Tens of millions of ethnically Chinese people live outside their ancestral homeland, everywhere from North America to South Africa. Many of them have gathered together in Chinatowns, some of them hundreds of years old, others much more recent. However different these Chinatowns are from each other, Chinese New Year is a shared celebration.
The area of Binondo in the Philippines capital has the distinction of being the oldest surviving Chinatown in the world. It was established by the Spanish colonial authorities in 1594, for Chinese converts to Catholicism. Many of these settlers married local women, and millions of Filipinos can claim some Chinese ancestry today.