The Chinese Community

Compiled by Clifton L. Holland

In addition to the Historic Chinatown in downtown Los Angeles, there are several Chinese communities in the Greater Los Angeles Area that are not officially classified as "Chinatowns", but are well known, such as Monterey Park, where over 60 percent of the population is Asian American, and San Gabriel (where the Asian population is approaching 50 percent).

The 2000 Census listed 329,352 Chinese residents in Los Angeles County and 59,717 in Orange County, for a total of 469,534. 

Maps of the Chinese population in Los Angeles

The American Cities Atlas Project is a continuing public education project of Professor William Bowen of California State University Northridge. For maps on Chinese population distribution and density in Los Angeles County based on 1990 Census see: 
http://130.166.124.2/LA_Pop.html

The IDEA Strategic Mapping and Information Service, directed by Clifton L. Holland, has produced a series of computer maps on ethnic and religious diversity in the Los Angeles 5-County Region, based on the 1990 Census of Population.    See the following links:   

Los Angeles County:   ../laco/chinese.pdf (note PDF format).    Orange County:   ../orco/d-as-chin.pdf (note PDF format).

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Old Chinatown in Los Angeles

Between 1852 (when the first Chinese immigrants were reported to be in Los Angeles) and 1890 a distinct community of over 3,000 Chinese people flourished. This original Chinatown was located between El Pueblo Plaza and Old Arcadia Street, stretching eastward across Alameda Street.

In 1871, 19 Chinese men and boys were murdered by a mob of 500 locals in one of the most serious incidents of racial violence that has ever occurred in America's West. This incident became known as "Chinese Massacre of 1871".

Reaching its heyday from 1890 to 1910, Chinatown grew to approximately 15 streets and alleys containing 200 buildings. It was large enough to boast a Chinese Opera theatre, three temples, its own newspaper, and a telephone exchange. But laws prohibiting most Chinese from citizenship and property ownership, and Exclusion Acts curtailing immigration, inhibited future growth for the district.

From the early 1910s Chinatown began to decline. Symptoms of a corrupt Los Angeles discolored the public's view of Chinatown; gambling houses, opium dens, and a fierce tong warfare severely reduced business in the area. As tenants and lessees rather than outright owners, the residents of Old Chinatown were threatened with impending redevelopment and as a result the owners neglected upkeep on their buildings. Eventually, the entire area was sold and resold, as entrepreneurs and town developers fought over usage of the area. After 30 years of continual decay, a Supreme Court ruling approved condemnation of the entire area to allow for the construction of the new major rail terminal, Union Station.

Seven years passed before an acceptable relocation proposal was put into place, situating Chinatown in its present day location. During that long hiatus, the entire area of Old Chinatown was demolished, leaving many businesses without a location, and forcing some of them to close permanently. Nonetheless, it is not commonly known that a remnant of Old Chinatown persisted into the early 1950s, situated between Union Station and the Old Plaza. A narrow, one-block street known as Ferguson Alley ran between the Plaza and Alameda, and was the location of a Buddhist temple and several businesses.

In the late 1950s the covenants on the use and ownership of property were removed, allowing Chinese Americans to live in other neighborhoods and gain access to new types of employment.

The New Chinatown

In the 1930s, under the efforts of Chinese American community leader Peter Soo Hoo, the design and operational concepts for a New Chinatown evolved through the collective community process, resulting in a blend of both Chinese and American architecture. The Los Angeles Chinatown saw major development, especially as a tourist attraction, throughout the 1930s with the development of the "Central Plaza]", a Hollywoodized version of Shanghai, containing names such as Bamboo Lane, Gin Ling Way and Chung King Road (named after the city of Chongqing in mainland China).  Chinatown was designed by Hollywood film set designers and a "Chinese" movie prop was subsequently donated by the legendary film director Cecil B. DeMille to give Chinatown an exotic atmosphere. Today, this section of Chinatown is less frequented by ethnic Chinese residents and dayshoppers, though it is where several benevolent associations are located. Chinatown expanded beyond the area and is now bounded by Olvera Street and Dodger Stadium.

While Chinatown generally does not have the activity of Chinatown, San Francisco—still regarded as the largest and most historic Chinatown in North America because of the huge Chinese population in that city—it still attracts visitors throughout the Los Angeles area and throughout the world. However, there are many businesses in Chinatown that generally cater mainly to the local community rather than the tourism economy.

Many of the older buildings built in the 1930s and 1940s in the northeast corner of New Chinatown (near the Pasadena Freeway) were previously abandoned. As part of gentrification movement, they are now primarily used as art galleries by artists. It has also been turned into a center of nightlife.

There is relatively little social interaction between these artists and business owners and the Chinatown Chinese-speaking residents. Many elderly residents usually lounge in the court of Central Plaza.  The historic Hop Sing Tong Society is located in Central Plaza, as are several other Chinatown lodges and guilds.

New Chinatown is served by the Gold Line of the city's Metro Rail; parts of Old Chinatown were uncovered during excavation for another portion of the L.A. subway (the Red Line connection to Union Station). The Metro Rail station in Chinatown has been designed with modernized traditional Chinese architecture.

Chinatown's residential areas are on the hills northwest of Alpine Park, with a public elementary school, library, Chinese school, hospital, churches, and other businesses. In the mornings at Alpine Recreation Center, many Chinese-speaking old-timers practice the relaxing martial arts tai chi, a scene common in many Chinatowns.

Modern Location of Chinatown in Los Angeles

The main streets running through the new Chinatown are Broadway, Spring Street and Hill Street. Chinatown is located directly north of downtown Los Angeles, between Dodger Stadium and the Los Angeles Civic Center. The Broadway side of Chinatown is usually packed with a myriad of tourists, with a lot of Chinese restaurants and merchants.

Chinatown is somewhat segregated between Chinese ethnic groups in some respects. College Street, running in a northwest-southeast direction, provides a rough boundary between the older (post-1930s and 1940s) and newer businesses (post-1980s). Many businesses belonging to the original American-born Chinese families (Taishanese and Cantonese Chinese) are in the northwest area. Also due to the stylized exotic atmosphere, this section of Chinatown is very popular for on-site movie filming, such as Rush Hour with Jackie Chan. In the southwest, according to an estimate in the Los Angeles Times, nearly 90% of businesses are owned by first-generation Southeast Asian immigrants and refugees of Chinese origin.

New ethnic Chinese immigrants

As in most other Chinatowns in the United States, Taishanese (or Toisan)–a subdialect of Cantonese–was the dominant Chinese dialect of the Los Angeles Chinatown until the 1970s. In post-Vietnam War 1970s, some members of the Los Angeles lodge of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association headed to the Vietnamese refugee settlements in Camp Pendelton to talk and entice several refugees - especially ethnic Chinese from Vietnam - into settling into the once-diminishing Chinatown by sponsoring them. Thus, during the 1980s, Cantonese and especially Teochew (Pinyin: Chaozhou, Vietnamese: Trieu Chau) Chinese became more widely spoken as Chinatown experienced a rise in Vietnamese and Cambodians and Thais.  While Cantonese is still predominant and remains the lingua franca of Chinatown, the use of Taishanese has diminished in Los Angeles and its usage is more common among elderly Chinese within the area.

With the boom of de facto suburban Chinese communities in the eastern part of the Los Angeles area, there have been very few immigrants from the Republic of China - especially those with high socioeconomic status - to the downtown Chinatown. Mandarin is only used in some contexts in Chinatown and is not widely spoken there.

The arrival of new immigrants from Southeast Asia and Mainland China to Los Angeles Chinatown gave rise to new associations such as the Southern California Teo Chew Association (serving the Teochew speakers), the Cambodia Ethnic Chinese Association (catering to Chinese Cambodian residents), and the Southern California Fukienese Association and the Foo Chow Natives Benevolent Association (both serving immigrants from the Fujian province of Mainland China).

Many Vietnamese and Cambodian immigrants in the downtown Chinatown run small curiosity shops and bazaars in the shopping plazas such as Saigon Plaza and Dynasty Center—both built in the 1980s—south of Broadway. Today these immigrants and their families own nearly 90 percent of Chinatown's businesses. Most old-time and dying Chinese American (those of Taishanese and Cantonese descent) businesses are located in the old Chinatown Plaza.

ADAPTED FROM:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinatown,_Los_Angeles

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Add material from Michael E. Engh, Frontier Faiths:  Church, Temple and Synagogue in Los Angeles, 1846-1888 (pages 23-29):  early Chinese settlement in Los Angeles and religious beliefs; and chapter 6, "Evangelization of the Chinese."

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Exerpts from Edward Drewry Jervey, The History of Methodism in Southern California and Arizona.  Nashville, TN:  Parthenon Press for the Historical Society of the Southern California-Arizona Conference, 1960, pages 85-86 (California Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, North). 

The Chinese had first been brought to America in large numbers to help build the transcontinental railroad.  Through the efforts of the Rev. Otis Gibson of the California Conference [of the Methodist Episcopal Church, North], Christian service came to these people.  [Otis] was instrumental in establishing a school for them.  In 1870, he saw the dedication of a Chinese [Methodist] Church in San Francisco.   Tremendous racial prejudice prevented any significant advance for some years beyond this small beginning.

In 1887 evangelism among the Chinese began in southern California when the members of the Los Angeles First [Methodist] Church organized a Chinese mission, which for the most part served as a Sunday School.  The progress was slow but rewarding.  Six years later, seventy-five Chinses were enrolled with an average attendance of forty-five.  A fine distinction came to the First [Methodist] Church at this time.  It licensed the first Chinese local preacher in the United States, Chan Kin Lung, who later became the pastor of the local Chinese Methodist Church.   As the Chinese population continue to grow, the Southern California Conference attempted several times to get aid from the General Board, which, however, was more disposed to help other groups.  Pasadena and San Diego Methodists sponsored Chinese missions as had [Methodists in] Los Angeles, and others were opened later in Mexicali and Phoenix.  

In 1904, the Pacific Chinese Mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church [North] was organized to try to give the units more stability.  Thorough and effective work was continually blocked by racial prejudice.  Moreover, the Old World ties of the overwhelming majority of Chinese made evangelism most difficult.

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Excerpt from Our heritage and our hope:  the history of First Baptist Church of Los Angeles, California, 1874-1974, by Herbert L. Sutton.

By 1894 there were a score of Chinese who were members of First Baptist [Church of Los Angeles], brought into the fold through the Chinese Mission which the Church sponsored, beginning in the Dorsey era.  The Mission was located at 608 North Main Street and was under the leadership of Emma Fitch, who had been employed as City Missionary to fill the vacancy when A. W. Rider left to become Pastor at Memorial.

Many Chinese laborers had come to Southern California after [working on the construction of the transcontinental] railways.  By 1880 there were 20,000 Chinese in Southern California — a sizeable part of the population.  They ran laundries, worked as domestics, and produced and distributed nearly all of the vegetables for Los Angeles. They also developed the fishing industry and were the first laborers in the citrus groves.

Their treatment by the citizenry was deplorable.  Historian Carey McWilliams reports, "Youngsters were given free license to stone the Chinese, upset their vegetable carts and laundry wagons, and to pull their Queues for good measure."  Beginning at the time of the Panic of 1873, the Chinese were blamed for unemployment, depressed wages and bad business conditions.  The political agitators who headed the Working-men's Party in California were responsible for this ever-increasing antipathy and they tried various ways to discourage both Chinese activity and immigration.  One of their pamphlets read,

"The Chinaman must leave the State of California.  The white freeman with his wife and children cannot live in the same atmosphere as the Coolie slave.   One or the other must leave the State and it must be the Chinaman."

It is much to the credit of the Church at that time that their spirit of Christian brotherhood kept them from heeding the rabble-rousers, even though such an attitude was very unpopular.  First Baptist also sponsored a resolution adopted by the Southern California Baptist State Convention:

"Resolved, that as a Convention of Baptists we enter our decided and emphatic protest against the recent act of the House of Representatives in passing the Geary Chinese Restriction Bill, by which nearly all Chinamen are forever prohibited from landing upon our shores, or gaining a livelihood in the United States."

The resolution went on to denounce the Bill as "unamerican, unchristian and outrageous."  As a matter of political expediency however, Congress passed the Bill and it became law.

SOURCE:  http://genealogytrails.com/cal/la/firstbaptistchurchhistory.html

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In 1997, the IDEA DATABASE for the Los Angeles 5-County Region contained the following 211 Chinese churches, sorted by city:

Note:  The religious Traditions and Classification Codes (CLASCODES) used in this table are explained in A Classification System of Religious Groups in the Americas by Major Traditions and Family Types (created by Clifton L. Holland of IDEA-PROLADES Ministries, latest version 2007).