Barrio Chino de Salsipuedes, Panama City巴拿马城老唐人街（萨西普埃德斯）

Type

Overseas Daoist Temples

Location

Panama · Panamá Province · Panama City · Around Salsipuedes, on the slope of El Javillo; the commercial center has since shifted to El Dorado

First built

the late nineteenth century · Panama's first Chinatown; some historic facades survive today

Overview

Panama's first Chinatown was built along Salsipuedes on the slope of El Javillo, where the Chinese constructed temples, association halls and gambling houses to maintain their customs in a foreign land. The area still preserves a number of characteristic facades today, the most conspicuous being the Sociedad Yan Wo on Calle Carlos A. Mendoza. In recent decades the commercial center of Chinatown has shifted to the El Dorado district, where an area of about five blocks now concentrates grocery stores, restaurants, food stalls, barbershops, clothing shops and acupuncture clinics, forming a new Chinese commercial corridor. It must be noted honestly that, apart from the Sociedad Yan Wo, most of the other temples and association altars in the old Chinatown have fallen out of use or been repurposed; this entry is a composite record of the district rather than a single temple. The dispersed pattern of Panama's Chinese community, with more than thirty-five separate associations, also gives its religious sites a scattered character, attached to individual associations.

Highlights

• Panama's first Chinatown
• The Chinese built temples, association halls and gambling houses here
• Commercial center has shifted to the El Dorado district
• Most temples and altars have fallen out of use
• A composite entry for the district, not a single temple