Tourists Not Impressed by Chinatown

Map It:  Gallery Pl-Chinatown 

WE'VE PLAYED THIS GAME BEFORE. Do a Technorati search of a random neighborhood or D.C.-related place and/or activity and see where it pops up on a tourist's blog. (Like this one in which a woman who fed "pineapple and cream cheese sandwiches" to local seagulls during a class trip years ago expresses her disappointment with a recent trip because her No. 1 attraction — the National Museum of American History and its "Wizard of Oz" ruby slippers — is closed for renovations. So sad.)

Blogger Gallery Place Living recently played the game, hunting for outsiders' impressions on the District's Chinatown, which is ridiculed for being a little less than authentic.

One San Francisco-based blogger had this to say on a recent visit to the 7th Street NW strip near Verizon Center:

Notice the Chinese sign as well as the English one [for Starbucks]. It's more prominent than I've seen anywhere else but it wasn't that surprising at first. But then I took a look around. There were no Chinese people. At all. Zero. Yet sure enough every sign was in Chinese and English. It was like a theme park.

» "What Visitors To Washington DC's Chinatown Are Saying" [GP Living]

Photo by James A. Parcell/The Washington Post