On a weekday morning along Colima Road, the trolleys of dim sum carts have not yet started rolling, but the bakeries are already busy and the parking lots at the plazas are filling with cars. This is the daily rhythm of the Chinese in Rowland Heights, an unincorporated stretch of the eastern San Gabriel Valley that has become one of the densest Chinese and Taiwanese suburbs in the United States. It did not happen by accident, and it did not happen quickly.
The Place
Rowland Heights sits at the eastern edge of the San Gabriel Valley in unincorporated Los Angeles County, tucked between the 60 Freeway to the north and the rising hills of the Puente range to the south. It has no city hall and no mayor. The county governs it, and the name comes from John Rowland, who with William Workman received the surrounding Rancho La Puente land grant in the 1840s.
For most of its history this was ranch and orchard country, then a quiet postwar suburb of tract homes and hillside lots. The transformation into a Chinese centre is recent enough that older residents remember it happening around them.
Today roughly 60 per cent of Rowland Heights residents are of Asian descent, and Chinese and Taiwanese Americans together make up about 43 per cent of the population, one of the highest shares of any community in the country. In the northern part of the neighbourhood, nearly a third of residents over the age of five speak Chinese at home. The Los Angeles Almanac consistently ranks it among the most Chinese places in America.
How It Became Chinese
Ranch land and orange groves
The land that became Rowland Heights was part of Rancho La Puente, sold to John Rowland and William Workman in 1842 and divided in 1868. For nearly a century afterwards it was given over to hog lots, walnut and citrus groves, and grazing. The community that grew up here through the mid twentieth century was predominantly Anglo and Hispanic.
Two things changed that. Postwar prosperity pushed Los Angeles families eastward in search of newer, cheaper homes, and the extension of the 60 Freeway made the area reachable. By the 1970s Rowland Heights was a comfortable, ordinary suburb of hillside houses and good public schools.
The Taiwanese arrival, 1980s
The Chinese story here begins in earnest in the 1980s, and it begins with Taiwan. The first large wave of Chinese settlement in the San Gabriel Valley had landed a decade earlier in Monterey Park, the suburb a banker named Frederic Hsieh marketed in Taiwanese newspapers as a “Chinese Beverly Hills.” As Monterey Park and neighbouring Alhambra grew crowded, established Taiwanese families looked further east.
Taiwan’s circumstances pushed them. The lifting of martial law in 1987, lingering uncertainty about the island’s future, and a booming export economy gave affluent families both the reason and the means to move capital and children abroad. Suburban Los Angeles real estate, with its strong schools, was an obvious destination.
They chose Rowland Heights for the same reason families had always chosen it: the hillside estates and the public schools of the Rowland Unified School District. By the early 1990s the density of Taiwanese households and businesses had earned the neighbourhood a nickname that stuck for two decades. People called it Little Taipei.
The mainland years
The pattern that shaped the whole San Gabriel Valley repeated here. As the earlier Taiwanese arrivals settled and prospered, newer immigrants from mainland China, including Cantonese, Teochew and later Mandarin speakers from across the provinces, moved into the housing and storefronts they had established. Rowland Heights broadened from a largely Taiwanese enclave into a mixed Chinese one, and the food and signage broadened with it.
The shift is visible on the menus. Where the older restaurants leaned Taiwanese and Cantonese, the newer arrivals brought Sichuan hotpot, Lanzhou hand pulled noodles and northern dumplings to the same shopping plazas. The community kept layering rather than replacing.
It is visible in the markets too. Alongside 99 Ranch, the corridor filled with other Asian American chains and independent grocers, supermarkets such as Shun Fat and Greenland sitting beside bakeries, herbal pharmacies and tea bars. A family arriving from Taipei in 1990 and a family arriving from Chengdu in 2015 could shop the same plazas and find the ingredients of home.
The Landmarks
99 Ranch Market, 1015 S Nogales Street. The Rowland Heights branch of the Asian American supermarket chain anchors the Nogales Street shopping district at the corner of Gale Avenue. For many families it is the practical centre of the neighbourhood, the place where the week’s cooking begins, with a tank of live seafood and aisles stocked for a dozen regional cuisines.
Hong Kong Plaza, Colima Road and Nogales Street. One of the cluster of Asian shopping centres that line the corridor, Hong Kong Plaza packs restaurants, a market and small shops into a single complex. It is the kind of place where a Sichuan restaurant, a bubble tea counter and a herbal pharmacy share a parking lot.
Pichaiyuan Hot Pot, 18406 Colima Road. Open from late morning until one in the morning, this hotpot house is part of the wave of mainland Chinese dining that arrived in the corridor. Its long hours reflect a neighbourhood where dinner often runs late and the table is the social centre of the evening.
Northern Cafe, 18495 Colima Road. Specialising in Lanzhou hand pulled noodles and dumplings, Northern Cafe represents the northern Chinese cooking that broadened the area’s once Taiwanese and Cantonese palate. The noodles are pulled to order, a small piece of theatre repeated all day.
Taste of China, 18457 E Colima Road. A dim sum, dumpling and baozi specialist on the same stretch of Colima Road, it is one of the morning anchors of the corridor. Steamer baskets and trolleys keep the older Cantonese tradition alive a few doors from the newer hotpot and noodle houses.
Pathfinder Park, 18150 Pathfinder Road. The neighbourhood’s main public green hosts the annual Taste of the Heights festival each April, a food and community gathering that has become a fixture of the local calendar. It is one of the few places in this unincorporated patch where the whole community turns out together.
Hsi Lai Temple, 3456 Glenmark Drive, Hacienda Heights. Just across the boundary in adjacent Hacienda Heights, Hsi Lai Temple is the largest Buddhist temple in the Western hemisphere, completed in 1988 on fifteen hillside acres. The first overseas branch of Taiwan’s Fo Guang Shan order, it serves as the North American headquarters for a religious organisation that grew alongside the same Taiwanese migration that filled Rowland Heights.
Where They Came From
The first and defining wave came from Taiwan. These were largely affluent, professional families who arrived in the 1980s and early 1990s, drawn by schools and stability and able to buy into the hillside estates outright. Their presence is why the neighbourhood was Little Taipei before it was anything else.
The later arrivals came from across mainland China. Some were Cantonese and Teochew, part of the broader Chinese movement through the San Gabriel Valley; others were Mandarin speakers from northern and central provinces whose cooking now fills the Colima Road corridor. The chain ran roughly from Taiwan, then mainland China, with each group inheriting and expanding the institutions the last had built.
It is a pattern the whole valley shares. The same migration that reshaped Arcadia and San Marino further west, and that sent Taiwanese families south to Orange County and Irvine, ran through Rowland Heights too. The neighbourhood is one node in a network that stretches across Southern California.
Rowland Heights Today
Rowland Heights remains unincorporated, governed by Los Angeles County, and that has not slowed it. The plazas along Nogales Street and Colima Road have only grown denser, and the dining has only diversified, with hotpot, dim sum, Lanzhou noodles, bakeries and tea bars sharing the same few blocks.
The schools that drew the first Taiwanese families still anchor the community. John A. Rowland High School, where Asian students now make up close to half the enrolment, ranks among the stronger public high schools in the state. The Rowland Unified School District remains a selling point passed between newcomer families much as it was forty years ago.
The food corridor has become a destination in its own right, pulling diners from across Southern California to a few blocks of Colima Road for hotpot and noodles. On weekend evenings the parking lots fill and the wait lists run long, a level of culinary density unusual for any suburb, let alone an unincorporated one.
The nickname Little Taipei has faded as the community has broadened beyond its Taiwanese origins, but the institutions it built remain. What began as a wealthy enclave for one island’s emigrants has become a working Chinese suburb for families from across a continent, still recognisably itself, still growing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Rowland Heights a Chinese neighbourhood?
Largely, yes. Chinese and Taiwanese Americans make up about 43 per cent of Rowland Heights, and roughly 60 per cent of residents are of Asian descent. It is one of the most heavily Chinese communities in the United States, though it remains ethnically mixed, with a substantial Hispanic population as well.
Why was Rowland Heights called Little Taipei?
From the 1980s into the early 1990s, large numbers of affluent Taiwanese families settled in the neighbourhood, drawn by hillside homes and strong public schools. The density of Taiwanese households and businesses earned it the nickname Little Taipei, which lasted into the 2000s before the community broadened to include more mainland Chinese arrivals.
Where is the best Chinese food in Rowland Heights?
Most of it is concentrated along Colima Road and Nogales Street, where shopping plazas such as Hong Kong Plaza hold dozens of restaurants. The range runs from Cantonese dim sum at places like Taste of China to Sichuan hotpot at Pichaiyuan and Lanzhou hand pulled noodles at Northern Cafe.
Is Hsi Lai Temple in Rowland Heights?
No. Hsi Lai Temple sits just over the boundary in adjacent Hacienda Heights, at 3456 Glenmark Drive. It is the largest Buddhist temple in the Western hemisphere and the North American headquarters of Taiwan’s Fo Guang Shan order, and it grew out of the same Taiwanese migration that shaped Rowland Heights.
Is Rowland Heights a city?
No. Rowland Heights is an unincorporated community in eastern Los Angeles County. It has no city government of its own and is administered directly by the county, which is unusual for a place of its size and density.
Where did the Chinese in Rowland Heights come from?
The earliest large wave came from Taiwan in the 1980s, followed by immigrants from mainland China, including Cantonese, Teochew and Mandarin speakers from across the provinces. The chain migration ran from Taiwan to the mainland, with each group expanding the businesses and institutions established by the last.
If your family’s story passed through Rowland Heights, or any of the places the Chinese have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From Taiwan to Rowland Heights, to wherever you are now.