How The San Gabriel Valley Became A Mecca For Chinese Dining
As far as the younger generation and more recent immigrants are concerned, the gigantic Chinatown that is the San Gabriel Valley is something that has always existed. I remember a comment on one of my interviews about the San Gabriel Valley was along the lines of "I always thought that my family used to live in East Los Angeles because they couldn't afford to live in Monterey Park at the time." But indeed, I remember a time when there were very few Chinese or other Asians living in the San Gabriel Valley, and in fact at one time that the San Gabriel Valley was the most racist, lily white areas in Los Angeles County. So naturally, the subject which intrigued me over the years is how such a gigantic Chinese dining mecca and Chinese community in terms of both population and geographic area could have developed in the San Gabriel Valley, and not anywhere else in the Los Angeles area or somewhere else in the United States. Now it’s not that I didn’t have a clue, as some o...