Chinatown

Chinatown is the most alive part of Manhattan below Houston, and the most useful. This is where you eat when you want to eat well without thinking about the price, and the streets themselves are a reason to come: Doyers with its sharp bend, Mott and Mulberry crossing at angles the grid never reached, fish and fruit on the sidewalk, and signage stacked three languages deep.

Eat first. Nom Wah Tea Parlor on Doyers has been serving dim sum since 1920, and the room still looks it. Beyond that, walk and read the windows: roast duck hanging in one, hand-pulled noodles in the next, bakeries with egg tarts for a couple of dollars. The rule is simple. If it is full of people eating lunch at 1pm, go in.

Columbus Park is the heart of the neighborhood and its only real green space, so it does a lot of work: tai chi in the morning, card games all afternoon under the pavilion, courts, shade, and older residents who have been meeting there for decades. Sara D. Roosevelt Park runs north from Canal if you want more room to walk.

The Mahayana Buddhist Temple by the Manhattan Bridge has a huge gold Buddha and asks nothing of you. The Museum of Chinese in America tells the story of how all of this got here.

Go hungry, bring cash for the small places, and come back for the same meal at half the price you would pay ten blocks north.