Chinatown Plaza courtyard — the finale

You're back where you started, at the gate, in the courtyard — and now it should look a little different than it did ninety minutes ago.

Picture this courtyard on Lunar New Year. For about twenty-five years now, this has been the place the whole valley comes for it — lion dancers from that kung-fu school upstairs weaving through the crowd, drums, red envelopes, thousands of people. And not just Lunar New Year: the Autumn Moon festival, Japan Fair, one celebration after another. In a city with no old Chinatown, no century-old quarter downtown, this made-to-order plaza quietly became the real thing a community needed — a civic square. A place to gather.

Think back over the walk. We started with a secret: that this Chinatown didn't grow, it was drawn, in a real-estate office, financed by three former classmates and named by a governor after a fight. Every reason to call it fake. And then look at what actually filled it. A bookshop keeping a language alive. An herbalist, a bakery, a Shaolin school that got here first. Late-night cooks, a food scene the whole country noticed, a Vietnamese market, a pho pot that refused to go cold. A neighborhood that is now genuinely, densely, one of the most Asian places in Nevada.

That's the answer to the whole question. It was made to order — and then a real community moved in and made it true. Thirty years on, the made-to-order Chinatown has become an organic one.

That's the tour. Thanks for walking it. Take your time in the plaza.