The coming of the Chinese New Year in Baltimore was announced this year by a tattered lion dancing in what was once known as Baltimore's Chinatown.
The old lion's head - made of papier-mache and now held together by tape - looked much like its surroundings: faded colors, frayed edges with a general appearance of deterioration.
"Chinatown isn't what it used to be," explained the lion's owner Arthur Lee after 10 minutes of dancing in front of a small crowd, which consisted mostly of bewildered white parishioners from an Episcopal church.
Chinatown once stretched for what was then more than two blocks along Park Avenue, between Saratoga and Mulberry streets. The neighborhood served for more than a century as the commercial and social hub for Baltimore's Chinese population. Today, all that remains is a cramped grocery store and a restaurant in the 300 block of Park Ave.
All over the country, Chinatowns are in decline, hit hard by redevelopment, the changing lifestyles of a younger generation and the migration of most Chinese populations to the suburbs.
The last standing structure from New Orleans' once-flourishing Chinese district was authorized this year for demolition. Soon, the district's only remnants will be jazz songs like "Who'll Chop Your Suey (When I'm Gone?)."
In San Francisco, many parts of Chinatown now serve mostly as tourist attractions. In Los Angeles, the Chinatown made famous by Jack Nicholson in the 1970s is largely ignored by immigrants who head instead for the ever-expanding San Gabriel Valley.
The reasons behind America's waning Chinatowns are complex and rooted in history. But the most important cause is the movement of Chinese-Americans to the suburbs.
Once restricted by discriminatory laws and practices, Chinese-Americans are now pursuing good schools for their children in the suburbs and jobs in the mainstream labor market that were once closed to them, said Min Zhou, author of Chinatown: The Socioeconomic Potential of an Urban Enclave.
"Even the newer immigrants today are more diverse," said Zhou, chairwoman of Asian-American studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. "Many are suburbanized upon arrival because they have the resources and skills. They don't need a Chinatown to survive anymore."
There is also an economic component to the decline. When most Chinatowns began, they were formed on what was then the city's edge, said Peter Kwong, an Asian-American studies professor at Hunter College in New York.
