The Chinatown, centered on Grant Avenue and Stockton Street in San Francisco, California, is the oldest Chinatown in North America and one of the largest Chinese enclaves outside Asia. It is also the oldest and largest of the four notable Chinese enclaves within San Francisco. Since its establishment in the early 1850s, it has been important and influential in the history and culture of ethnic Chinese immigrants in North America. Chinatown is an enclave that has retained its own customs, languages, places of worship, social clubs, and identity.
The Chinatown district is primarily Cantonese and Taishanese-speaking, both dialects originating in southern China. Most Chinatown residents have origins in Guangdong Province and Hong Kong, with some Mandarin-speaking residents from Taiwan and central and Northern China, although lesser in comparison to Cantonese-speaking people, despite Cantonese being a minority language amongst people in China and ethnically Chinese people in Asia.