THE NAME IS becoming a little anachronistic. Many of the restaurants and shops in this 18-block district just northeast of the Old City are now owned by Vietnamese and Thai immigrants, who arrived in Montreal in the wake of 20th-century upheavals in Southeast Asia.

The Chinese, however, were here first. They began arriving in large numbers after 1880, along with many European immigrants, and stuck together in this corner of the city in an attempt to avoid discrimination.

As they grew more prosperous, many of the descendants of the first immigrants moved to wealthier areas, leaving Chinatown to the old and to the newly arrived. Many thousands of them now return on weekends, and the narrow streets are busy with people shopping for silk, souvenirs, vegetables, records, and barbecued meat.

Restaurants specialize in a range of cuisines, serving Szechuan, Cantonese, Thai, Vietnamese, and Korean food, and the air is fragrant with the smell of hot barbecued pork and aromatic noodles.

For those seeking respite from the bustle, there is a lovely little garden dedicated to the charismatic Chinese leader Sun Yat-sen on Clarke Street. Other features of the area include two large, Chinese-style arches which span de la Gauchetière Street, and a pair of authentic pagodas on the roof of the modern Holiday Inn hotel.