Cultural Diversity Springs From Asian Influx : Monterey Park: Location gave it a natural potential for Chinese migration that has changed city’s character.

When Fred Hsieh told his Monterey Park Chamber of Commerce colleagues in the mid-1970s that their town would soon become a mecca for Chinese immigrants, they nearly laughed him out of the room.

“They were dumbfounded--they thought I was blowing a lot of smoke,” Hsieh said recently.

At that time, the 75-year-old community of Monterey Park was, like most of its San Gabriel Valley neighbors, populated largely by Anglo and Latino residents, with a small Asian population divided between Chinese- and Japanese-Americans.

Today, the city has an Asian majority. The 1990 census puts the population at 60,738 with 34,022 Asians, many of them recent immigrants who have transformed Monterey Park into a kind of suburban Chinatown.

Drive down the city’s main thoroughfares and Chinese-language signs rise over markets, restaurants, beauty shops and dentists’ offices. At night, when the neon signs are lighted, the city bears a closer resemblance to Hong Kong than it does to neighboring Rosemead.

A Chinese-language theater operates alongside noodle shops, dim sum restaurants and Oriental markets selling vats of sea cucumbers and bins of dried mushrooms. Cantonese and Mandarin are heard regularly on the streets.

Hsieh, who has since become an international developer and real estate speculator, saw early on what Monterey Park had to offer.

Bordered by the San Bernardino (10) Freeway on the north, the Pomona (60) Freeway on the south, the Long Beach (710) Freeway on the west and the city of Rosemead on the east, Monterey Park is a well-defined community about 10 minutes east of downtown Los Angeles.

Monterey Park, which was originally called Ramona Acres, was incorporated in 1916. Laura Scudder started her potato chip company there in 1926. The city’s main thoroughfare, a park and a school district were named after Richard Garvey, a U.S. Army mail carrier and miner who settled in Monterey Park around the turn of the century and started a school there.

In the early 1970s, Monterey Park was a bedroom community with lots of vacant commercial property, plenty of mobile home parks and hilly neighborhoods on the west side of town that provided spectacular views of downtown Los Angeles and the Westside.

Hsieh, Chinese-born but with an American university education, was in a position to understand the Asian situation and master the American marketplace.

He saw the opportunities in Monterey Park and began buying property, then opened the Mandarin Realty Co. and eventually founded his own property management group and escrow company.

He also recognized that the advances made by the People’s Republic of China in worldwide recognition and status made Chinese residents of Taiwan and Hong Kong increasingly anxious about the potential spread of communism.

“Those who had experienced that tyranny wanted to go as quickly and as far away as they could, many to the United States and, obviously, many to Southern California,” he said.

He realized that Los Angeles’ Chinatown simply did not have the residential property to accommodate the expected wave of immigrants. But Monterey Park, close to Chinatown and attractive enough to bring in the mostly educated, wealthy Taiwanese and Hong Kong emigres, did.

As Chinese emigration started, Hsieh and his agents put out the word about Monterey Park and the first new residents started to trickle in around 1976. They liked the city, found prices reasonable and began opening their own businesses.

Then they passed the word to relatives, friends and business associates. Throughout the 1980s, the city began to be transformed. Old, established businesses were replaced by new ones with Chinese owners. Whole neighborhoods turned over.

“The Chinese people, they don’t know San Diego or Washington, D.C. But they know Los Angeles and they know New York and they know Monterey Park,” Hsieh said proudly.

As the immigrants arrived, property values escalated. Longtime Monterey Park real estate agent Phil Browning said Monterey Park property today is worth more than four times what it was before the Asian influx.

“The Chinese came in and bought up everything in sight. They didn’t even ask the prices because it was so damn cheap at the time,” Browning said. In 1975, a typical two-bedroom bungalow in the east end of town sold for about $32,500, he said. Today the samehouse would sell for at least $180,000.

An average two-bedroom home on the east side of town, built between 1941 and 1954, sells for around $225,000. The average price goes up to $325,000 west of Atlantic Boulevard, Browning said, where homes mostly date back to the 1950s and early 1960s. Larger, two-story view homes in the hills on the west side of town with three bedrooms, a family room and 3,000 square feet of living space might sell for as much as $750,000, he said.

Condominiums sell for between $180,000 and $300,000 on the east side of town, and new, garden-style condos in a planned development on the west side are selling for as much as $500,000, he said.

Sung and Esther Choe moved into their $475,000, four-bedroom home in the Monterey Park hills last July. The 2,100-square-foot home has 2 1/2 baths and a large living room that commands a view of the surrounding San Gabriel Valley.

When they lived in Downey, Sung had a long commute to his job as a urologist at the USC Medical Center, Esther said. Now, it takes him five to seven minutes to drive to the hospital. Esther is a substitute teacher in the nearby Alhambra School District. They share their home with their 3-year-old daughter, Christie, and Esther’s brother, Daniel Park, and sister, Elizabeth Park.

“The neighborhood is quiet and nearly all Asian,” Esther Choe said. “I can do my shopping in the Chinese markets, which stock Korean food, so I don’t have to make a trip to Koreatown every week. Even the Hughes market has a large Asian foods section.”

Like most of their neighbors, the Choes remove their shoes before entering their home and ask their guests to do the same. “We used to leave them on the porch but we put them inside now since a couple have been stolen,” she said.

Although most of the Asian residents in Monterey Park are Chinese, there are Koreans, Vietnamese and Cambodians moving in. Browning said he gets very few new Anglo buyers into his office and the city’s majority Anglo population has dwindled considerably. Asians currently make up 56% of Monterey Park’s population, Latinos 31% and the Anglo population is at 11.8%.

Eli Isenberg has lived in Monterey Park since 1947, when he moved west from Boston and bought the local weekly newspaper, the Monterey Park Progress, which he ran until 1978.

He and his wife bought a two-bedroom home with a den on a big lot in 1955 for $20,000. They have added two bedrooms and two baths to it over the years and now estimate its value at $300,000.

They made the decision to stay in Monterey Park during the years of change. “A lot of the Anglos who moved out did not have a special connectedness to the community,” he said. “But we still have a meaningful life here.”

But the decision to remain was not an easy one, Isenberg said, and neither is being a minority in the midst of a largely foreign culture. He described watching familiar stores and city landmarks close and reopen with Chinese names. The only Western-style supermarket left in town is the Hughes market on Atlantic Boulevard. The closest McDonald’s is in neighboring Rosemead.

When the Paris restaurant closed two or three years ago, Isenberg said, he felt a great sense of loss. The coffee shop had become an informal meeting place for community leaders and old-timers to gather on weekday mornings for coffee and chat.

“They’ve since moved the kaffeeklatsch to Alhambra, but it’s not the same,” he said.

Bob Brackenbury was born in Monterey Park in 1929 and he and his wife, Sally, have lived in their three-bedroom, cul-de-sac home since 1973, when they purchased it for $46,000. Today the home is worth about $300,000, he said.

They decided to stay in the city because they owned a mom-and-pop paint and decorating store. They sold the business and retired in 1983, and although they like the city’s proximity to downtown and to the freeways, Brackenbury said he does not like much about the community anymore. “Do you know you can’t buy a hot turkey sandwich in this town?” he said.

The perception that Monterey Park was losing its identity led to racial tensions and political strife in the city during the 1980s that included controversies over Chinese books in the public library and attempts to make English the official language.

Such problems have faded over the last few years, however, with the election of two Asians and a Latino to the five-member City Council. Judy Chu, a council member who served as mayor in 1990, said the backlash against Asians has subsided.

“Those (residents) who were very upset about the Asian influence have moved out and those who remained have gotten used to this very diverse cultural city,” she said.

In recent years, there has been a rise in crime in the city, especially among organized crime groups and gang members who now present a serious problem, said Bill Reynolds, Monterey Park police community relations officer.

While Reynolds said the crime rate in Monterey Park is substantially lower than that of neighboring East Los Angeles, both Chinese and Vietnamese gangs participate in residential robberies, extortion, car burglary and residential burglary.

Monterey Park schools suffered from the overload of non-English-speaking youngsters during the last decade, said Anthony Woo, a bilingual education specialist with the Garvey School District. Of the 7,200 students in the district, he estimated that half have limited English skills.

The schools coped by hiring instructional aides from the community who speak the five major foreign languages heard in the school system, Woo said. About 25 other languages and dialects also crop up occasionally among students who enroll in the Monterey Park schools, he said.

Today the district is near average in its state test scores, Woo said. He added that newcomers to the community are likely to be more concerned about economic opportunities and fitting into the culture in terms of diet, comfort and jobs than they are about schools.

Warren Chang, who emigrated to the United States from Taiwan in 1986, likes the feeling of familiarity he finds in Monterey Park. He and his wife paid $260,000 for their three-bedroom home on the east side of town last October.

“I like it here because my job is here and there are so many restaurants that remind me of home,” said Chang, an editor for a Chinese-language newspaper, the International Daily News.

AT A GLANCE

Population

1990 estimate: 60,738

1980-90 change: +11.7%

Median age: 32.6 years

Annual income

Per capita: $12,532

Median household: $35,412

Household distribution

Less than $25,000: 37.8%

$25,000 - $35,000: 16.2%

$35,000 - $50,000: 19.1%

$50,000 - $75,000: 18.6%

$75,000 +: 8.3%