On a Saturday morning in north Naperville, the parking lots fill early. Children with violin cases and backpacks of Chinese workbooks file into classrooms borrowed from public high schools, while their parents carry grocery lists in two scripts toward the Asian markets on the city’s edge. The Chinese in Naperville have built one of the most quietly accomplished diaspora communities in the Midwest, threaded through a suburb known nationally for its schools, its tidiness, and its corporate research campuses.
It is a community that arrived not through a port or a railway but through a laboratory and a school district. To understand the Chinese in Naperville, you have to understand why so many engineers and scientists, many of them born in Shanghai, Beijing, Taipei or Guangzhou, decided that this stretch of DuPage County was where their families would do best.
The Place
Naperville sits about thirty miles west of downtown Chicago, on the west bank of the DuPage River. Joseph Naper established Naper’s Settlement here in 1831, and the town grew slowly, incorporating as a city in 1890 and remaining a modest farming and quarry community for most of its history.
Then the growth came in a rush. Through the 1980s and 1990s the population roughly tripled, and by the 2020 census Naperville counted 149,540 residents, making it the fourth-largest city in Illinois. It is consistently ranked among the wealthiest and safest mid-sized cities in the country, with a downtown Riverwalk, low crime, and a school system that draws families from across the world.
That last point matters most. Naperville’s reputation is built on its public schools, and for a particular kind of immigrant family, schools are the whole argument.
How It Became Chinese
The Chinese presence in Naperville is inseparable from the corporate research corridor that grew up along the East-West Tollway, now Interstate 88, in the second half of the twentieth century.
The laboratory that built the suburb
In 1964, Bell Labs announced it would build a major research facility just north of Naperville, near an interchange on the tollway. The site opened in 1965 and, over the following decades, became one of the most important telecommunications research campuses in the world, developing switching systems and software that ran much of the American phone network.
The company changed names as the industry consolidated. Bell Labs became part of Lucent Technologies, which merged with the French firm Alcatel in 2006 to form Alcatel-Lucent, which Nokia in turn acquired in 2016. At its height the campus employed thousands of engineers, and by 2020 Nokia, working from the building at 2000 Lucent Lane, was still the city’s third-largest employer with roughly 2,750 workers.
A research campus on that scale needs engineers, and from the 1980s onward a great many of them were Chinese. Some came directly from graduate programmes at the University of Illinois, Purdue and the Illinois Institute of Technology. Others were recruited from across the country. They were physicists, electrical engineers, software developers and applied mathematicians, and they were exactly the kind of people who study school rankings before they sign a lease.
The school district as a magnet
Naperville is split between two highly regarded public school systems: Naperville Community Unit School District 203, covering the central and northern parts of the city, and Indian Prairie Community Unit School District 204, covering the rapidly developed south side. Both rank among the strongest districts in Illinois and the nation.
For Chinese families weighing where to settle, the high schools were decisive. Neuqua Valley High School in District 204 became a particular draw, an academic powerhouse where Asian students now make up roughly forty per cent of enrolment, alongside Metea Valley and the District 203 high schools, Naperville North and Naperville Central.
The pattern fed on itself. Engineers at the research campuses chose Naperville for the schools, their success reinforced the schools’ reputations, and that reputation pulled in the next wave of professional families, many of them Chinese, who bought homes in the new subdivisions south of the tollway specifically to be inside District 204.
A community organises itself
As the population grew, so did the institutions a community needs to pass on a language and a culture. In 1989 a group of families founded what became the Xilin Association in Naperville, notable as one of the first Chinese schools in the United States to teach simplified Chinese characters rather than the traditional set, reflecting the mainland origins of many of its families. It registered as the Xilin Association in 2003 and grew into a network of weekend schools and social services across DuPage County.
Other weekend schools followed, including the Naperville Chinese School, known in Chinese as 瑞柏中文學校, teaching reading, writing and calligraphy to children who otherwise spend their weeks in English-language classrooms. Saturdays in Naperville became, for thousands of families, a second school day in a second tongue.
The numbers tell the story plainly. Asian residents rose from under ten per cent of Naperville’s population in 2000 to more than twenty-two per cent by 2020. Within that figure, residents of Indian origin form the largest single Asian group, but the Chinese community numbers close to seven thousand people, large enough to support its own markets, schools, churches and festivals.
The Landmarks
Nokia campus, 2000 Lucent Lane. The glass research building north of the tollway is the reason much of this community exists. Generations of Chinese engineers walked its corridors, and the campus name, Lucent Lane, is a quiet monument to the company that drew them to the western suburbs.
Xilin Association, 1163 E Ogden Avenue. Founded in 1989, Xilin pioneered the teaching of simplified Chinese characters in American weekend schools. Beyond language classes it runs cultural programmes and social services, and for many families it was the first place in Naperville that felt unmistakably theirs.
MingHin Cuisine, 1633 N Naper Boulevard. A Cantonese and dim sum restaurant where carts of har gow and siu mai circulate on weekend mornings. It is the kind of dim sum hall that signals a community has reached a certain size, the place where grandparents, parents and children share a round table after Saturday Chinese school.
Naperville Oriental Foods, 6486 College Road, Lisle. Known to Chinese shoppers by its Mandarin name 瑞柏超市, this market just over the Lisle line stocks the fresh greens, sauces, dried goods and seafood that the conventional supermarkets do not. For decades it has been the pantry of the local Chinese kitchen.
Living Water Evangelical Church. One of several Chinese-American congregations serving the area, it holds worship in both Mandarin and English, allowing older immigrants to sing hymns and hear scripture in Chinese while their American-raised children worship in English under the same roof.
Pacifica Square, 4360 E New York Street, Aurora. An Asian lifestyle centre on the Naperville border at Route 59, built around dozens of Asian restaurants and the Park to Shop supermarket. Its autumn Moon Festival has become one of the area’s largest pan-Asian gatherings, drawing Chinese families from across the western suburbs.
Where They Came From
The Chinese of Naperville did not arrive in a single chain from one village, the way some American Chinatowns trace back to Taishan or a handful of Guangdong counties. They came as a professional migration, drawn by graduate schools and corporate research, and their origins are correspondingly broad.
Many trace their families to the great mainland cities, Shanghai, Beijing, Nanjing and Guangzhou, arriving after the reforms of the late 1970s and 1980s opened the way for students to study abroad. A substantial number came from Taiwan, part of the wave of Taiwanese engineers and academics who settled across the American suburbs in the same decades. Others arrived by way of Hong Kong.
What united them was less a shared dialect than a shared path: a STEM degree, often a graduate one, a job in the technology and research corridor or a related profession, and a decision to plant a family where the schools were strongest. It is a diaspora of credentials as much as of geography.
Naperville Today
The corporate landscape that built the community is shifting. The old Bell Labs campus has shed thousands of jobs over the years, and much of the surrounding land is being eyed for redevelopment. Yet the community the laboratory seeded has long since put down roots that do not depend on any single employer.
Today the Chinese presence in Naperville is woven into the ordinary texture of the suburb. It shows up in the make-up of the high school honour rolls and orchestras, in the weekend traffic around the Chinese schools, in the dim sum brunches and the Lunar New Year and Moon Festival celebrations that fill community halls and the Pacifica Square plaza. The children of the first engineers are now doctors, lawyers, founders and, often enough, engineers themselves.
It is worth noting that Naperville’s Chinese community grew up alongside an even larger Indian one, the two professional diasporas sharing the same schools, subdivisions and ambitions without merging into one. You can read about that parallel story of the Indians in Naperville, Illinois. The Chinese here also belong to a wider national map of suburban Chinese settlement, from the Chinese in Cupertino, California and the Chinese in Bayside, Queens to the older heart of ethnic Chinese suburbia in Monterey Park, California.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many Chinese people live in Naperville, Illinois?
Roughly seven thousand residents of Chinese origin live in Naperville. They are part of a larger Asian population that grew from under ten per cent of the city in 2000 to more than twenty-two per cent by 2020, with residents of Indian origin forming the single largest Asian group.
Why did so many Chinese families settle in Naperville?
The Chinese in Naperville were drawn first by the technology and research corridor along the East-West Tollway, especially the Bell Labs and later Nokia campus, which employed many Chinese engineers and scientists. Top-ranked public schools, particularly in District 204, then made the city a magnet for professional families.
Is there a Chinese school in Naperville?
Yes. The Xilin Association, founded in Naperville in 1989, was one of the first Chinese schools in the United States to teach simplified characters, and the Naperville Chinese School and others run weekend language and culture classes. They typically use borrowed public school classrooms on Saturdays.
Where do Chinese residents shop and eat in Naperville?
Naperville Oriental Foods in nearby Lisle is a long-standing Chinese grocery, while MingHin Cuisine on North Naper Boulevard is a popular dim sum hall. Pacifica Square, an Asian lifestyle centre on the Aurora border, offers dozens of restaurants and the Park to Shop supermarket.
Which Naperville schools have the most Chinese students?
Neuqua Valley High School in District 204 has a large Asian enrolment, around forty per cent, and along with Metea Valley and the District 203 high schools is a major reason Chinese families choose Naperville. The strength of these schools has reinforced the city’s appeal for decades.
Where did Naperville’s Chinese community come from?
Most came as a professional migration rather than a village chain, with roots in mainland cities such as Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou, as well as Taiwan and Hong Kong. They generally arrived through graduate study and technology or research careers from the 1980s onward.
If your family’s story passed through Naperville, or any of the places Chinese families have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From a graduate programme in Shanghai or Taipei to a research campus off the tollway, to wherever you are now.