On a Saturday morning in autumn, the lawn behind a Millburn elementary school fills with red lanterns, a lion-dance drum, and the smell of mooncakes cut into careful eighths. The crowd is a portrait of the Chinese in Short Hills: parents who trade equities in Manhattan by week and run a Mandarin reading club by weekend, children who place out of high-school calculus, grandparents flown in from Shanghai for the season. In one of the most expensive zip codes in America, a community that barely registered on the census twenty years ago now fills the schools, the train platform, and the festival lawn.
The Place
Short Hills is not a town. It is an unincorporated community and census district inside Millburn Township, in Essex County, about fifteen miles west of Manhattan. It carries its own zip code, 07078, and a reputation that arrived long before any recent newcomer: Forbes has ranked it among the most expensive zip codes in the country, with median home prices climbing past the million-dollar mark years ago.
The geography is deliberate. Short Hills was a planned village, drawn on paper before it was built, and the curving streets and wooded half-acre lots still follow that original design. The Mall at Short Hills, with roughly 1.34 million square feet of retail and a tenant list that runs from Hermes to Louis Vuitton, anchors the south end. The NJ Transit Morristown Line runs through the middle, carrying commuters to Newark and New York Penn Station in under forty minutes.
How It Became Chinese
For most of its history, Short Hills was a commuter suburb of old American wealth, and then, increasingly through the twentieth century, of Jewish professional families who left Newark and the inner Oranges for its schools and quiet. The story of the Chinese in Short Hills is recent, fast, and tied almost entirely to one thing: the Millburn Township Public Schools.
A village built on paper, 1879
The shape of the place came from one man. Stewart Hartshorn made his fortune manufacturing the spring-loaded window shade, and in the 1870s he began buying land on the gentle rises west of Millburn village. He assembled roughly 1,552 acres and laid out a model community, keeping individual plots small, half an acre or less, so that the woods and topography would carry the look of the place.
In 1879 Hartshorn built a railroad station at his own expense, paying the Morris and Essex line $2,520 and securing two daily stops, and a post office opened the following year. The current station building dates from 1907. That single decision, to put a commuter stop in the middle of his village, set the pattern that everything else would follow. Short Hills would always be a place defined by its train and its schools.
The school district as a magnet
By the late twentieth century, Millburn High School had become one of the most decorated public schools in New Jersey, ranked in the top fifteen statewide and, in 2015, named by Newsweek the number-one open-admission public school in the nation. For Chinese families arriving in the New York metropolitan area with means and an exacting view of education, that ranking was not a detail. It was the reason to come.
The pattern is one repeated across the region. Chinese immigrants who entered through Manhattan, Flushing, or the older enclaves moved up the socioeconomic ladder and then moved out, choosing specific towns almost entirely for the strength of their school districts. In New Jersey that logic produced Chinese concentrations in Edison, West Windsor, and Livingston, and across the line in New York it built communities like the Chinese families of Scarsdale. In Essex County it pointed straight at Millburn and Short Hills.
A community organises, 2005
By the mid-2000s there were enough Chinese families in town to want an institution of their own. In 2005 a group founded the Millburn Short Hills Chinese Association, a registered non-profit formed to serve local Chinese residents, share Chinese tradition and culture with their neighbours, and contribute to township life. It began with fewer than a hundred participants.
It did not stay small. Two decades later the association counts more than two hundred member families and over a thousand members, and its annual Moon Festival gala has become a fixture on the Millburn calendar, drawing families well beyond the Chinese community to a lawn of lanterns, performances, and mooncakes each autumn. In 2025 the association marked its twentieth anniversary.
The census catches up
The numbers tell the speed of the change plainly. In the 2010 census, the Asian share of Short Hills stood at roughly 15 percent. By 2020 it had more than doubled, to about 34 percent, while the White share fell from near 80 percent to 56 percent in the same decade. Across Millburn Township as a whole, the Asian population rose from under 16 percent to nearly 33 percent.
The schools registered it first and most sharply. By the 2023 to 2024 school year, the student body of Millburn High School was about 41 percent Asian, and across the township district the figure approached half. A community that had been a rounding error at the turn of the century had, within a single generation of homebuyers, become one of the defining presences in town.
The Landmarks
Millburn Short Hills Chinese Association, PO Box 276, Short Hills. Founded in 2005, the association has no grand building, but it is the centre of Chinese life in town. Its Moon Festival gala, summer barbecue, and cultural programmes turn rented school lawns and gyms into the community’s gathering places each year.
Millburn High School, 462 Millburn Avenue, Millburn. The reason many Chinese families chose this zip code over any other. Consistently ranked among New Jersey’s best public high schools, its classrooms and its near-half Asian enrolment are where the community’s investment in education is most visible.
The Mall at Short Hills, 1200 Morris Turnpike, Short Hills. The retail landmark that gives the town its national name, roughly 1.34 million square feet of luxury shops. On weekends its halls fill with the same multigenerational Chinese families who line the festival lawn in autumn.
Short Hills station, 23 Chatham Road, Short Hills. The 1907 station building stands on the spot where Stewart Hartshorn paid for a stop in 1879. It is still the daily artery, carrying Short Hills commuters, many of them in finance and pharmaceuticals, to Newark and Manhattan.
Jade Lake Gourmet, 229 Millburn Avenue, Millburn. A neighbourhood Chinese kitchen on downtown Millburn’s main commercial street, the kind of unassuming storefront that anchors everyday Chinese dining in a town better known for its luxury retail.
Paper Mill Playhouse, 22 Brookside Drive, Millburn. The 1,200-seat regional theatre on the Rahway River, established in 1938 and designated New Jersey’s State Theatre. It is the cultural common ground of the township, the stage where newcomer and old-timer families sit in the same dark.
Taylor Park, Millburn. The downtown green where the township gathers for its public life, a few steps from the clock tower at Main and Essex Streets. It is the ordinary civic centre that any community, however new, eventually claims as its own.
Where They Came From
The Chinese in Short Hills did not arrive directly from China so much as ascend from elsewhere in the New York metropolitan region. The metro area receives more legal Chinese immigrants than Los Angeles and San Francisco combined, and as those families gain footing, many leave the dense first-stop neighbourhoods of Manhattan and Queens for suburban space and, above all, for school districts.
That second migration is what built Short Hills. The families who can afford a half-acre lot in a million-dollar zip code tend to be mainland-born professionals, many Mandarin-speaking, working in finance, pharmaceuticals, technology, and medicine. They are a different stream from the Fujianese and Cantonese labour migration that built Manhattan’s older Chinatowns, and the contrast in means is part of why they landed here rather than there.
The result is a community that shares the affluent professional profile of the established Jewish families it joined, while keeping its own institutions, its association, its festivals, and its weekend Chinese-language teaching. Short Hills is one of a string of Essex and Middlesex towns, alongside the Chinese community in nearby Livingston and the larger Chinese presence in West Windsor, where this pattern has repeated almost identically.
Short Hills Today
Today the Chinese presence in Short Hills is no longer new and no longer surprising. It is simply part of how the town works: the SAT prep, the youth orchestras, the college-admissions intensity that has long defined Millburn now carries a strong Chinese-American current, and the high school’s hallways reflect a near-even balance of White and Asian students.
It sits alongside the older communities rather than replacing them. The long-established Jewish community of Short Hills remains a defining part of the town, and the two affluent professional populations share the same schools, the same train, and the same parks. The Moon Festival lawn and the synagogue parking lot fill on different weekends, with overlapping families.
What has not changed is the engine underneath it all. People come to Short Hills for the schools, pay enormously for the privilege, and organise their lives around what those schools can do for their children. The Chinese families who poured in over the past two decades understood that logic perhaps better than anyone, and in a single generation they have written themselves into the centre of one of America’s most exclusive zip codes. For a fuller picture of how this played out across the region, the history of Chinese settlement in the New York metropolitan area traces the same arc town by town.
Frequently Asked Questions
How large is the Chinese community in Short Hills, New Jersey?
Short Hills does not publish a separate Chinese-only count, but the Asian share of the community rose from about 15 percent in 2010 to roughly 34 percent in 2020, and the Chinese in Short Hills are a leading part of that growth. Millburn High School was about 41 percent Asian as of the 2023 to 2024 school year.
Why did Chinese families move to Short Hills?
The single strongest draw is the Millburn Township school district, repeatedly ranked among the best public schools in New Jersey. Chinese families who gained means elsewhere in the New York metro area chose Short Hills almost entirely for its schools, much as they did in Edison, Livingston, and West Windsor.
Is there a Chinese community organisation in Short Hills?
Yes. The Millburn Short Hills Chinese Association, founded in 2005, is the central institution of the Chinese in Short Hills. It now has more than two hundred member families and over a thousand members, and hosts an annual Moon Festival gala and cultural and language programmes.
Where did the Chinese families in Short Hills come from?
Most are mainland-born, often Mandarin-speaking professionals who first settled elsewhere in the New York metropolitan area before moving to the suburbs for more space and stronger schools. They tend to work in finance, pharmaceuticals, technology, and medicine.
What is The Mall at Short Hills?
The Mall at Short Hills is a luxury shopping centre of roughly 1.34 million square feet at 1200 Morris Turnpike, one of the largest and most upscale malls in New Jersey. It gives the town its national name and is a weekend gathering spot for many local families.
How wealthy is Short Hills, New Jersey?
Very. Short Hills has appeared on Forbes lists of the most expensive zip codes in the United States, with median home prices well above one million dollars and median household income exceeding 250,000 dollars in recent years. It is among the most affluent communities in the state.
If your family’s story passed through Short Hills, or any of the places Chinese families have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From a first apartment in Flushing or Manhattan, to a half-acre lot off the Morristown Line, to wherever you are now.