Historically there has been a population of Chinese Americans in Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area. As of 2010, there were 393,488 Chinese Americans in Los Angeles County, 4.0% of the county's population, and 66,782 Chinese Americans in the city of Los Angeles (1.8% of the total population). [1]
The historian William Mason stated that the first Chinese in Los Angeles were Ah Luce and Ah Fou, who arrived in 1850. [2] In his memoirs, Harris Newmark stated that the first Chinese person was the servant of his uncle, Joseph Newmark. [3]
The Chinese massacre of 1871 was a racially motivated riot which occurred on October 24, 1871 in Los Angeles, when a mob of around 500 white men entered Chinatown to attack, rob, and murder Chinese residents of the city. [4] [5] An estimated 17 to 20 Chinese immigrants were systematically tortured and then hanged by the mob, making the event the largest mass lynching in American history. [5] [6]
By 1900, there were about 3,000 Chinese in the city. Most residents of the old Chinatown came from Sanyi (San Yup) and Siyi (Sze Yup) in Guangdong. The Old Chinatown began to decline as more Chinese left. The Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal, built in 1933, was built over much of the former Old Chinatown, so a new Chinatown was established after Peter SooHoo Sr. and Herbert Lapham, an agent for the Santa Fe Railway, negotiated a land purchase for what would become the new Chinatown. [7]
Christine Sterling, a civic leader, developed "China City," a tourist attraction which opened in 1938. Chinese working there also lived there. After two fires, "China City" decayed and was gone by the 1950s. To make way for the Hollywood Freeway, almost all of the remainder of old Chinatown was destroyed in 1951. The remaining portions were parts of Sanchez Alley and Garnier Block. [8]
More Chinese, especially those from Hong Kong, immigrated to Los Angeles after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (Hart-Cellar Act) passed. By the end of the 20th Century many Chinese began moving to suburbs such as Monterey Park, Alhambra, Arcadia, and Rosemead. [8] By 2013, large numbers of ethnic Chinese moved into communities in the San Gabriel Valley, including San Gabriel, San Marino, and Walnut. [9]
The 2015 Rowland Heights, California bullying incident involved Chinese nationals living in the Los Angeles area.
The San Gabriel Valley has a large Chinese population. Much of the Chinese immigrants are from Taiwan and Hong Kong. The population is concentrated in the cities of Monterey Park and Alhambra.
The Chinese American Museum is located in Downtown Los Angeles. The Chinese Historical Society of Southern California is located in Los Angeles, California. [10]
Previously Cantonese was a major spoken language among the Los Angeles area Chinese. By 2022 Mandarin Chinese was becoming more dominant. [11]
As of 2006 most of the Greater Los Angeles Chinese supplementary educational schools are located in Chinese communities, serving mostly ethnic Chinese, in the San Gabriel Valley. The ethnic Chinese students come from various ethnic Chinese backgrounds. The weekend schools have a tendency of attracting clientele from wider areas while daily programs have a tendency of attracting nearby students. [12]
As of 1993 Saturday morning Chinese language programs in the San Gabriel Valley had about 10,000 Chinese American children as students. That year Chinese schools held classes in four Rowland Unified School District elementary school campuses. [13] As of 2006, the Southern California Chinese Consumer Yellow Pages had a listing of such institutes, stating that there were 135 academic after school tutoring establishments, with buxibans among them. The same directory listed 90 Chinese language schools, 90 dancing and music schools, and 50 art centers and schools. [12]
The weekend Chinese schools, in addition to Saturday classes, also held classes on summer weekdays and in after-school periods on other weekdays. As of 1993 the yearly tuition of a weekend Chinese school for children ranged $200 to $300 (with inflation accounted for, $405.16 to $607.74) per person. Classes were generally held from 8:30 AM to 12:30 PM. Some public schools in the San Gabriel Valley distributed foreign language credits to students of Chinese schools. [13]
11 Los Angeles area Chinese weekend schools in Los Angeles County co-founded the Southern California Council of Chinese Schools in 1976. In 1993 this council operated Chinese schools in California and Arizona, and that year almost all of the San Gabriel Valley Chinese schools belonged to this council. [13]
The Hacienda Heights Area Chinese School, which opened in 1982, initially held classes in a church and had about 100 students. In 1984 it moved to Dibble Adult School. In 1990 it began holding classes at Cedarlane Junior High School due to an expanding student body. As of 1993 it had about 550 students. [13]
Michael Chen co-founded the Ming Yuan Institute, held at St. Steven's Catholic School in Monterey Park, in 1987. As of 1993 the school had 750 students in its main Saturday program in Monterey Park and 50 students at a branch campus in Rowland Heights. [13]
The San Fernando Valley Chinese School was founded in 1971 and had sponsorship from the San Fernando Valley Chinese Cultural Association. As of 1988 it holds its classes in Andasol Elementary School in Northridge. [14]
Monterey Park is a city in the western San Gabriel Valley region of Los Angeles County, California, United States, approximately seven miles (11 km) east of the Downtown Los Angeles civic center. It is bordered by Alhambra, East Los Angeles, Montebello and Rosemead. The city's motto is "Pride in the past, Faith in the future".
Rowland Heights is an unincorporated area in and below the Puente Hills in the San Gabriel Valley, in Los Angeles County, California, United States. The population was 48,231 at the 2020 census. Rowland Heights is in the Los Angeles metropolitan area and represented by the County of Los Angeles and is the largest census designated place in Los Angeles County by area and the county's fourth largest CDP by population. The area has a high Taiwanese population and was known as “Little Taipei” in the 1980s and 1990s, when it saw an influx of wealthy immigrants from Taiwan.
Taiwanese Americans are Americans who carry full or partial ancestry from Taiwan. This includes American-born citizens who descend from migrants from Taiwan.
The San Gabriel Valley, often referred to by its initials as SGV, is one of the principal valleys of Southern California, lying immediately to the east of the eastern limits of the city of Los Angeles and occupying the vast majority of the southeastern part of Los Angeles County. Surrounding landforms and other features include the following:
Chinatown is a neighborhood in Downtown Los Angeles, California, that became a commercial center for Chinese and other Asian businesses in Central Los Angeles in 1938. The area includes restaurants, shops, and art galleries, but also has a residential neighborhood with a low-income, aging population of about 7,800 residents.
Sam Woo Restaurant (三和) is a restaurant chain that serves Hong Kong-style cuisine. It has many locations in predominantly overseas Chinese communities of Southern California, in Las Vegas, and in the suburbs of Toronto. "Sam Woo" is a romanization of the Cantonese pronunciation for "triple harmonies," in reference to feng shui principles, including the synthesis of heaven, earth, and humanity. The complete Chinese name (三和燒臘麵家) would translate literally into English as "Three Harmonies Roast Meats and Noodle House."
Hong Kong Supermarket is an Asian American supermarket chain started in the San Gabriel Valley region of Southern California. It operates mainly in the newer suburban overseas Chinese communities, particularly in the Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and New York City areas. Hong Kong Supermarket specializes mainly in imported Asian groceries. Many items are from Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
Shun Fat Supermarket is a Chinese Vietnamese American supermarket chain in the San Gabriel Valley region in California, Sacramento, California, San Pablo, California, Las Vegas, Nevada, Portland, Oregon and Garland, Texas.
Frederic Shu Kong Hsieh was a Chinese-born American realtor and investor who "founded" the first Chinese American suburban community of Monterey Park, California by purchasing and reselling plots of abandoned land in the city at premium prices to Chinese investors from Taiwan. In addition, he heavily promoted Monterey Park in newspapers of Hong Kong and Taiwan to encourage prospective Chinese emigrants to move to the city. In the early 1970s, he predicted that the then-predominantly Caucasian city of Monterey Park and the San Gabriel Valley would serve as an anchor for new ethnic Chinese immigrants as an alternative to the old Chinatown in Los Angeles, but it was immediately dismissed and brushed off as mere speculation at the time.
The Asian-American influx to the San Gabriel Valley grew rapidly when Chinese began settling in Monterey Park, California, in the western San Gabriel Valley in the 1970s. Just east of Los Angeles, the region has achieved international prominence as a hub of overseas Chinese, or hua qiao. Although Chinese immigrants were a noteworthy presence in the establishment of Southern California from the 19th century, significant Chinese migration to suburban San Gabriel Valley coincided with a trend of white out-migration from the 1970s onward. This opened an opportunity for middle-class Asian Americans to begin settling in the San Gabriel Valley.
Wah Ching, meaning Chinese Youth, is a Chinese American criminal organization and street gang that was founded in San Francisco, California in 1964. The Wah Ching has been involved in crimes including narcotic sales, racketeering and gambling.
The Los Angeles Chinese massacre of 1871 was a racial massacre targeting Chinese immigrants in Los Angeles, California, United States that occurred on October 24, 1871. Approximately 500 white and Hispanic Americans attacked, harassed, robbed, and murdered the ethnic Chinese residents in what is today referred to as the old Chinatown neighborhood. The massacre took place on Calle de los Negros, also referred to as "Negro Alley". The mob gathered after hearing that a policeman and a rancher had been killed as a result of a conflict between rival tongs, the Nin Yung, and Hong Chow. As news of their death spread across the city, fueling rumors that the Chinese community "were killing whites wholesale", more men gathered around the boundaries of Negro Alley. A few 21st-century sources have described this as the largest mass lynching in American history.
Valley Boulevard is a street in Southern California, running east from Los Angeles to Pomona, where it becomes Holt Boulevard, and a continuation from Fontana to Colton. It generally parallels Interstate 10 (I-10) and State Route 60 (CA 60), and is the original alignment of U.S. Route 60 (US 60). The present north end of I-710 is at Valley Boulevard in Los Angeles, just west of Alhambra.
The Ramón C. Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts, known unofficially as “VAPA” by students, is a performing arts public high school in the Los Angeles Unified School District in the United States. It is located on the site of the old Fort Moore at the corner of Grand Avenue and Cesar E. Chavez Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, adjacent to Chinatown. Grand Arts anchors the north end of Los Angeles' "Grand Avenue Cultural Corridor". The school's distinctive architecture has made the facility noteworthy beyond the Los Angeles area.
Chinatowns are enclaves of Chinese people outside of China. The first Chinatown in the United States was San Francisco's Chinatown in 1848, and many other Chinatowns were established in the 19th century by the Chinese diaspora on the West Coast. By 1875, Chinatowns had emerged in eastern cities such as New York City, Boston, and Philadelphia. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 barred Chinese immigration to the United States, but the Magnuson Act of 1943 repealed it, and the population of Chinatowns began to rise again. In the 2010s, the downturn in the U.S. economy caused many Chinese Americans to return to China.
Asian Californians are residents of the state of California who are of Asian ancestry. California has the largest Asian American population in the U.S., and second highest proportion of Asian American residents, after Hawaii. As of the 2020 U.S. Census, there were over 6 million Asian-Americans in California; 15.5% of the state's population. If including those with partial Asian ancestry, this figure is around 17%. This is a jump from 13.8% recorded in 2010.
The 1990 United States census and 2000 United States census found that non-Hispanic whites were becoming a minority in Los Angeles. Estimates for the 2010 United States census results find Latinos to be approximately half (47-49%) of the city's population, growing from 40% in 2000 and 30-35% in 1990 census.
There is a large Taiwanese and Taiwanese American community in the Greater Los Angeles Area. The Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana metropolitan area had a Taiwanese population of 83,294 as of 2008. At 24.3% of the total Taiwanese-American population, the Taiwanese community in Greater Los Angeles represents the largest Taiwanese community in the United States.
Chinese American church refers to Christian churches in the United States made up of predominantly ethnic Chinese congregations.
Old Chinatown, or original Chinatown, is a retronym that refers to the location of a former Chinese-American ethnic enclave enforced by legal segregation that existed near downtown Los Angeles, California in the United States from the 1860s until the 1930s. Old Chinatown included the former Calle de los Negros and extended east across Alameda Street to Apablasa, Benjamin, Jeannete, Juan, Marchessault, and Macy Streets. This Chinatown was at its commercial and communal peak between 1890 and 1910.
There were 17. It was the largest mass lynching in American history.
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