Escorts in Chinatown, W1D: who is close, and how soon
Chinatown fills a small pocket of W1D between Shaftesbury Avenue and Leicester Square, bounded by Charing Cross Road on the east and Wardour Street on the west, with Gerrard Street running through the middle and Lisle Street alongside it. After ten at night, when much of the West End is stacking its chairs, this is one of the few corners still wide awake, and for Chinatown escorts that late hour is the whole reason to come.
No name on the board has a Chinatown address, but three live just across Shaftesbury Avenue in Soho, and when a message names W1D the office looks at who is nearest as well as who is free. What follows is the district from the end of the evening performances into the small hours: what stays lit, how the streets change as the night goes on, and how a late night here tends to finish.
On the ground
Chinatown in practice
Landmarks on the arrival slip
By postcode, never by nameWC2H 7DX, W1D 7DT, W1D 3SE, WC2N 4HX, W1D 3JA.
Nearest stations
Walking timeLeicester Square, 2 minutes. Piccadilly Circus, 4 minutes. Tottenham Court Road, 7 minutes.
Getting there
W1DTravel is included across Zones 1 and 2, and counted from the moment the hour is set rather than from when she leaves.
On the board
Nearest prints to Chinatown
Who works here
On the board in Chinatown
The eight prints above are a first shortlist for Chinatown tonight. Any of the twenty eight on the who is free page can be asked for by name instead.
Note 02
Gerrard Street after ten
The early evening belongs to families and groups round large tables. By ten the mix has turned over: audiences out of the theatres on Shaftesbury Avenue, people from the late screenings on Leicester Square, and people who work late elsewhere in the West End, all of them after supper. Gerrard Street is closed to traffic, so the crowd walks down the middle of the road rather than along the kerb, under rows of red lanterns strung from one side to the other.
The windows set the mood. Roast meats hang behind the glass at the counters, bakeries keep trays of buns and custard tarts on show until they close, and the menus by the doors are printed in two scripts. At this hour the carved gates at the ends of the street are more than decoration: they are the easiest way to say which end of Chinatown you mean.
Note 03
Kitchens that outlast the curtain
Chinatown has long kept later hours than the streets around it, and some of its kitchens still take orders well after midnight. The late trade is its own kind of eating: bowls of noodles and congee, roast pork on rice, clay pots, and the hot pot rooms where a broth simmers in the middle of each table and a meal lasts as long as the conversation does. None of it is formal, and nobody minds what time you sit down.
Dessert keeps going too. The shops selling bubble tea, sweet buns and iced desserts stay busy into the late evening, which suits a night when dinner was eaten elsewhere and all that is wanted now is something sweet and a stroll. Opening hours differ from door to door, so the street itself is a better guide than any list.
Note 04
The side streets once the shutters come down
Away from Gerrard Street the district quietens in stages. The grocers and herbalists on Newport Place and Newport Court close well before the restaurants, and the short lanes towards Charing Cross Road go still while the main street is still full. Lisle Street, one block south, keeps its dining rooms lit later, with less of a crowd, and after midnight it is the calmer of the two long streets.
Macclesfield Street, the short link north to Shaftesbury Avenue, carries a steady trickle of people late at night, most of them heading out of the district rather than into it. By then the lanterns give most of the light, and Chinatown feels smaller and more private than it did at nine.
Note 05
The square and the Circus on either side
South of Lisle Street the district opens into Leicester Square, where the big cinemas run their last showings late and the square stays lit and populated long after the shops round it have shut. It is the obvious place for a late film before supper, or a turn round the square after it, and it gives an evening a second wind if one is wanted.
To the west, along Coventry Street, the illuminated screens of Piccadilly Circus stay lit through the night above the junction. North, beyond Shaftesbury Avenue, the small streets of Soho keep their own late hours in bars and clubs, and that is where a night that is not ready to end generally drifts.
Note 06
How the night ends here
Sooner or later even these kitchens close, and the lanterns are left hanging over an empty street. Leicester Square is the nearest station for the Underground, and night buses run along Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue; which trains are still running depends on the night of the week, so check before relying on one. For a hotel guest the walk is usually simpler: the hotels in the panel above, in W1D, WC2H and WC2N, are a few streets off rather than a journey.
If the evening is to carry on in a room, allow about an hour from the office's confirmation for her to get there, longer while the theatre and cinema crowds are leaving together, and see the rates for every length. Escorts in Chinatown suit a late start better than an early one, because the district is at its best once the rest of the West End has gone home.
From The Roundup
Two notes worth reading for Chinatown
Asked most often
Chinatown, asked and answered
Does the rest of W1D stay up as late as Chinatown?
Which streets here are liveliest after midnight?
Where can we still eat at one in the morning?
Can the evening start after a show lets out?
One zone either way
Next along from Chinatown
Last strip
Say a name and an hour
Write in with a length, a time and the zone you are staying in, and a name from the board comes back with a window attached. That is the whole of the arrangement.