The town was named for a man who carried China’s flag. In 1868, the diplomat Anson Burlingame negotiated the first treaty between China and a Western power that treated the two as equals, and the country club that founded this San Francisco Peninsula city borrowed his name a quarter century later. More than 150 years on, the Chinese in Burlingame, California number in the thousands, threading through the high schools, the Bayshore dim sum halls and the tree-lined streets of one of the Peninsula’s most desirable addresses. The history reads almost as a circle closing.
The Place
Burlingame sits on the San Francisco Peninsula in San Mateo County, roughly ten miles south of the city and pressed up against San Francisco International Airport. It is an affluent, leafy place, often called the City of Trees, with a population of about 30,500 and a median home value that has climbed past 2 million dollars.
The town has two retail spines: Burlingame Avenue, the polished downtown shopping street with an Apple Store and a Caltrain depot, and Broadway, the older, more neighbourhood commercial strip a mile north. Between them sit quiet residential blocks of Spanish-revival and craftsman homes settled, originally, by San Franciscans fleeing the city after the 1906 earthquake.
Burlingame is hemmed by communities that share its character and, increasingly, its Chinese families: Millbrae to the north, San Mateo to the south, and Foster City across the bay flats to the east.
How It Became Chinese
The Chinese arrival in Burlingame is recent, gradual and tied to the Peninsula’s transformation into a corridor of tech and finance wealth. But the name itself reaches back to the very first chapter of Chinese-American diplomacy.
The man and the treaty
Anson Burlingame was a Massachusetts congressman whom Abraham Lincoln appointed as US minister to China in 1861. He served Beijing so credibly that, when his American posting ended, the Qing court asked him to represent China abroad. As China’s envoy he negotiated the Burlingame Treaty, signed in Washington on 28 July 1868.
It was the first equal treaty China signed with a Western power after the Opium Wars, recognising Chinese sovereignty and, crucially, affirming the right of Chinese to emigrate freely to the United States (the full Burlingame Treaty text survives in the historical record). The principle would be gutted within a generation by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, but it stood, briefly, as a statement of welcome.
The town took the name secondhand. In 1893 Francis Newlands laid out a development of country homes around a new country club, which honoured Anson Burlingame, a guest of the banker William Ralston who had visited the area only once. The city incorporated on 6 June 1908.
The postwar suburb
For most of the twentieth century Burlingame was a white, comfortable commuter town. Industrial and office growth in the 1960s and 1970s, spurred by the airport next door, brought aerospace and later biotech employers to the Bayshore flats. The bones of an affluent suburb were set: good public schools, walkable downtown, an easy Caltrain ride to the financial district.
Chinese families were largely absent from this picture until the closing decades of the century. The early Peninsula Chinese presence concentrated in San Francisco’s Chinatown and, after the war, spread south to working-class and middle-class suburbs. Burlingame, expensive and established, was a later destination.
The professional wave
The shift came with the Bay Area’s tech and finance boom and the loosening of immigration after 1965. Engineers, doctors, executives and entrepreneurs from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan looked for a Peninsula base that put them within commuting range of both San Francisco and Silicon Valley, with airport access for the constant trans-Pacific travel that defined many of their careers.
Burlingame fit precisely. It offered the schools and housing stock of a premium suburb without the eye-watering price ceiling of Palo Alto or the suburban sprawl further south. Hong Kong families, many of them arriving in the years around the 1997 handover, were drawn to the Cantonese-speaking commercial fabric already forming nearby in Millbrae and San Mateo.
By the 2020 census, Asian residents made up 27.3 percent of Burlingame, a figure that has since climbed past 29 percent, with Chinese-Americans the single largest component. In a town of roughly 30,000 people, that is several thousand residents of Chinese heritage, a presence visible in the schools, the parent associations and the restaurants along the Bayshore.
Schools as the magnet
As with every Peninsula suburb that drew Chinese families, schools did much of the work. Burlingame’s elementary and middle schools run through the Burlingame School District, while Burlingame High School, the sole public secondary school, falls under the well-regarded San Mateo Union High School District.
Chinese families weighed those schools the way they weighed everything: carefully, comparatively, with an eye to the long arc of a child’s prospects. The result is a high school where Mandarin and Cantonese are spoken in the parking lot, and weekend Chinese-language classes fill the calendars of families determined that the next generation not lose the language.
The Landmarks
HL Peninsula Pearl, 1590 Old Bayshore Highway. One of the Peninsula’s grand Cantonese banquet halls, where carts of har gow and siu mai weave between round tables on weekend mornings. The Bayshore strip it anchors has become an informal dim sum row, drawing Chinese families from across San Mateo County for the loud, generous ritual of yum cha.
Grand Harbor Dim Sum & Seafood, 1492 Old Bayshore Highway. A few doors down, Grand Harbor pairs steamer baskets and rice-noodle rolls with views of the bay and the planes lifting off from SFO. The weekend brunch crowd is the closest thing Burlingame has to a Chinese town square.
San Mateo County Chinese School, 1849 Bayshore Highway. A non-profit weekend school teaching Mandarin to K-12 students, with a particular focus on children of mixed-race families determined to keep the language alive. It is the kind of quiet institution that holds a diaspora together across generations.
Young Can Wok Chinese Bistro, on Broadway. A modern bistro on Burlingame’s older commercial strip, serving chef-driven takes on chow fun, Mongolian beef and a house Broadway fried rice. It signals how Chinese cooking has moved off the Bayshore and onto the town’s everyday shopping streets.
The Anson Burlingame bust, Burlingame Public Library. Unveiled on 16 November 2018 for the 150th anniversary of the treaty, the bronze sits at the library that bears the diplomat’s name. The ceremony, hosted by the City of Burlingame, drew Burlingame descendants and Chinese-American activists alike, a rare moment when a suburb’s name and its newer residents met in the same room.
Burlingame Avenue, downtown. The walkable retail spine where the polished present of the town is on display: cafes, an Apple Store, the Caltrain depot. On weekends it fills with Peninsula families, and the easy multilingualism of the crowd tells you how much the town has changed.
Broadway, north Burlingame. The older, less glossy commercial strip, where neighbourhood restaurants and a level crossing give a more lived-in feel. It is here, rather than on showpiece Burlingame Avenue, that the everyday immigrant economy of the town is quietly expanding.
Where They Came From
Burlingame’s Chinese residents are not from one place. They are a composite of the three great streams of postwar Chinese migration to the Bay Area: the mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Mainland Chinese families, many arriving since the 1990s for graduate study or professional work in tech and biotech, form the fastest-growing group. Hong Kong families, a number of them tied to the uncertainty around the 1997 handover, brought Cantonese and a deep familiarity with the banquet-hall food culture that lines the Bayshore. Taiwanese families, often earlier arrivals with roots in the South Bay, complete the picture.
What united them was a calculation about place. Each looked for a Peninsula address with strong schools, airport proximity for the trans-Pacific lives many of them led, and an existing Chinese commercial fabric within easy reach. Burlingame, ringed by Millbrae, San Mateo and Foster City, sat at the centre of exactly that.
Burlingame Today
Burlingame today is a town where the Chinese presence is woven in rather than concentrated. There is no Chinatown here, no single street that announces the community. Instead it shows up in the parent groups at Burlingame High, the weekend traffic at the Bayshore dim sum halls, and the steady appearance of Chinese restaurants on Broadway.
The cost of entry is the defining pressure. With a median home value above 2 million dollars, Burlingame draws the most established slice of the Peninsula’s Chinese professionals, the engineers turned managers, the physicians, the founders. Younger families often start in San Mateo or Foster City and move up to Burlingame as careers mature, making the town a kind of capstone address.
It is, in the end, a quietly fitting place for a Chinese community to have grown. A town named, by an accident of nineteenth-century diplomacy, for the one American who insisted China be met as an equal, now counts thousands of Chinese residents among the families walking its tree-lined streets. The bronze bust at the library makes the connection explicit, but you can read it just as clearly in the steamer baskets on a Sunday morning.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many Chinese people live in Burlingame, California?
Asian residents make up more than 29 percent of Burlingame’s roughly 30,500 people, with Chinese-Americans the largest group within that share. That works out to several thousand residents of Chinese heritage, a presence concentrated among established professional families.
Why is Burlingame named after a Chinese diplomat?
The town is named for Anson Burlingame, an American who served as US minister to China and then as China’s own envoy abroad. He negotiated the Burlingame Treaty of 1868, and a country club founded near the site in 1893 borrowed his name, which the city later took at its incorporation in 1908.
Where do the Chinese in Burlingame go for dim sum?
The Old Bayshore Highway strip is the Peninsula’s informal dim sum row, anchored by HL Peninsula Pearl at 1590 Old Bayshore and Grand Harbor Dim Sum & Seafood at 1492 Old Bayshore. Weekend yum cha there draws Chinese families from across San Mateo County.
What schools do Chinese families in Burlingame choose?
Public elementary and middle schools run through the Burlingame School District, while Burlingame High School falls under the strong San Mateo Union High School District. Many Chinese families also send children to weekend programmes such as the San Mateo County Chinese School to maintain the language.
Where did the Chinese in Burlingame come from?
Burlingame’s Chinese residents come from the mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Mainland families arriving since the 1990s for tech and biotech work are the fastest-growing group, alongside Hong Kong families tied to the 1997 handover and earlier Taiwanese arrivals.
How does Burlingame compare to nearby Chinese communities?
Burlingame is the more expensive, capstone address among a cluster of Chinese Peninsula communities that includes Millbrae, San Mateo and Foster City. Families often begin in those neighbouring towns and move up to Burlingame as their careers and means grow.
If your family’s story passed through Burlingame, or any of the places Chinese families have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From a treaty signed in 1868 to a dim sum table on Old Bayshore Highway, to wherever you are now.