Abstract：Although the urban-geographical research in China has made great achievements, it has not be linked with cultural-geographical inquiry yet. This paper is a result of a FEp program, sponsored by the Canadian government. The author investigates the "ethnic island" in Montreal under the influence of North American geographers. The concept of "ethnic island" is not created by Chinese geographists. It has been introduced in several foreign geographical books. "Ethnic island" means a residential district in which an ethnic group inhabits. These "ethnic islanks" can exist both in urban and rural areas. Such districts must have obvious differences from their neighbourhoods in inner and outer cultural characteristics. This paper tries to describe the emergence, distribution and the shaping factors of Montreal's "ethnic islands", then find a new way of research for urban geography and cultural geography in China.
