinese patrons. For example, the import-export companies often had storefronts that sold luxury goods from East Asia. These East Asian merchandise stores included the Chinese American Company at 721 Royal and later 719 Royal, and Honey Gee’s Oriental Gift Shop at 641 Bourbon. Tennessee Williams lived down the street from Honey Gee’s, at 632 ½ St. Peter Street, when he wrote A Streetcar Named Desire in 1947: The “little Chinese shop on Bourbon” where Blanche buys her colored paper lantern is a reference to this shop.

The 500 and 600 blocks of Bourbon Street were already lined with bars and nightclubs when the Chinatown businesses moved there in 1937. French Quarter Chinese restaurants were open late, the food was cheap, and the portions were large, so they became popular with tourists, locals, and workers in the entertainment industry alike. The restaurants became part of the culture of the French Quarter, and they became so popular that yaka mein, a noodle soup commonly served in Chinese American restaurants at the time, became known as “old sober,” the secret hangover cure of the French Quarter. These French Quarter Chinese restaurants included the China Town Cafe at 627 Bourbon Street, Dan’s International at 601 Bourbon Street, Chinese Village at 532 Bourbon, Fong Restaurant on 609 Decatur Street, and the Mee Hong Restaurant, better known as Gin’s Mee Hong, at 739 Conti Street.

But by the 1940s, the Chinese were already migrating from the city to the suburbs of Lakeview and the East Bank of Jefferson Parish, taking their businesses and institutions with them. Today, Jefferson Parish has the largest Chinese and Asian American populations in Louisiana. The last of the French Quarter Chinatown businesses closed at the end of the 1980s when their owners retired, their children having long since graduated from college and moved on to careers in medicine, engineering, and law. In 1988, the On Leong Association moved from the French Quarter to Metairie, and in 2011 to Kenner, where its office is still located today. The Chinese Presbyterian Mission still exists but moved out of Chinatown in 1924, moving to several locations before it was absorbed by the Chinese Presbyterian Church in 1957 and finally relocated to Kenner in 1997.

More recently, several new Asian American businesses have moved into the French Quarter, including restaurants like Dian Xin and Zhang’s Bistro, both founded by relatively recent immigrants from mainland China. However, none of the historic Chinese American businesses still exist. The English- and Chinese-language sign over the door of the On Leong building at 530 Bourbon is the last visible evidence that the New Orleans Chinatown ever existed.