This weekend, the largest Chinese New Year celebrations outside of Asia take place in and around London’s Chinatown in Soho. But did you know that London’s original Chinatown was in East London?

Limehouse was the site of a short-lived porcelain factory founded by George Wilson in 1746. It was one of many attempts to make a British version of the beautiful, white ceramic that was flooding into London from the Far East. Limehouse porcelain  looked Chinese but was made in East London. You can see examples of this porcelain at the Museum of London.

One hundred years later, a small community of Chinese sailors settled at Limehouse Causeway. This was one of two small, East End Chinese communities. The other was in Pennyfields in Poplar, where Chinese sailors from Shanghai had settled. Virtually all were single men, some of whom married British women.

By 1914, there were around 30 businesses and 300 people living in these small East End communities. Limehouse and Pennyfields became known as Chinatown, and many of its inhabitants made a living by running laundries.

During the Second World War, the Docklands area, including Chinatown, was badly damaged and many Chinese people moved out. In the 1950s, the market for Chinese food grew and restaurants and stalls began to spring up in Gerrard Street and Lisle Street. This was the start of the Chinatown we know today in Soho.

Find out more about Chinatown’s history or discover today’s Chinatown in Soho

Guest post by the Museum of London as part of our brand new Visiting the Past blog series. More fascinating facts about London’s history from the Museum of London next week!

Postcard Teas
If you really care where your tea comes from, this shop run by well-travelled tea expert Timothy d’Offay is for you. Postcard Teas on New Bond Street claims to be the only shop that reveals the true origins of its teas, marking every tin with the maker or estate’s name and the place of production. You can send someone a “tea postcard” by posting a packet into the shop’s own red postbox.
Top tea: The rare Ancient Tree Teas, including a blend from four 100-year-old trees on Wuyi Mountain in China. Only 5-7kg of Oolong tea is made from them every year.

Yumchaa
Yumchaa believes the key factors for a great cup of tea are “the leaf, the water and the freedom for the two to mingle”. So it’s loose leaf or nothing across its four shops - one on Tottenham Street near Goodge Street station, two in Camden and one in Soho.
Top tea:  Berry Berry Nice, a Rooibos tea with notes of blueberry, blackberry, strawberry, rhubarb, kiwi, vanilla and rose petals. It should be drunk while wearing sunglasses, according to Yumchaa.

Twinings
Thomas Twining bought this flagship Twinings shop on The Strand in 1706, as tea became an increasingly popular alternative to the coffee houses springing up in London. It still operates today, albeit in a slightly more modern form. It has a loose tea bar with unusual and expensive teas, a sampling counter where you can try warm teas, and even a small tea museum with old teapots and artefacts from the Twining family.
Top tea: The Cutty Sark blend, created to celebrate the reopening of the world’s last remaining tea clipper ship in Greenwich. The black version is a mixture of two Chinese teas: strong sweet leaves from Yunnan province and Keemun tea from Anhui province.

Tea Palace
This queen of modern tea shops sits in the Market Building in Covent Garden. It sells tea bags and loose leaf tea in regal purple tin caddies. Among more than 160 whole leaf teas, Tea Palacecreates limited edition blends for special occasions – such as an Ultimate Antioxidant Tea Trio to celebrate the London 2012 Olympic Games.
Top tea: The Diamond Jubilee Blend – although Tea Palace keeps the exact blend of black teas involved a secret.

If you fancy some tea and cake, here’s our list of the best afternoon teas in London.

Images by Mark Baynes.

Were you there? Don’t forget to add your photos to the Visit London Flickr pool.

Chinese Taipei is the designated name used by the Republic of China, commonly known as “Taiwan”, when they participate in the Olympic Games.

In recent months, Taiwan’s bubble tea has been big news here in London. Bubble tea had previously been sold in stores in Chinatown, but the drink is now going mainstream.

Served warm or cold, bubble tea drinks have a red or green tea base, and are infused with fruit flavours. Then, at the bottom, they have tapioca pearls, called “Boba Pearls.” These pearls have a texture like gummy bears with a slight caramel taste, and take in some of the flavour of the tea. Yum!

London now has a bubble tea gourmet determined to bring the true taste of Taiwan to the city: Bubbleology owner, Assad Khan.

Khan fell in love with the drink while working in New York. Spotting the potential to spread the bubble tea love in London, he opened Bubbleology in Soho earlier this spring.

Khan knows his bubble tea: he drank four or five cups a day in New York, and 40 cups a day on a two-month research trip to Taiwan before setting up business in London. He believes the choice of materials, water temperature and timing were essential. Khan has imported the shakers, plastic-sealing machines and plastic cups from Taiwan, along with the thick straws that allow you to suck up the “bubbles” and chew on them.

His staff, called ”Bubbleologists,” have trained under renowned bubble tea masters to learn the exact science of making proper bubble tea. In a nod to the country responsible for this unusual, refreshing drink, they all wear a Republic of China flag pin on their uniforms.

So if you want a taste of Taiwan in London, head down to Bubbleology in Soho or in Harvey Nichols’ restaurant. You can read more about the brand at www.bubbleology.co.uk.

Do you know of any other examples of Taiwanese culture in London? Let us know in the comments below.

Spice up your summer with a visit to the Moroccan Garden at Meza Bar & Grill in Soho.

The restaurant is offering both the taste and feel of Marrakech to visitors this month, as it has transformed its atrium into a Bedouin tent serving Moroccan-style mezze.

Enjoy dishes including marinated lamb and merguez kebabs; nut tabbouleh and saffron yoghurt; and harisa aubergines, while taking in the colours and scents of the Middle East.

Moroccan Garden at Meza until 31 Aug 2011

Where else can you find Moroccan culture in London? Let us know in the comments below.

Karolina Kolodziej from the Polish Cultural Institute tells us where to find a taste of Poland in London for our World in London series.

Since 2004, the cultural picture of the UK’s capital has dramatically changed. “The Poles are coming!” the British newspapers shouted. And so we came… in quite big numbers actually (some estimated the total at one million!).

Polish shops (polski sklep) sprang up in every London borough and our rustling language can be heard on practically every street corner.

But our relationship with the UK goes way back and has for a long time influenced cultural life in the capital. Bonnie Prince Charlie was the son of James Francis Edward Stewart and Polish aristocrat Maria Klementyna Sobieska, daughter of the Polish King Jan III Sobieski.

Funnily enough, Poland Street in London’s Soho was named in honour of King Sobieski, who won the Battle of Vienna in 1683 defending Europe against the Ottoman Empire’s army.

The Second World War saw the Polish flying aces fighting in the Battle of Britain and our mathematicians helping to break the Enigma code. After the war, Polish soldiers and their families settled down in the UK, many of them in London, choosing areas such as Ealing and Hammersmith to build their new lives.

The next generations became prominent individuals in the capital’s cultural life, from composers, musicians, artists, to museum and gallery directors, film producers and directors, designers, architects… the list goes on.

So find your Polish London! Here are a few clues on how to discover it:

Try our food delicacies. Be brave and venture into one of London’s many Polish shops, buy some kieÅ‚basa (polish name for sausage) for the barbeque and try our bread.

Visit one of the Polish restaurants. We highly recommend Baltic in Southwark or The Knaypa in Hammersmith, which serve modern Polish cuisine and great vodka cocktails.

See some Polish contemporary art. Works of PaweÅ‚ Althamer, Zbigniew Libera, MirosÅ‚aw BaÅ‚ka, Wilhelm Sasnal and Artur Å»mijewski can be seen in Tate Modern as well commercial galleries such as Gagosian or White Cube. You can also check out London’s branch of Warsaw gallery Lokal 30.

Look out for Polish classical and jazz music. Our orchestras, bands and soloists visit the UK capital very regularly with concerts in venues such as the Barbican, Southbank Centre or Wigmore Hall.

Every March, we host the Polish Film Festival Kinoteka with the crème de la crème of Polish cinematography being screened at the Riverside Studios, Prince Charles Cinema, BFI Southbank and the Barbican.

Don’t forget to grab a Polish read. Books by established writers such as MiÅ‚osz, KapuÅ›ciÅ„ski and Mrożek, as well as contemporaries including Huelle, Tokarczuk and Krajewski, are available in every good bookshop. And for a real literary treat, visit the British Library and ask for the Polish Collection, to see the historical gems as old as 15th century.

So no excuses - Polish London is out there and within easy reach!

Check out the Polish Cultural Institute website www.PolishCulture.org.uk for regular updates on what’s to come. And let us know your Polish London recommendations below…

London’s Photographers’ Gallery will close on 19 September for major redevelopment. When the gallery reopens in late 2011 it will boast three floors of gallery space, a ground floor café, a bigger bookshop, better accessibility and a whole floor dedicated to learning.

“We’re bursting at the seams,” said the gallery’s director Brett Rogers. “With the Sally Mann show, we’ve been getting eight to 10 thousand visitors a week.”

The new gallery will have room for larger scale works and more exhibitions.  It will also respond to the changing landscape of photography, with a digital wall where members of the public can upload their own photos.

During the closure, look out for pop-up Photographers’ Gallery exhibitions around London:

• FrenchMottershead will take to the streets of Soho with their quirky, interactive work
• Anders Petersen will invite people to be photographed in his London hotel room
• Fiona Tan will create an exhibition based on Londoners’ family albums
• The Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2011 will take place at Ambika P3

The gallery’s lecture series will also continue at various London venues, including a series of “photography socials” at Soho pubs and bars.

For more information see www.photonet.org.uk

According to Golden Union, Joseph Malin set up the first chip shop in Cleveland Street in London’s East End in 1860 on this date.

To celebrate the momentous occasion, Golden Union is offering the first 150 customers through their door on 16 August a fish and chips meal for £1.50 each. Good luck!

It got us wondering, where do you go for London’s best fish and chips?

This week, we’ve spotted this great video from lebensgeniesser1, although the credits say it was written by Dave Hughes, with co-writers Chris, Fiona, James, Joleen, Niamh, Richard, and Stuart.

They describe it as follows:

an experiment — mixing (a) old friends, (b) new friends, (c) the capital city of a kingdom, (d) 1,200 photos, and (e) late afternoon ice cream in the park.

It certainly looks like they had a great time. Look out for the V&A, Harrods, Hyde Park and Old Compton Street in Soho on a pretty packed day out in London. Plus great music from The Killers!

This new seven-day long celebration of all things 1960s includes everything from a look at mod fashion to special film screenings, 60s music from upcoming bands, and architecture tours.

London was at the heart of the swinging 1960s cultural revolution; with Carnaby Street, Soho and Kings Road among the hippest places to hang out.

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the decade of peace, love, and harmony, the festival provides the opportunity for those who were not around to learn about 60s culture, and for those who were to reminisce.

Chair of London 60s Week, Chris Pleydell, said: “There seemed to me to be a void in our communication between one generation and another. This project’s sole goal is to reach between these two generations…from the ones who are making cultural history now to those that have already put their stamp on the UK’s history.”

Visit www.london60sweek.co.uk for more information on events and locations. Events continue until 25th July.