On a Saturday morning in Livingston, the parking lots of the public schools fill not with sports teams but with families carrying workbooks. Inside, hundreds of children trace characters and recite tones, then file back out into a township that, within a single generation, has become one of the most visibly Chinese in New Jersey. The story of the Chinese in Livingston is not one of a downtown enclave or a strip of red awnings. It is a quieter arrival, told through report cards, weekend classrooms, and a corporate corridor twenty miles west of Manhattan.
The Place
Livingston is a suburban township in Essex County, roughly twenty miles west of New York City, threaded by Interstate 280 and the office campuses of Eisenhower Parkway. It traces its land back to the 1702 purchase of the Horseneck Tract from the Lenni Lenape, and was incorporated in 1813, taking its name from William Livingston, the first governor of New Jersey.
For most of its history it was farm country: lumber and shoemaking, then dairy, which remained the leading local industry well into the twentieth century. The automobile and the postwar highway turned it into a commuter suburb almost overnight. In 1950 the township counted 9,932 residents; by 1960 that figure had jumped to 23,124, as housing developments replaced the last of the farms.
Today it is one of New Jersey’s higher-income communities, known above all for a public school system that earned Livingston High School a National Blue Ribbon from the U.S. Department of Education in 1998. That reputation, more than any single landmark, is what drew the families this article is about.
How It Became Chinese
The Chinese arrival in Livingston was gradual, then sudden. It did not begin with a restaurant row or a temple, but with a calculation that thousands of immigrant families made independently and arrived at together: that a child raised here would have an unusually clear path to a good university.
An older town, a Jewish chapter
Before Livingston was a destination for Chinese professionals, it was a destination for another community moving out of Newark. As the city’s Jewish population shifted westward into Essex County through the 1960s, Livingston became a centre of suburban Jewish life. Temple B’nai Abraham, one of the oldest and largest independent synagogues in America, founded in 1853, moved from Newark to Livingston in 1973. The story of the Jews of Livingston is a chapter of its own, and one this township still carries.
That congregation carried real history with it. Its long-serving rabbi, Joachim Prinz, who had escaped Nazi Germany in 1937, became a national civil rights figure and arranged for Martin Luther King Jr. to address the congregation in its Newark building in January 1963. The Jewish institutions that anchored Livingston for decades remain, and the newer Chinese community has grown alongside them rather than in place of them. The two stories share a town and a set of values about education and arrival, without sharing a single narrative.
The professionals arrive
The first significant Chinese presence in the area was small and grounded in faith and language rather than numbers. In 1974, several Chinese Christian families across New Jersey organised the church that would become the Christian Evangelical Church in Livingston, originally meeting in nearby West Orange. By the early 1980s, enough Chinese families had settled across western Essex County to support a weekend Chinese school: the Livingston Chinese School, founded in 1983 by Julia Dutka and Catherine Hwang to teach Mandarin and Cantonese to a then-modest community.
What followed tracked the broader wave of skilled migration from China and Taiwan that reshaped suburbs across the state, from the Chinese families who settled in West Windsor for its schools to the longer-established South Asian corridor of Indians in Edison. New Jersey’s pharmaceutical and financial industries, much of it within commuting distance of Livingston, drew engineers, scientists, accountants and physicians. The township’s office campuses along Eisenhower Parkway and Mount Pleasant Avenue, home to corporate names including KPMG and AIG, made it possible to live and work in the same suburb, or to reach Manhattan within the hour.
A demographic transformation
The numbers tell the speed of the change plainly. In 2000, residents identifying as Asian made up about 14.5 percent of the township. By 2010 that share had risen to roughly 19.2 percent, some 5,642 people. By the 2020s, Asian residents accounted for around a third of Livingston’s population of roughly 31,000, with the Chinese the largest single group within that.
This was not a slow seep but a doubling and then a doubling again, compressed into two decades. It reshaped the school district, the weekend rhythm of the town, and eventually its civic life, as a community that had arrived quietly began to take a public role.
From newcomers to neighbours
The clearest marker of that shift came in 2024, when Ketan Bhuptani was elected as the township’s first Asian American council member, a milestone for a population that had grown faster than its representation. The township’s Committee for Diversity and Inclusion and a local AAPI committee began organising public events, including an Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Picnic held at Memorial Oval on Robert H. Harp Drive.
The arc is a familiar one in affluent American suburbs: a community arrives for the schools, concentrates around them, builds its own institutions in language and worship, and only later steps into the council chamber. Livingston has run that course unusually quickly.
The Landmarks
Livingston Chinese School, 20 Foxcroft Drive. Founded in 1983 by Julia Dutka and Catherine Hwang, this is the older of the township’s two Chinese weekend schools. It teaches Mandarin and Cantonese to children from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade, along with adult conversation classes, and predates the demographic wave that would later fill its rooms.
Livingston Huaxia Chinese School. Established in September 2002, this branch of the national Huaxia network grew from around 200 students to more than 600, making it one of the largest in the system. Its Saturday programme runs well beyond language, covering arts, sports and culture, and it has become a fixture of the township’s weekend life.
Christian Evangelical Church in Livingston, 71 Old Road. Rooted in the gathering of Chinese Christian families who first organised in 1974 in West Orange, the congregation moved to its Livingston home on 3 June 2006. With about 75 members, swelling past 100 at Christmas and Thanksgiving, it draws Chinese worshippers from China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore.
Livingston Town Center, North Livingston Avenue at Route 10. The township’s open-air centre of more than twenty restaurants and shops is where the community’s everyday life is most visible, from family dinners to weekend errands. It is less a Chinese landmark than a shared one, a measure of how integrated the township has become.
Eisenhower Parkway corporate corridor. The Class A office campuses along Eisenhower Parkway and Mount Pleasant Avenue, with corporate tenants such as KPMG and AIG, anchor the professional life that brought many Chinese families here. For two-career households, the appeal was working near home in pharma, finance or technology while keeping Manhattan within reach.
Memorial Oval, Robert H. Harp Drive. The township’s central green hosts its civic gatherings, including the AAPI Heritage Picnic introduced as the Asian community grew into a public presence. It is where a population once defined by private weekend classrooms began to celebrate in the open.
Temple B’nai Abraham, 300 East Northfield Road. Not a Chinese landmark, but an essential part of the town the Chinese joined. Founded in 1853 and relocated to Livingston in 1973, it is a reminder that this was an established community of arrival long before the Chinese came, and that the two have grown side by side.
Where They Came From
The Chinese of Livingston did not come from a single village or province in the way some older American Chinatowns did. They came as a professional migration drawn from across the Chinese-speaking world: mainland China, particularly its eastern cities, alongside Taiwan, and smaller numbers from Hong Kong and the diaspora communities of Southeast Asia.
That breadth is visible in the institutions. The Christian Evangelical Church counts members from China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore in a single congregation. The weekend schools teach both Mandarin and Cantonese, a quiet acknowledgement of mixed origins.
What united them was less geography than aspiration. They were graduate students who stayed, engineers and scientists recruited into New Jersey’s pharmaceutical and financial sectors, and families who chose Livingston for one reason above all others: the schools. It is the same logic that built the Indian community in Iselin a few towns south, a generation of professionals choosing a suburb by its report cards.
Livingston Today
Today the Chinese community in Livingston is no longer a newcomer story. With Asian residents making up around a third of the township and the Chinese the largest group among them, their presence is woven into the ordinary fabric of the place: the school pickup line, the supermarket aisle, the council chamber.
It remains a suburban community rather than an enclave. There is no Chinatown here, no single street that announces itself. Instead there are the weekend schools that fill public classrooms on Saturdays, the church on Old Road, the families who chose this township for its report cards and stayed to shape its civic life. The election of the first Asian American council member in 2024 marked the moment a private community became a public one.
The honest tension is the one familiar to every affluent, fast-changing suburb: a town defined for decades by one community has become home to another, and the work of becoming genuine neighbours rather than parallel residents is ongoing. In Livingston, so far, that work has been done quietly and largely well, two arrivals separated by half a century, joined by the same belief in what a good school can give a child.
Frequently Asked Questions
How large is the Chinese community in Livingston, New Jersey?
Asian residents make up roughly a third of Livingston’s population of about 31,000, and the Chinese are the largest single group among them. The Asian share grew from around 14.5 percent in 2000 to about 19.2 percent in 2010 and roughly 35 percent by the 2020s.
Why did so many Chinese families move to Livingston?
The Chinese in Livingston were drawn primarily by the public school system, which earned Livingston High School a National Blue Ribbon in 1998. The township’s corporate campuses in pharmaceuticals and finance, and an easy commute to Manhattan, made it practical for two-career professional households to settle there.
Is there a Chinatown in Livingston?
No. The Chinese community in Livingston is a suburban, professional one rather than a traditional enclave. Its institutions are weekend Chinese schools, a church and corporate workplaces rather than a single commercial district.
What Chinese schools operate in Livingston?
The township has two main weekend Chinese schools: the Livingston Chinese School, founded in 1983, and the Livingston Huaxia Chinese School, established in 2002, which grew from around 200 students to more than 600. Both teach language and culture, primarily on Saturdays.
How does the Chinese community relate to Livingston’s Jewish community?
Livingston was a centre of suburban Jewish life well before the Chinese arrived, anchored by Temple B’nai Abraham, which moved from Newark in 1973. The Chinese community has grown alongside the established Jewish community rather than replacing it, with the two sharing a town built around education and family.
When did the Chinese community in Livingston gain political representation?
In 2024, Ketan Bhuptani became the township’s first Asian American council member. The township has also created a Committee for Diversity and Inclusion and an AAPI committee, and hosts public events such as an AAPI Heritage Picnic at Memorial Oval.
If your family’s story passed through Livingston, or any of the places Chinese families have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From a graduate programme or a recruiter’s call in an eastern Chinese city, to a Saturday classroom on Foxcroft Drive, to wherever you are now.