Chinese Australians
As a whole, Australian residents identifying themselves as having Chinese ancestry made up 5.6% of those nominating their ancestry at the 2016 census and numbered 1,213,903. At the 2016 census, 509,555 people declared that they were born in Mainland China, 86,886 declared that they were born in Hong Kong, while 46,882 declared that they were born in Taiwan. There are also a large number of persons of Chinese ancestry among those born in Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines and Vietnam.
Chinatowns in Australia
Melbourne's Chinatown is in Little Bourke Street. It is notable as the oldest Chinatown in Australia, the oldest continuous Chinese settlement in Australia, and the longest continuously running Chinatown outside of Asia. Suburban Chinese communities, of a mostly Cantonese culture, are in Doncaster, Box Hill, Springvale and Glen Waverley. Melbourne's Chinatown boasts some world-famous cuisine, Flower Drum for example was voted as one of the best Chinese restaurants in the world by the New York Times. It was also the location where the Dim Sim, a popular Chinese-Australian snackfood commonly served in takeaway outlets throughout the country, was first invented by William Wing Young, at his restaurant "Wing Lee", in 1945. Gift shops and souvenir shops also make up a large proportion of businesses. Melbourne Chinatown also houses the world's longest annually paraded Chinese dragon in the Melbourne Chinese Museum. This record is believed to have been held by the city since 1978 when the original "Dai Loong" dragon was commissioned, which was also the first Chinese dragon built in China since 1948. It was 92 metres long, had 6160 scales on its body and was initially paraded with a procession involving over 200 participants. In 2003, it was replaced with a new dragon, the Millennium Dragon, which was deliberately crafted in order to retain the record, and required 8 people to hold its head up. This later dragon is also locally known as Dai Loong, as some parts of the original 1978 dragon were reconditioned for use in the new dragon.