Chinatown

1. conglomeration of predominantly chinese businesses and culture. (Other ethnicities have other "districts," for example, Little Tokyo would be comprised of mostly japanese businesses.) 2. A drama thriller made in 1974 directed by Roman Polanski and staring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway about drought-ridden '30s L.A., corruption, weird family relations, and a divorce specializing private detective; spawned the phrase "it's Chinatown" - the phrase is used to refer to a situation that is impossible to deal with due to the fact that it is the result of issues imbedded in a tangled web of too many people's personal problems and/or ambitions, greed, or deviance, and that there is nothing one person on the outside of that web can do to set everything right because the whole situation is too fucked up.