Monterey Park Grapples Anew With Language Law

Francis Hong, a businessman and member of the city’s Human Relations Commission, rose before the Monterey Park City Council to speak his mind.

The council, late one night last month, was debating whether to further restrict the use of foreign languages on business signs in this community where the most visible and dominant language, other than English, is Chinese.

“The Asian community has cooperated. . . . Don’t push us, please,” Hong told the council. “Have you found a sign that you couldn’t read in Monterey Park?”

“That isn’t the total question,” Councilman Barry L. Hatch replied. “The question . . . of (many) residents is why is (there) such an abundance of a language they don’t understand.”

Hong, his voice breaking, continued: “A language is an aspect of culture. And a culture goes with race. If you try to legalize . . . a certain language and outlaw another culture, it infringes on the rights of freedom of speech.”

Frustration over the amount of foreign language on signs of businesses, restaurants and storefronts has led Hatch and Councilwoman Betty Couch to push for more English.

The two want to amend the city’s sign ordinance to resemble Arcadia’s rule, which requires that two-thirds of a sign be in English.

“I’ve talked to a lot of people about this and they want to feel like it’s their town, too, not just a Chinese town,” Couch said in an interview. “Why should Monterey Park be called the Chinese Beverly Hills?”

“We have to take everybody . . . into consideration,” said Hatch, who for several years has been active in the English-as-the-official-language movement. “It can be turned into an ugly issue or it can be dealt with on a very positive basis.”

There seems to be no consensus, either on the council or within the community, over an issue that divided the city in 1985.

Almost everyone agrees there should be English on signs. The debate is over how much.

Judy Chu, the only Asian-American member on the council, objects to the reintroduction of the issue. “It definitely is divisive,” she said, since the city went through this a couple of years ago. “This is so self-defeating.” Chu, whose mother was born in China, said she is not offended by the foreign-language signs even though she is unable to read them and understands only a bit of spoken Chinese.

‘Pluralistic Society’

“This is a pluralistic society,” she said. “If we can’t accept the different members of our community, what that does mean?”

The president of the Monterey Park Chamber of Commerce and the chairman of the Planning Commission say they see no need to amend the law. City planner M. Margo Wheeler said that although her staff is researching possible changes, she does not “anticipate recommending any change because we have not found any problems with the (sign) code.”

J.J. Rodriguez, chairman of the Planning Commission, also said he sees no problem with the current law. “No one has complained to me,” he said.

Sophie Wong, president of the Chamber of Commerce and the first Chinese-American woman to hold that position, agrees. The sign law, she said, “is working out well.” But, she said, she will recommend that the chamber survey its membership.

The ordinance mandates that the general nature of businesses, such as a bakery, restaurant or supermarket, be posted in English somewhere on the building. It must be visible from 100 or more feet away.

Heated Exchanges

The ordinance was passed in 1985 after heated exchanges at council meetings, and Chinese business owners attacked the proposal as encroaching on the right to free speech.

Businesses initially were required to display their addresses in Arabic numerals to aid police and firefighters. City officials say the law prevents public safety problems which once existed. Later that year, the sign ordinance was amended to require that the nature of the business be identified in English.

Hatch, who joined the council in April, 1986, after the sign law was changed, and Couch, who was elected last April, say further revisions are necessary.

Language, Hatch said, “is an important part of a person’s culture. So (business owners) need to remember that when they put up their Chinese signs, that others feel alienated.”

But Christine Ching, who operates Atlantic Printing with her husband, Philip, said: “You have to find out why we put the Chinese on the sign. The reason is I’ve got Chinese customers.”

Their storefront operation on South Atlantic Boulevard is located on a street chockablock with signs using Chinese characters. Right now, mostly Chinese appears on the storefront. The only English on the storefront are the words “Atlantic Printing.”

As she was speaking inside her tiny shop, employees around her typed Chinese restaurant menus on a computer, using word processing programs that use thousands of Chinese characters as well as the 26 characters of the English alphabet. Besides menus, Ching said her firm prints bilingual business cards, invoices and stationery for clients from around the world who see Atlantic’s ads in the internationally circulated, Chinese-language newspapers published in Monterey Park.

Flag in Doorway

“If City Hall guarantees me business from white people, English-speaking people,” said Ching, facing an American flag draped by the doorway, “I will put a huge sign in English out front.”

When her customers visit her, she said, “we talk Chinese and they like it.” She estimates that 95% of her customers, many of whom come from throughout Southern California, speak and read Chinese.

Hatch said he appreciates the needs of businesses that cater to a Chinese-speaking population. Of the council members, Hatch is perhaps the most conversant in Chinese. He can speak, somewhat rustily, Cantonese. As a young man he spent three years as a Mormon missionary in Hong Kong.

“All I ask is for people . . . to be level-headed,” he said.

Ideally, Hatch said, businesses would use only English except for a small sign in the window to indicate which other languages are spoken in the establishment.

Beyond the language question, Hatch and Couch say, there are aesthetic issues over the size, color and materials used for signs.

Wants to Look Like America

“It’s more than just English only,” Couch said. “I want signs that look like we’re in America.”

The city already has passed rules designed to result in a more restrained, uniform look to the signs along the main business thoroughfares of Atlantic Boulevard and Garfield and Garvey avenues. Rooftop signs and signs on tall poles will not be allowed after 1990.

Although Councilwoman Patricia Reichenberger says she is uncertain whether she would support restricting foreign languages to one-third of any sign,

she is sure that something must be done to ensure that the quality of signs improves. “The two-thirds in English is an interesting idea,” she said, “but it is very hard to achieve in a community like Monterey Park.”

Mayor Christopher F. Houseman said it is premature to discuss what, if any, changes need to be made. Research still must be done, he said. And, he said, “it is important that we consult with our business community.”

‘Suburban Issue’

City planner Wheeler’s preliminary research has shown that only a handful of California communities have sign laws related to foreign languages.

“It’s a suburban kind of issue,” she said, noting that Los Angeles has no restrictions on language. Eric Ritter, a Los Angeles planner, said that during the city’s overhaul of the sign law from 1984 to 1986, “foreign language was not a question.”

However, in 1985 and 1986, partly because of the debate in Monterey Park, a few cities, including several in the San Gabriel Valley coping with an influx of Asian immigrants, enacted laws requiring English on signs. Among those cities were Temple City, which prohibits foreign-language signs within a five-block downtown area, El Monte and Rosemead. Baldwin Park, Gardena and Torrance enacted similar laws. Bellflower, West Covina and Garden Grove discussed foreign-language-sign laws but never approved them.

Strict Law Enacted in 1985

Arcadia in 1985 enacted what may be one of the area’s strictest laws. City planner Bill Woolard acknowledges that part of the ease in passing the law stemmed from the fact that there were very few signs that used foreign languages.

By next month Wheeler said she expects to present the sign issue to the Monterey Park Design Review Board and the Planning Commission. She reports there have been few complaints and there are no more than half a dozen violations of the sign ordinance, including several English signs that do not include a generic description of the type of business.

A former chamber board member, David H. Ma, said in an interview that he was reluctant to discuss the issue. But he said: “It’s like fighting a war. If you give up the front line, you are forced to defend the second line.”

Ma, who runs a Monterey Park consulting firm catering to Asians wanting to locate their businesses in Southern California, said: “I’m for English on signs, even no Chinese, but that has to be left to the individual entrepreneur.”

Shanghai-born Ma, who came to the San Gabriel Valley in 1983 after serving 10 years as a U.S. Foreign Service officer in the Far East, was just named the head of the Kiwanis Club International for the 48 chapters in the San Gabriel Valley.

“The people I’m in contact with are for maintaining the status quo,” said Ma, adding that he is helping to organize a meeting of those opposing changes in the sign law.

‘Outright Prejudice’

“I think it is outright prejudice against Asians” to require that two-thirds of the lettering be in English, Ma said.

But to George Yamo, a 35-year resident of Monterey Park and a second-generation Japanese, the Chinese signs are a barrier to communication. “(The foreign-language signs) have done more to divide the city than anything else,” Yamo said. He is sensitive, he said, to the issue of discrimination against Asian businesses, though. During World War II, as a Japanese-American, he was confined at the Santa Anita race track in Arcadia and then at an internment facility in Arizona.

“To force people to change (the signs) all of the sudden is kind of rough,” Yamo said. “But definitely there ought to be a change.”

Reichenberger and Hatch acknowledge that the problem exists because nothing was done at the time the signs were erected five and 10 years ago. “I lay some of the blame on our (previous) city fathers,” Hatch said. “You can’t blame the Chinese. . . . There was no one here telling them to minimize the Chinese (characters).”

Still, Reichenberger acknowledged: “now, it’s a little like trying to close the barn door after the horse is already gotten out.”