Pittsburgh’s Chinatown is gone, but its history showed me that I belong here<h1>Pittsburgh’s Chinatown is gone, but its history showed me that I belong here</h1> <p class="byline">by First-person essay by Melissa Lee, Pittsburgh's Public Source <br />August 7, 2026</p> <p>When people ask why I decided to move to Pittsburgh, here's the honest truth: I don't really know. Initially, just learning that there had once been a small community of Chinese immigrants made my heart ache, but my connection only continued to strengthen. Most of its occupants, I learned, were first-generation Chinese immigrants from Hoiping (Kaiping) and Toisan, two small cities in southern China. While Pittsburgh's Chinese immigrants primarily <a href="https://newsinteractive.post-gazette.com/thedigs/2015/03/04/pittsburghs-chinatown-and-how-it-disappeared/">stopped here on the way to Gold Rush California</a> and stayed, my grandfather traveled from Toisan to Manhattan, stopping through Ellis Island, as a young child. (Photo by Jason Alpert-Wisnia/Pittsburgh’s Public Source)</figcaption></figure> <h2 id="h-pittsburgh-s-chinatown-wasn-t-new-york-s" class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Pittsburgh’s Chinatown wasn’t New York’s</strong></h2> <div class="wp-block-group"> <p>At its height, Pittsburgh's Chinatown had around <a href="https://www.pittsburghmagazine.com/the-fight-to-recognize-pittsburghs-lost-chinatown/">500 residents</a> (a stark contrast from my grandparents' Manhattan Chinatown, which housed somewhere around 4,000 people in the late 1920s).