Links Classical Chinese Garden Vancouver's Chinatown began in Shanghai Alley in the late 1880's, on the shores of False Creek at Pender and Carrall Street. Today, Chinatown stands firmly established as a strong ethnic community, a well-known tourist attraction, and a prosperous commercial district. To discover Chinatown is to be suddenly engulfed with the tastes, sounds and fragrances of another culture.
Streets bustle with colour and commerce, telephone booths are topped with pagoda tiles.
Curious foodstuffs spill onto the sidewalks and apothecaries sell ancient and exotic remedies of dried lizard skin, thin-sliced deer antler, and ground rhinoceros bone. Listed in the Guinness Book of World Records , the Sam Kee Building is the narrowest building in the world - it's only 6 foot wide. In 1912, the city expropriated most of Chang Toy's property to widen Pender Street. Leaving only a tiny strip of land, Chang responded by erecting the narrow building. Below the sidewalk, a basement 10 foot wide extended the full length of the building, which was used as an underground bath house.