Soaring rents threaten London's Chinatown

You don't have to come to China to experience its delights. A visit to one of the many Chinatowns in cities around the world lets you meet descendants of early immigrants, admire Chinese architecture and sample the country's food.

San Francisco's main Chinatown, for example, is a sprawling downtown area that has been home to generations of Chinese who, from the 1849 Gold Rush onward, crossed the Pacific in search of a new life.

It is a major tourist attraction, and I spent a day there, wandering through the streets, visiting shops packed with brightly colored Chinese goods, enjoying a bowl of noodles and visiting a fortune cookie factory.