c h i n a t o w n

It's an old story to the police. Visitors are more or less of a nuisance in Chinatown and a good many times they're disappointed. For they've built up such fantastic ideas of what goes on down there that if they don't see a few Chinamen disappearing down traps in the pavement pursued by somebody with a hatchet or a long carved knife, they haven't had any fun.

-- Policeman Cornelius Willemse, A Cop Remembers, 1933.