My mother is the oldest of five siblings, most of whom grew up in New York’s Chinatown. They are voracious eaters and bargain hunters, and lifelong visitors to Chinese neighborhoods everywhere. When we talk about a good Chinatown, we point to certain signs: live fish for sale, dragon eyes in sidewalk produce displays, smokers, crowds.

A few years ago, I wrote a book about American Chinatowns and my family’s history in them. People often ask, “What’s your favorite Chinatown?” or “What do you look for?” I wondered if there was a shorthand I could offer, to sum up the best of the best. And so: fish, dragons, smoke, crowds.

Live fish mean that there are enough people buying to make the trouble of caring for the seafood worthwhile. The dragon eye — longan in Cantonese — is a strange fruit, a sweet, subtly fragrant exotic with coarse, sandpapery skin. Shaped like, well, an eyeball, it slips out of its brown covering to reveal translucent white flesh, with a hard mahogany seed inside. You have to know how to eat it, by cracking the whole thing open like a peanut. Chinese people are crazy for longan. Like the aforementioned fish, its presence indicates a recently arrived populace desiring a range of fresh food — some of it still swimming — not usually seen in the corner grocery.

The smokers? In the United States the smoking rate is at a new low. Not so in China; it’s the world’s biggest consumer of cigarettes. As strange as it may seem, smoking is a strong cultural indicator that a Chinatown continues to serve a vibrant population of immigrants. A Chinese restaurant with a bunch of cooks smoking out back, or customers puffing while waiting for a table? Worth a try! It’s one that’s less likely to be Americanized.