Canada · British Columbia · Vancouver
Chinatown, Vancouver — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Chinatown sits east of downtown Vancouver, one of North America's largest, its axis East Pender Street, with the Chinese Canadian Museum.
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Where to stay in Chinatown
The practical side of choosing where to sleep.
Chinatown works best for a visitor who wants to be close to the East Side's food and museums and does not mind a plain, workaday setting. Dedicated hotel beds are scarce here. Most of the quarter is residential and small-business, so many travellers book in adjacent Gastown or Downtown Vancouver and walk over.
The Stadium-Chinatown SkyTrain station sits on the western edge, linking the area to the rest of Vancouver. Come for the restaurants and the Chinese Canadian Museum, and for daytime walks rather than a night-out base.
Things to do in and around Vancouver
Ranked by global recognition; descriptions from Wikidata (CC0).
Museums & Galleries
3- Beatty Street Drill Hall Heritage
- Hastings Mill
- Storyeum
Churches & Religious Sites
3- Cathedral of Our Lady of the Rosary, Vancouver Heritage
- Coastal Church Heritage
- St. Andrew's-Wesley United Church
worth knowingacross 2 categories in and around Vancouver
About Chinatown
What are the main landmarks in Chinatown?
Chinatown's sights are small institutions that hold the neighbourhood's past, not grand monuments. The Chinese Canadian Museum, in the restored Wing Sang building on East Pender Street, is the anchor, with the Chinatown Storytelling Centre and the Chinese Canadian Military Museum Society a short walk away on Columbia Street. The Vancouver Police Museum sits just north, in the former coroner's court.
Across False Creek to the south, the geodesic dome of Science World marks the far shore.
What is the history of Chinatown?
Chinese labourers built this quarter first. Drawn by railway and sawmill work in Vancouver's early decades, they settled the blocks around East Pender Street and made them the centre of Chinese life on the coast. Nearby Hastings Mill, the mill around which the city first grew, defined that industrial waterfront.
Head-tax and exclusion laws then hemmed the community into these streets, and clan associations and benevolent societies grew up in response. The Chinese Canadian Museum records that long history from inside the neighbourhood.
Where is Chinatown?
Chinatown lies on Vancouver's East Side, hemmed by the Downtown Eastside to the north and Strathcona to the east. Gastown is a short walk northwest. To the south the ground drops toward False Creek, where viaducts carry Georgia and Dunsmuir Streets across to Science World on the far shore.
The core runs along Pender and Keefer Streets, with Main Street marking the eastern boundary and Columbia Street cutting through the middle.
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Updated October 2026