Chopsticks click against plates as voices rise and fall and pages turn - it is, for an outsider, immediate immersion.
Since soon after the first Chinese immigrants arrived in the 1880s and pitched tents on Ping On Alley, just around the corner from Chau Chow City, Chinatown has been a pulsing place, set snugly near the center of Boston.
Today, Chinatown has, on average, more older and more younger people than other parts of Boston. They live in closer quarters - twice as dense as the city average - and are poorer, by more than half, with an average annual income under $15,000.
The dismantled Central Artery has brought the openness of the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, but also high-end developers to Chinatown's edge. It evolves from the inside, too, as new immigrants from regions across China and other parts of Asia continue to change the dynamics of the long-settled community.
Approach from the south, along Interstate 93, and Chinatown's nestled network of streets are hidden, bounded at one end by the wide walls of Tufts Medical Center, the neighborhood's largest landowner, and at the other by financial towers. Chinatown's formal entrance is on the east side, where a high, green-topped gate leads onto the bustling commercial heart of Beach Street. Men gather beneath the gate on sunny days and banter as fingers fly above chess boards. On one weekday afternoon, Zhen Fei Zhang, 70, stood by a game table wearing a khaki jacket, blue slacks, loafers, and a "Boston" baseball cap.
"It's a fast-moving game," Zhang said, speaking in Cantonese to an interpreter. "You wait for the other guy to make a wrong move."
Zhang taught chess at a middle school in his native Guangzhou, a booming metropolis in southern China, and a hotbed of the game. He followed his grown son to Boston after retirement, four years ago.
"Chess is very good for practicing your logic, to prevent against Alzheimer's, to exercise your brain," Zhang said.
