Chinese in America

Newcomers Have the Numbers to Upend City Politics from the NY Times, about how immigration in NY is changing the politics.

Interesting quote:

while some of those who immigrated from China tend not to understand multiparty politics, the project found.

The Chinese community in the US is a sleeping giant politically, the challenge is they are so diverse. The only thing I see they have in common is respect for education and food. Politics, language, income, etc. have a huge amount of difference. What does a fifth generation person who's ancestors came over in the Gold Rush have in common with a person who arrived from China on a 747 a couple of months ago?

Rowland Heights ChinaTown - We're Famous!

A Chinatown like no other from the LA Times, via the Minneapolis Star Tribune, MN.

I live in Rowland Heights. A friend of mine in Texas mentioned the article as did my paretns. I missed it when it first came out.

I would give the article a grade of C+, it really did not capture Rowland Heights area.

We have late night places to eat and karaoke, to major businesses that are ethnic Chinese owned such as NewEgg and Viewsonic, to many small businesses. We also are county, so we are not a city (good and bad). Diamond Bar and Walnut are both cities, as well as the interesting City of Industry (99% businesses, with a few lucky residents). Hacienda Heights also has a large Chinese community and has a lot in common with Rowland Heights.

Diamond Bar/Walnut have better school districts by test score than Rowland. Rowland is a mixture of La Puente, West Covina, Walnut, City of Industry, and Rowland Heights. The district has some heavily Latino areas, Asian, and African American areas. There are a few whites around (like me). School districts don't follow city lines in California, so even if you buy a house in Walnut you may end up going to Rowland School district.

We got lucky and through a lottery got my daughter into the Walnut/Diamond Bar School district that has better test scores than Rowland. A lot of my daughter's friends have done the same. So many that somehow Rowland supposedly closed this loophole (I am sure it's frustrating when all your best students leave).

The area has gone through a lot of changes, some positive and some not. My daughter's K-5 school looks like it will be closing, replaced by Apartments. Why - the school did not change with the times. Wonderful school, that could have been so much better. They shocked my wife when the school principal at a dinner started talking about how their graduates went to such wonderful schools as Azusa Pacific, Cal State LA, Mt. Sac, etc. My wife wanted to hear Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, UCLA, UC Berkeley...

And Rowland Heights has lots of Chinese great Chinese food! History and Culture: Chinese Food is a nice article.

And a listing of Chinatowns across the US Chinatowns of the United States

Las Vegas Chinatown

I am helping out a friend with a Trade Show, and we stopped by dinner at the Las Vegas Chinatown and then checked out the 99 Market. There is also a 99 market in Rowland Heights.

Some observations:

• The Chinatown here has increased in size. Their is now a vegetarian restaurant (Rowland Heights has 2) and lots of restaurants.
• The Chinatown here is aimed at Asians in general (Philippino fast food is an example, where in West Covina next to Rowland Heights we have a huge Philippine area). The 99 Market was smaller than the one in Rowland Heights, but still had a good selection.
• The Chinatown here has a mixture of the usual tourist junk you find in the LA Chinatown, plus non-tourist stuff.
• Food was OK and pretty authentic. We ate at a place inside the mall that was open. Staff wore a Chinese style shirt, that you don't see in Rowland Heights. More touristy.

My listings of Chinatowns of the United States

Earthquake readiness taught in Mandarin

Earthquake readiness taught in Mandarin in Mountain View, home of Google and a great used bookstore! It makes sense to give presentations in the language of the people in your area. In Silicon Valley, there is a large Chinese population. And yes, Childbook.com does get a few orders for Learning Chinese products from this area :-)

Exploring America’s Chinatowns

Exploring America’s Chinatowns from MSN.

It only lists a couple of Chinatowns, my list has a few more :-) Chinatowns of the United States and Szechuan restaurants are a bit scarce. In LA, which has a huge selection of Chinese restaurants from A-Z, the two best are in Monterey Park (no, I have not had the guts to go there). LA Weekly - Eat+Drink - Chile Scenes of Summer - Jonathan Gold ...

Cantonese in the older Chinatowns are the most common. New Chinatowns will have a mixture of Northern China and Taiwanese, along with the usual dim sum places.

Cute book - Exploring Chinatown: A Children's Guide to Chinese Culture

PinkBerry - The Craze

Class Action suit against Pinkberry.

A PinkBerry just opened a few blocks from our house, and my daughter loves it! The branding is wonderful. I believe the first Pinkberry opened up in Koreatown. A graphic designer I worked with (A+ work), drove with his family from Chino Hills to Rowland Heights to go to Pinkberry. The finish they give to each of their dishes is a work of art. Just beautiful! There are many other places in our Chinatown, oops I mean Rowland Heights that are selling Frozen Yogurt, but none are as popular as Pinkberry.

San Franscisco Chinese Related Things to Visit

I am up in the San Franscisco area visiting suppliers (and my Grandmother is on the way...). SF has a huge Chinatown, there are also lots of newer Chinatowns in the area. There is a big Chinese mall over in Fremont, Chinese Restaurants on Castro Street in Mountain View (and a great used bookstore, BookBuyers‎, that is not Chinese related). Angel Island that was the Ellis Island of the West is also a good visit. In San Jose there is also a Chinese garden.

Non Chinese related is two great bookstores. One in Menlo Park, Kepler's Books & Magazines‎ -and the other in Palo Alto, Book Inc. Books Inc‎ has the Idiot's Guide for Doing Business in China. I gave it a quick look. I am not sure of the significance when there is enough demand for an idiot's book, does that meant this is to trendly, a bubble, or just the interest in China is that huge? Another book that I will definitely be getting is Emotional Design, who also wrote a favorite book of mine, The Design of Everyday Things.

Chinatown San Jose

There is an archeology dig being done in San Jose at the site of what was a Chinatown. An article from the local paper, the mercury news covers it. Path to Chinatown in San Jose lot and Excavation planned of former Chinatown in San Jose The article mentions how the previous Chinatown was burned, and how a German immigrant built a walled area to protect local Chinese. When I hear the term walled area, I think of the term Ghetto.



Lawrence Yep has written some great books that include this time period of Chinese history in the US in his Gold Mountain Chronicles.

Related Links:

• Chinatowns of the United States
• Chinese American History
• Racism Against Chinese in the United States
• Chinese Historical and Cultural Project (CHCP) in San Jose - Excellent group! The webmaster gave us a tour of their museum one time.

Related Books:

Exploring Chinatown: A Children's Guide to Chinese Culture
Our Price: $22.95
This is a book for kids, families, and teachers who’d like to get more out of their visit to Chinatown than an “I escaped Alcatraz” t-shirt or oversized pencil. It’s a guide to what makes Chinese culture, well, “Chinese.” It covers almost everything, from how to order in a restaurant, and what not to do with chopsticks, to how to write characters in Chinese and how to make potstickers. It tells about herbal medicine shops, temples, and tearooms.


Kai's Journey to Gold Mountain: An Angel Island Story by Katrina Saltonstall Currier, Illustrated by Gabhor Utomo (hardcover)
Our Price: $21.00 Sale Price: $16.95 You Save $4.05!
A journey through the Ellis Island of the West for Chinese, Angel Island, by a young boy

Angel Island Prisoner, 1922
Our Price: $11.50 Sale Price: $7.50 You Save $4.00!
A journey through the Ellis Island of the West for Chinese, Angel Island, by a young girl.

New Chinatown - Rowland Heights Restaurants

At the local Hong Kong Market Plaza in Rowland Heights, there were three restaurant suites all empty. Dragon Noodle, also known as Supreme Dragon , then empty suite, then Good Time Cafe, then empty, empty, and the market. In another part of Rowland Heights, it appears a
Vietnamese Restaurant that used to be a Taco Bell has closed.

Supreme Dragon is a great place for Beef Soup and Steamed Dumplings at a pretty good price. It's survived by having fast service and good prices. Good Time Cafe is a Taiwanese Cafe. My favorite their is pork chop rice, that is actually a fried pork chop over rice that includes a soy sauce egg. The name makes you think fried rice. A place opened right next to it one time, also selling Taiwanese Food. Not very nice of the plaza management to allow this. Good news was Good Time Cafe survived this, and their competitor is no longer there.

Restaurants have a high degree of risk. That is one of the challenges with chinesediner.com was how to keep it up to date, with restaurants going out of business all the time. The challenge is people could falsely enter a restaurant has gone out of business. And who would have time to check if a restaurant has truly gone out of business. chinesediner.com was a Chinese Restaurant Finder I had set up for a while, but closed down because of the maintenance issue.

				Dim Sum For Everyone!
				Our Price: $6.99 Sale Price: $5.99 You Save $1.00!
				Dim Sum For Everyone! Great book about a little girl's visit to a Dim Sum restaurant.
				Cooking with Kids - Exploring Chinese Food, Culture, and Language
				Our Price: $24.95
				Should your kids Learn Chinese Cooking? And some Chinese? Then get this DVD for ages 8-12 that includes much more than just Chinese cooking! It gives your kids a fun way to learn Mandarin Chinese tones, words, and phrases.
				The Ugly Vegetables by Graced Lin
				Our Price: $6.95
				A little girl wonders why she and her Mom are growing plants in their garden that are so different from their neighbors'. Recipe for Ugly Vegetable Soup included!
				Fortune Cookie Fortunes by Grace Lin
				Our Price: $6.99
				After a young Chinese American girl opens fortune cookies with her family, she notices that the fortunes seem to come true, in a story which includes brief notes on the history of the fortune cookie.

Travel Guides in Chinese - New York, Boston, Washington DC

Nice service - VGP Travel Guides in Chinese for New York, Boston, and Washington DC. A customer asked me if I knew of a travel guide for NY in Chinese. So I did a bit looking and did not find anything. So I sent E-Mails to the Chinatown Web Sites for NY and the NY Visit Web Site. The NY Visit Web site replied to me with the VGP site.

New York also has three Chinatowns located in Flushing (Queens), Brooklyn, and Manhatten. My list of Chinatowns of the United States. There is even a museum MOCA - Museum of Chinese in the Americas!

Associated Products:

Exploring Chinatown: A Children's Guide to Chinese Culture
Our Price: $22.95 Sale Price: $19.95 You Save $3.00!
This is a book for kids, families, and teachers who’d like to get more out of their visit to Chinatown than an “I escaped Alcatraz” t-shirt or oversized pencil. It’s a guide to what makes Chinese culture, well, “Chinese.” It covers almost everything, from how to order in a restaurant, and what not to do with chopsticks, to how to write characters in Chinese and how to make potstickers. It tells about herbal medicine shops, temples, and tearooms.

New Chinatown - Rowland Heights

A local Christian School in Rowland Heights, Southlands Christian School, is going to move and sell the property to a developer that is proposing to put apartments in there. More evidence of changing demographics. The area has changed to a mostly Asian (Chinese and Korean) plus a bit of everything else, while the church has not. There are so many Asian Churches in the area (see map that gives some clue - I did a search on churches around Rowland Heights).

It's a nice school, unfortunately they have not successfully adopted to the changing demographics and are moving because of it to another area. translation, the property has gone up a huge amount, the church members are for the most part no longer local, and why not move and use the money from the sale.

There is a shortage of apartments in the area, so many younger adults will rent a room in a house in the local area. Going rate I understand is $600 per room.



View Larger Map

Congestion Pricing - NY Chinatown

NY is considering congestion pricing in the Manhatten Chinatown. NY actually has more than one Chinatown. The one in Flushing (where my cousins lived) was more Taiwanese, one in Brooklyn, and one in Manhatten. On ChildBook's page of US Chinatowns I actually list all three.

Relevant Book:
Exploring Chinatown: A Children's Guide to Chinese Culture

Things to do:
*Laurence Yep book I need to add.
*Revise Chinatown's page. Right now I could give it grade of B, but A's are better than B's!

Chinatown's Hidden Side

Time Magazine's article about Hillary Clinton's Chinatown donor issue gives some interesting peeks into Chinatown Culture.

Key points from the article:

• Chinatown economies are built almost entirely on cash transactions, tremendously high savings rates and a tradition of financial secretiveness.
• Few Chinese-American workers in New York City's several Chinatowns will reveal how much they really make.
• It is not uncommon to see waiters and dishwashers among other so called menial workers who are capable of paying for cars, plunking down large initial premiums for insurance policies or making sizable down payments on homes or apartments — in cash.
• Banks of Chinatown centered in Canal Street in Manhattan have combined deposits of $6 billion, behind only the ritzy Upper East Side ($8 billion) among New York City neighborhoods.

What the article missed was the province/ethnic origin angle in Chinatown of the donors (Fujian) that I mentioned before Chinese Associations & Clinton Fundraising