In the past few years, the Cantonese dialect that has dominated Chinatown for decades is being rapidly swept aside by Mandarin Chinese, the national language of China and the lingua franca of most of the latest Chinese immigrants. While the Flushing Chinatown in Queens has become the largest Chinatown in the world, it has also become the epicenter of organized prostitution in the United States. Flushing is undergoing rapid gentrification by Chinese transnational entities. The growth of the business activity at the core of Downtown Flushing, dominated by the Flushing Chinatown, has continued despite the Covid-19 pandemic. San Francisco A Pacific port city, San Francisco has the oldest and longest continuous running Chinatown in the Western Hemisphere. It originated circa 1848 and served as a gateway for incoming immigrants who arrived during the California gold rush and the construction of the North American transcontinental railroads. Chinatown was later reconceptualized as a tourist attraction in 1910. San Francisco's Chinatown was almost completely destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, but some of its inhabitants did not relocate elsewhere. Looming large were proposals by real estate speculators and politicians to expand the Financial District's influence into the area, by displacing the Chinese community to the southern part of the city. In response, many of Chinatown's residents and landlords defiantly stayed behind to stake their neighborhood's claim, sleeping out in the open and in makeshift tents. Numerous businesses and housing based in brick buildings survived with moderate damage and continued functioning, if only in a limited capacity. In just two years after the earthquake, the landmark Sing Fat and Sing Chong buildings were completed as a statement of the Chinese community's resolve to remain in the area. As a result of this action, Chinatown remains the longest, continuously occupied Chinese community outside of Asia. Still a community of predominantly Taishanese-speaking inhabitants, San Francisco's Chinatown became one of the most important Chinese centers in the United States. Latin America Chinatowns in Latin America (, singular barrio chino / , singular bairro chinês) developed with the rise of Chinese immigration in the 19th century to various countries in Latin America as contract laborers (i.e., indentured servants) in agricultural and fishing industries. Most came from Guangdong Province. Since the 1970s, the new arrivals have typically hailed from Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. Latin American Chinatowns may include the descendants of original migrants — often of mixed