page_title: History of Chinese Americans in Los Angeles
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: History of Chinese Americans in Los Angeles / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Los Angeles Chinatown Heritage and Visitors Center
context_page_description: Historically there has been a population of Chinese Americans in Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area. As of 2010, there were 393,488 Chinese Americans in Los Angeles County, 4.0% of the county's population, and 66,782 Chinese Americans in the city of Los Angeles.
context_section_description: The historian William Mason stated that the first Chinese in Los Angeles were Ah Luce and Ah Fou, who arrived in 1850. In his memoirs, Harris Newmark stated that the first Chinese person was the servant of his uncle, Joseph Newmark.
  The Chinese massacre of 1871 was a racially motivated riot which occurred on October 24, 1871 in Los Angeles, when a mob of around 500 white men entered Chinatown to attack, rob, and murder Chinese residents of the city. An estimated 17 to 20 Chinese immigrants were systematically tortured and then hanged by the mob, making the event the largest mass lynching in American history.
  By 1900, there were about 3,000 Chinese in the city. Most residents of the old Chinatown came from Sanyi (San Yup) and Siyi (Sze Yup) in Guangdong. The Old Chinatown began to decline as more Chinese left. Many moved to East Adams around the 1920s and 1930s. The Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal, built in 1933, was built over much of the former Old Chinatown, so a new Chinatown was established after Peter SooHoo Sr. and Herbert Lapham, an agent for the Santa Fe Railway, negotiated a land purchase for what would become the new Chinatown.
  Christine Sterling, a civic leader, developed "China City," a tourist attraction which opened in 1938. Chinese working there also lived there. After two fires, "China City" decayed and was gone by the 1950s. To make way for the Hollywood Freeway, almost all of the remainder of old Chinatown was destroyed in 1951. The remaining portions were parts of Sanchez Alley and Garnier Block.
  More Chinese, especially those from Hong Kong, immigrated to Los Angeles after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (Hart-Cellar Act) passed. By the end of the 20th Century many Chinese began moving to suburbs such as Monterey Park, Alhambra, Arcadia, and Rosemead. By 2013, large numbers of ethnic Chinese moved into communities in the San Gabriel Valley, including San Gabriel, San Marino, and Walnut.
  The 2015 Rowland Heights, California bullying incident involved Chinese nationals living in the Los Angeles area.
caption: Chinatown Heritage and Visitors Center, Chinese Historical Society of Southern California
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