Monterey Park transformed the Chinese American experience, NYT, Jan. 23, 2023.
Known as the first suburban Chinatown, the city would spearhead massive demographic changes across Southern California.
There are few places in the United States that hold greater significance to the Chinese American community than Monterey Park, Calif.
Known as the first suburban Chinatown, the city owes its changes to the late Chinese American real estate developer Fred Hsieh, who promoted the community about seven miles east of downtown Los Angeles as the “Chinese Beverly Hills.”
His vision would ignite a demographic transformation starting in the 1970s as Monterey Park and the neighboring city of Alhambra welcomed more and more middle-class ethnic Chinese residents from both home and abroad. In 1983, the city made history by naming its first Chinese American female mayor, Lily Lee Chen.
Delegations from China and Taiwan made a point of visiting Monterey Park on trips to Los Angeles. Monterey Park’s development mirrored the changes taking place thousands of miles away in Asia. While many of the first ethnic Chinese residents in the city came from Hong Kong and Taiwan, it would increasingly take in arrivals from mainland China starting around 2000 as the world’s most populous country experienced historic economic growth. Trade between the United States and China compelled more wealthy Chinese immigrants to plant roots in the city, but it also made it a destination for undocumented immigrants, who were funneled into jobs in the suburb’s many restaurants, nail salons and massage parlors.