Liverpool's Chinatown is today centred around the Chinese restaurants in Nelson Street, L1 5DN.

The city has one of the oldest established Chinese communities in Europe. Some say it is the oldest in Europe. It dates back to 1834 when Chinese sailors arrived in Liverpool on board the Bibby ship Duchess of Clarence, which had brought tea direct from China. They had a six-month wait for the next ship back.

The community grew in the late 1860s when steamers began providing a regular shipping service between Britain and China. Such was the level of activity that in 1868 officials arrived in Liverpool to establish a Chinese Embassy in Britain.

Some Chinese sailors decided to base themselves in Liverpool and settled around Cleveland Square and Pitt Street close to the docks. Some lived in boarding houses opened by the Holt Shipping Company. By 1871 there was even a Chinese Community Centre and it was reported that 202 Chinese had settled in Liverpool.

Some began businesses supplying services to their countrymen, such as accommodation, food and cafes. Marriages between Chinese men and local women became not uncommon. The women were willing to help in their husbands' businesses in the shops and growing number of laundries.

After World War One the settlement slowly spread more inland into the side streets. There were 14 places in Pitt Street where you could either eat or buy Chinese food. Some gambling houses opened, mainly visited by those Chinese seamen required to stay on shore for a period. In an effort to stop them gambling away their wages, the Chinese Seamen's Welfare Centre was opened in 1917 in Bedford Street.

By the 1930s the Chinese community was well established, Forty-four of Pitt Street's 58 addresses were listed as being Chinese houses, shops, restaurants, laundries or community centres.

But then Liverpool Council began to demolish the Chinatown area as part of plans to replace old tenement blocks and warehouses with new buildings. This was followed by the German bombing of Liverpool in the 1940s which hastened the demolition of old Chinatown.

The Chinese began to move out to either the suburbs, to other cities, or just several hundred yards away to Nelson Street and George Square, where shipping company Holts had established a new seaman's hostel to replace the boarding houses lost in Pitt Street and Cleveland Square.

From Nelson Street, Liverpool's new Chinatown grew to take in parts of Berry Street, Duke Street, Upper Pitt Street and Upper Parliament Street. January 2000 saw the official opening of the Imperial Arch (pictured), marking a new phase in Chinatown's development. For more information, see the Liverpool Chinatown Business Association website www.lcba.net