Drive the long curve of Chino Hills Parkway on a Saturday morning and you will see it before you read a single sign: minivans and SUVs filing into the lot at 99 Ranch Market, grandmothers steering carts of bok choy and live crab, families queued for dim sum two doors down. The Chinese in Chino Hills did not arrive in a single wave or build a Chinatown gate. They came quietly, household by household, up over the ridgeline from the San Gabriel Valley, and turned a former cattle ranch into one of the most heavily Asian suburbs in Southern California.
The Place
Chino Hills sits at the far western edge of San Bernardino County, pressed against the Orange County and Los Angeles County lines where the Inland Empire meets the back slope of the San Gabriel Valley. It is a city of rolling hills, gated developments and master-planned villages, with a median household income well above the national figure and home prices that climb past two million dollars in its priciest enclave.
For most of its history this was ranchland, part of the Mexican land grant Rancho Santa Ana del Chino. The suburb you see today was drawn up on paper in 1979 and only became a city in 1991. What makes Chino Hills unusual is who filled those villages: by the 2020s, Asian residents were the single largest group in town, and the Chinese were the largest community within that.
How It Became Chinese
From the Lugo ranch to a specific plan
The land was cattle country first. In 1841 the Mexican governor granted Rancho Santa Ana del Chino to Antonio Maria Lugo, and for well over a century the hills carried cattle, sheep and dairies rather than houses. Into the 1970s most of Chino Hills was still open range and equestrian land, rural in a way that is almost impossible to picture from the parkway today.
The turning point was bureaucratic. In 1979 San Bernardino County launched the Chino Hills Specific Plan, a blueprint for developing 18,000 acres into clustered residential villages while preserving open space around them. Subdivisions rose with names like Payne Ranch, Butterfield Ranch, Rolling Ridge and Los Serranos. The population had reached roughly 42,000 by the time residents voted to incorporate as a city on 1 December 1991.
The San Gabriel Valley spills east
To understand the Chinese arrival in Chino Hills, you have to understand the geography just to the west. The San Gabriel Valley, the largest concentration of Chinese Americans in the United States, had been filling since the 1980s, first Monterey Park and Alhambra, then the eastern valley towns of Rowland Heights, Hacienda Heights and Walnut.
By the late 1980s and 1990s those eastern valley communities were established and increasingly expensive. Families looking for newer houses, larger lots and the next set of good schools kept moving east, over the hills and across the county line. The brand-new villages of Chino Hills, with their two-storey homes and cul-de-sacs, sat just minutes from the Chinese groceries and churches of Rowland Heights and Walnut.
The neighbouring city of Diamond Bar, separated from Chino Hills only by the 57 freeway and a ridgeline, had already become a heavily Chinese suburb. Chino Hills was the natural overflow, the same migration crossing one more boundary into San Bernardino County.
Schools, space and a second generation
What anchored the move was the same thing that anchors Chinese suburban migration across America: schools. The Chino Valley Unified School District, and Chino Hills High School in particular, ranked among the stronger public schools in the region, and that reputation travelled by word of mouth through families and church congregations.
The numbers tell the arc plainly. In 2000, Asian residents made up roughly a fifth of Chino Hills. Within two decades that share had climbed past forty per cent, and of the city’s tens of thousands of Asian residents, the largest single ancestry was Chinese, ahead of Filipino, Korean and Indian neighbours.
This was never a single-origin enclave. Chino Hills grew up alongside a substantial South Asian community as well, a story told separately. But the Chinese presence shaped the commercial heart of the city, the restaurants and groceries clustered along Chino Avenue and Chino Hills Parkway that now read like a slice of the San Gabriel Valley transplanted east.
The Landmarks
99 Ranch Market, 2959 Chino Ave. The Taiwanese-American supermarket chain is the gravitational centre of Chinese life in Chino Hills. On weekend mornings its parking lot fills early, families stocking up on live seafood, Asian produce and a deli counter of roast meats. Where 99 Ranch opens, the rest of the community follows.
Tasty Noodle House, 2947 Chino Ave. A neighbourhood Shanghai restaurant in the same plaza, known for its xiao long bao soup dumplings, pan-fried rice cakes and curry chicken noodle soup. It is the kind of unglamorous, reliably good dining room that signals a community has truly settled in, not a destination so much as a Tuesday-night habit.
Dim Sum King, Skyline Plaza. Near 99 Ranch, Dim Sum King serves the steamed BBQ pork buns, shrimp dumplings and pumpkin pastries that anchor a Cantonese weekend. Cart-and-teapot Sunday mornings, once the preserve of Chinatown and Monterey Park, are now a fixture of the Chino Hills calendar.
300G Noodles, 14230 Chino Hills Parkway. A hand-pulled noodle house turning out northern and Sichuan dishes, including dan dan noodles. Its presence reflects the breadth of the community: not only the Cantonese and Shanghainese cooking of earlier waves but the spicier regional food that arrived with newer mainland immigration.
The Shoppes at Chino Hills, 13920 City Center Dr. The city’s open-air retail centre, anchored by big-box stores and chain restaurants. It is not a Chinese landmark in itself, but it is where Chinese, Indian, Filipino and Korean families mix on a Friday evening, a reminder that Chino Hills is a genuinely shared suburb rather than a single-group enclave.
Vellano Country Club, 2441 Vellano Club Dr. A private golf community designed by Greg Norman, once billed as the most expensive housing development in the Inland Empire, with homes built to exceed two million dollars. Its custom estates have drawn affluent Chinese buyers, the visible top end of a community that spans first-generation shopkeepers and second-generation professionals.
Chino Hills High School, 16150 Pomona Rincon Rd. One of seven high schools in the Chino Valley Unified School District and consistently among the better-ranked public schools in San Bernardino County. For many Chinese families it was the reason for the move, and its college-bound culture is woven through with the children of the families who shop at 99 Ranch on Saturdays.
Where They Came From
The Chinese of Chino Hills did not come straight from China to the hills. Most arrived by way of the San Gabriel Valley, a generation or a few years removed from Taiwan, Hong Kong or mainland China, having first put down roots in Monterey Park, Rowland Heights, Walnut or Diamond Bar before moving east for newer homes and good schools.
The earliest of this Southern California migration leaned Taiwanese and Cantonese, the families who built the Evangelical Formosan churches that planted congregations across Walnut, Hacienda Heights and into Chino Hills. The newer arrivals, especially from the 2000s on, have included more mainland Chinese, a shift you can taste in the spread from Cantonese dim sum to Sichuan noodles along Chino Avenue.
What they shared was an aspiration that fit the suburb exactly: space, safety, a good school district and a community of neighbours who spoke the same languages and shopped at the same markets. Chino Hills offered all four, one ridgeline beyond where the established Chinese suburbs ended.
Chino Hills Today
Today Chino Hills is a fully bilingual suburb in the quiet, residential way that the eastern San Gabriel Valley is. The signs along Chino Avenue carry Chinese characters; the supermarket aisles stock the brands of three countries; the high school parking lots fill with families speaking Mandarin, Cantonese, Tagalog and Punjabi. The Chinese community is woven into the ordinary texture of the place rather than confined to a single district.
It is also unmistakably affluent. This is not a working-class immigrant gateway but a destination suburb, where Chinese arrival has tracked upward mobility, from apartment to first house to custom estate. The community here is largely second-stage and second-generation, the families who already made it in Los Angeles and chose the hills for the next chapter.
Chino Hills shares this story with its neighbours, and the boundaries between them are porous. A family might worship in Rowland Heights, shop in Walnut, send a cousin to school in Diamond Bar and live in Chino Hills, the whole eastern arc of the Chinese Southern California suburb functioning as one loose, connected world. Chino Hills is simply its newest, furthest edge.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many Chinese people live in Chino Hills?
Estimates put the Chinese community in Chino Hills at well over thirteen thousand residents, the single largest Asian ancestry group in a city where Asian residents are now the largest group overall. The Chinese in Chino Hills outnumber Filipino, Korean and Indian neighbours, though all four communities are substantial.
Why did so many Chinese families move to Chino Hills?
Most came from the San Gabriel Valley, especially Rowland Heights, Walnut and Diamond Bar, drawn east by newer homes, larger lots and the strong Chino Valley Unified schools. As the established eastern valley suburbs grew expensive and built out, Chino Hills offered the same community of neighbours and markets one ridgeline beyond the county line.
Where do Chinese residents shop for groceries in Chino Hills?
The anchor is 99 Ranch Market on Chino Avenue, the Taiwanese-American supermarket chain that serves as the commercial centre of Chinese life in town. Around it cluster Chinese restaurants and bakeries along Chino Avenue and Chino Hills Parkway, giving the area the feel of a transplanted slice of the San Gabriel Valley.
Is the Chinese community in Chino Hills mainland or Taiwanese?
Both, and the mix has shifted over time. Earlier arrivals leaned Taiwanese and Cantonese, building the Evangelical Formosan churches that spread across the eastern valley, while newer immigration since the 2000s has brought more mainland Chinese, reflected in the city’s growing range of regional Chinese restaurants.
What is the relationship between Chino Hills and Diamond Bar?
The two cities sit side by side, separated mainly by the 57 freeway and a ridgeline, with Diamond Bar in Los Angeles County and Chino Hills in San Bernardino County. Diamond Bar became a heavily Chinese suburb first, and Chino Hills grew as its natural eastward overflow, the same families crossing one more boundary.
Does Chino Hills have a Chinatown?
No. The Chinese in Chino Hills never built a single ethnic district with a gate or a name. Instead the community is woven through the city’s master-planned villages, with its commercial heart spread along Chino Avenue and Chino Hills Parkway rather than concentrated in one quarter.
If your family’s story passed through Chino Hills, or any of the places Chinese Americans have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From the streets of Taipei, Hong Kong or Guangzhou, to a new house in the hills above the San Gabriel Valley, to wherever you are now.