China Doll, RIP

After almost five decades, the China Doll restaurant closed last night. To me, that makes it official: Chinatown is now just a place with a few Chinese restaurants. After all, the neighborhood is dominated by stores like Ann Taylor Loft and Bed Bath and Beyond.

It's sad, of course.

But these things happen. Neighborhoods change.

Harlem is going through gentrification. But before it became predominantly black, it was a Jewish neighborhood. And Italian. And Hispanic.

Georgetown, D.C.'s most famous elite and mostly white enclave, used to be a thriving black neighborhood after the Civil War.

And although the Chinatown gate (paifong) will remind us of the neighborhood's roots, it was a German neighborhood before Chinese immigrants settled in.