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Tube: Leicester Square. Chinatown, hemmed in between Leicester Square and Shaftesbury Avenue, is a self-contained jumble of shops, cafes and restaurants that makes up one of London's most distinct and popular ethnic enclaves. Gerrard Street , Chinatown's main drag, has been endowed with ersatz touches - telephone kiosks rigged out as pagodas and fake oriental gates - but few of London's 60,000 Chinese actually live in the three small blocks of Chinatown. Nonetheless, it remains a focus for the community, a place to do business or the weekly shopping, celebrate a wedding, or just meet up for meals, particularly on Sundays, when the restaurants overflow with Chinese families tucking into dim sum. The Chinese New Year celebrations, instigated here in 1973, draw in thousands of Chinese for the Sunday nearest to New Year's Day (late January or early February). Huge papier-mache lions dance through the streets to a cacophony of firecrackers, devouring cabbages hung from the upper floors by strings pinned with money. The noise is deafening, and if you want to see anything, you'll need to position yourself close to one of the cabbages around noon and stand your ground. For the rest of the year, most Londoners come to Chinatown simply to eat - easy and inexpensive enough to do, though the choice is somewhat overwhelming, especially on Gerrard Street itself. Cantonese cuisine predominates, and you're unlikely to be disappointed wherever you go
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