Sino-California
By Jane Mack-Cozzo

Between 1990 and 2000, Southern California’s San Gabriel Valley (an area just east of Los Angeles that often hatches trends which later spread across the nation) absorbed a large wave of Chinese immigrants. The only U.S. locality which got more Chinese was New York City (though as a percentage increase, places like South Carolina and Arkansas had the decade’s sharpest increases in Chinese arrivals).

 

The largest concentration of Chinese can be found in Monterey Park and San Gabriel (which has a Chinese mayor). As early as the 1990s, the Chinese had become a majority in this area. The influx has been so great that at times a visitor is hard-pressed to know whether he’s in Hong Kong, Taipei, Guangzhou, or greater Los Angeles. At least one Taiwanese realtor regularly advertises Monterey Park homes for sale in Taipei. Every day, Chinese tour buses disgorge visiting passengers for extended shopping excursions. The Chinese- run stores make them feel at home.

 

In the 1980s, city fathers passed an ordinance requiring Chinese-language signs to include English translations, but at this point there is no resisting the dominance of Chinese culture in the area. Writer Kenneth Timmerman has called the San Gabriel Valley China’s “23rd province.” No less than seven of the valley’s communities now have a majority Chinese population. In these places, Chinese immigrants dominate community life, including public offices (most often as Democrats).

 

This inflow of Chinese is an example of what demographers call “chain migration.” Anchor families bring over relatives, friends, and extended family. They set up computer manufacturing businesses, financial institutions, small grocery stores, and restaurants, which mostly employ and serve fellow immigrants. Because the state of California administers driver’s license tests in Mandarin and Cantonese, there is no need for Chinese immigrants to learn English, and as many as a third have not done so. Why should they? The four-inch-thick Chinese Yellow Page directory provides countless tradesmen, physicians, real estate agents, and attorneys fluent in a variety of dialects.

 

This massive immigration has displaced previous residents, and huge Chinese shopping centers have replaced older non-Chinese businesses, even chain stores like Target. Public libraries offer an increasing number of Chinese-language books, magazines, and newspapers. From the core unassimilated areas there is not only “white flight” but also growing Chinese flight. As they achieve financial prosperity, many Chinese are moving to wealthier adjacent communities, not only within the San Gabriel Valley, but also in Riverside and Orange counties.

 

San Marino, an affluent town with top-notch schools, has long been the most desired destination for Chinese from Hong Kong and Taiwan. An average house price of $1.5 million hasn’t deterred wealthy Chinese from coming in ever-increasing numbers. At one point there was local controversy over “parachute families”—Chinese teenagers living alone in houses their Hong Kong or Taiwanese parents had bought so their children could attend San Marino high school (rated number two in the state). This practice was curtailed when some of the unsupervised teens were kidnapped.

 

Today, the Chinese are nearly a majority in San Marino, and the high school is 71 percent Asian (predominately Chinese). Chinese parents press for their children’s acceptance at prestigious universities. Many local Chinese students go to tutoring academies after high school hours, modeled after the so-called “cram schools” that are ubiquitous in Asia.

 

Local housing ordinances have had to be adapted to prevent the transformation of single-family homes into multi-family dwellings. San Marino has enacted an ordinance delineating square footages allowable per resident. There are new prohibitions on the conversion of garages to housing. In response to different cultural norms, local residents have demanded rules requiring the storage of trash receptacles in back (not front) yards. Dead lawns and bushes are now prohibited.

 

There has also been a heated debate over the removal or radical pruning of trees (particularly the large California oaks which line the city’s streets) by Chinese arrivals who believe the trees bring bad luck. Though cutting down street trees is now illegal, some continue to die mysteriously—by poisoning, it’s generally acknowledged.

 

All part of life in today’s new “suburban Chinatowns.”

 

 

Jane Mack-Cozzo is a TAE contributing writer.