Chinatown is turning 100.

There’s hardly a mystical tale behind it, but it’s been a century since the first Chinese businesses opened up in the area centered around Cermak Road and Wentworth Avenue.

Chi Can To, executive director of the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, says his organization isn’t planning any single celebration to mark the centennial. Instead they’ll add a little extra pizzaz to this year’s events in Chinatown.

Things will kick off with the Lunar New Year Parade on Jan. 29, which marks another auspicious year for Chinese folks, not just in Chicago but all over the world: the year of the dragon.

“It’s particularly special that our 100th year falls in the year of the dragon,” To said. “The dragon year is very important in Chinese culture.”

According to the Chinese-American Museum of Chicago, the first Chinese-owned businesses in the area opened in 1912 on Cermak, inside a building run by the On Leong Merchants Association. Many Chinese businesses had been located around Clark and Van Buren streets before that, but rising rents and a growing population that needed more space to live pushed them to move elsewhere.

“Landlords started raising rents downtown,” said Soo Lon Moy, exhibition curator at the Chinese-American Museum of Chicago. “At Cermak and Wentworth, the rents were lower, but it was seedier, too.”

Another huge factor was a turf war between Chinese factions. The rivalry was one of many that flared up across the nation, known as the Tong Wars. Battling tribes of Chinese gangs fought over women, turf, drugs and more.

So one “tong,” the On Leong, decamped for Cermak in 1912.

Much of Chinatown was composed of the On Leong Merchants Association’s holdings, starting with a low-slung building on Cermak. Only a few years later, with the Chinese population booming, they built a much bigger structure on the corner of Cermak at Wentworth: the On Leong Merchants Association building, one of the most distinctive facilities in Chinatown. Built in 1928, its distinctive towers stand out on the corner and for years it was known as Chinatown’s city hall.

Around that same time, what is now Chinatown’s oldest restaurant opened: Won Kow, at 2337 S. Wentworth. The restaurant’s 84-year-old owner, Peter Huey, says he used to come to the restaurant when he first moved to the U.S. 60 years ago.

Huey said he bought the place 20 years ago and completely remodeled it, but decided not to change the name.

“The name was here so long, so I just kept it,” Huey said.

A lot of other things have shifted around him though.

“The neighborhood has been changing a lot,” he said. “It used to be when I walked out I knew everybody, and now, not so much.”

Indeed, Huey moved during perhaps the biggest boom in Chinatown’s expansion. When the People’s Republic of China was formed in 1949, it locked a lot of Chicago’s Chinese population into the U.S. and fostered a strong period of growth in the community.

That was hampered by the decision to pin the community in with expressways on three sides when the Dan Ryan and Stevenson were built in the 1960s. But the neighborhood continued growing nonetheless, as denser high-rises gradually made their way into the community.

Eventually, many of the people in Chinatown moved out of the area. It has become a landing pad of sorts for Chinese immigrants, which puts real estate at a premium and also tends to encourage people to stay only temporarily.

“The highways kind of stopped Chinatown’s expansion,” Moy said. “These days, this is the port of entry for immigrants, and then they move on to other neighboring areas and suburbs.”

But Huey said he finds that when people come back to visit Chinatown, they’re overjoyed to see his restaurant is still around.

“A lot of customers come in and say they came here when they were kids,” Huey said. “They like to visit when they come back to the city just to see if it’s still here.”