Chinatown

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  • Address
    Little Bourke St, btwn Spring & Swanston Sts, city centre

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Lonely Planet review

Red archways across either end of Little Bourke St's Chinatown are your gateways to clattering woks, glowing neons, exotic aromas and shops with floor-to-ceiling chambers of medicinal herbs and tinctures. Melbourne's Chinatown has been thriving since the 1850s when Chinese prospectors joined the rush to find gold.

The single-storey brick buildings were built in the 19th century, a time when brothels, opium dens and boarding houses were the main tenants. Today the area is chock-a-block with discount shops and authentic Chinese restaurants.

It's the best place for yum cha (dim sum) , and to sate that craving for sea slug in Sichuan sauce.

Chinatown's Chinese Museum (tel: 9662 2888; www.chinesemuseum.com.au; 22 Cohen Pl; adult/concession around A$7 /4.50; ; - ) has five levels containing items of Chinese social history. There's a temple in the basement, wedding gowns, artefacts from the gold-rush period and two dragons. Dai Loong dragon, whose head weighs 90kg, was retired from civic duties in 2003. The head of the Millennium Dragon, its replacement, weighs 218kg, requiring six people to hunker underneath to carry it through the streets at Chinese New Year and Moomba. If you're in town during either festival and fancy being a dragon for a day, the museum is always looking for volunteers.

Walk off your Sunday-morning yum cha by taking in some of the old buildings, warehouses and cobbled lanes. The building that is now Sum Kum Lee General Store (112-114 Little Bourke St) has been occupied by Chinese food and grocery sellers pretty much since it opened in 1888. The former Chinese Mission Hall (cnr Little Bourke St & Cohen Pl), built by a Chinese evangelist in 1894, is now the Po Hong Trading Company, with more Asian knick-knacks than you can poke a chopstick at.