On a Saturday morning along Las Tunas Drive, the line outside the dim sum parlour spills onto the pavement, the bakery cases fill with egg tarts and pineapple buns, and the conversations drifting past are mostly in Mandarin and Cantonese. This is the Chinese in Temple City, a four-square-mile city in the western San Gabriel Valley where a citrus-era townsite quietly became one of the most Chinese places in America.
The Place
Temple City sits about twelve miles east of downtown Los Angeles, hemmed in by Arcadia to the north, San Gabriel and Rosemead to the west and south, and unincorporated county land between. It is small, just four square miles, and almost entirely residential, a grid of single-storey bungalows and newer two-storey homes wrapped around the commercial spine of Las Tunas Drive.
The city still calls itself the “Home of Camellias,” a slogan chosen by the local Women’s Club in 1944. The camellias remain, planted in front gardens and along the parade route. What has changed is who tends them.
How It Became Chinese
Temple City began as a developer’s dream. On 30 May 1923, Walter P. Temple, heir to one of Southern California’s old Californio-American landholding families, bought roughly 400 acres carved out of Lucky Baldwin’s former Rancho Santa Anita. Temple wanted, in his own words, a community where average people could afford to own a home.
For its first half-century, that is exactly what it was: a modest, mostly white suburb of citrus groves giving way to tract houses. Orange and lemon trees covered the flatland between the foothills and the river, and the early advertisements sold the place on clean air, cheap lots, and the promise of a garden of one’s own. The town changed its name from “Town of Temple” to Temple City in 1928 to avoid confusion with the town of Tempe, and finally incorporated as a city on 25 May 1960. As late as 1980, the non-Hispanic white population stood at roughly 81 per cent, according to census records for the city.
The wave from the west San Gabriel Valley
The transformation came from a few miles south. In the early 1970s a young Taiwanese realtor named Frederic Hsieh began marketing Monterey Park to Chinese immigrants and overseas investors, billing it as a “Chinese Beverly Hills.” Capital and families followed, first from Taiwan, then from Hong Kong, and later from mainland China.
Monterey Park reached an Asian plurality, then majority, and the settlement pushed outward into Alhambra, San Gabriel, Rosemead, and Arcadia. Temple City lay directly in that path. The scholar Wei Li would later coin the term “ethnoburb” for exactly this phenomenon: a suburban ethnic cluster that is residential, commercial, and professional all at once, not a downtown Chinatown but a sprawling region of them. The story of how Chinese entrepreneurs transformed the San Gabriel Valley has been told many times since.
Why Temple City, specifically
Several things made Temple City attractive. It was affordable relative to neighbouring Arcadia and San Marino, two cities Chinese families also flocked to. The lots were generous, the streets quiet, and the city had its own well-regarded school district rather than feeding into a larger one.
For immigrant parents weighing where to raise children, that combination mattered enormously. Word travelled through family networks and Chinese-language newspapers: Temple City was safe, the schools were strong, and a Mandarin speaker could buy groceries, see a doctor, and order dinner without ever switching to English.
From minority to majority
The numbers tell the story plainly. By the 2010 Census, the Asian share of Temple City had reached 55.7 per cent, about 19,800 residents. By 2020 it had climbed to 63.9 per cent of a population of 36,494, while the non-Hispanic white share had fallen to roughly 13 per cent. Within Los Angeles County, Temple City now ranks among the most heavily Asian communities, the great majority of them ethnic Chinese.
It happened without the friction that marked Monterey Park’s English-only fights of the 1980s. Temple City absorbed its change later and more gradually, the bungalows passing one by one to new owners, the Las Tunas storefronts turning over from diners and hardware shops to bakeries and herbalists.
The Landmarks
Bistro Na’s, 9055 Las Tunas Drive, Suite 105. An outpost of Beijing’s Na Jia Xiao Guan group, whose founder claims a court physician among his ancestors, Bistro Na’s serves Qing imperial cuisine in a small Temple City strip mall. It opened in late 2016 and earned a Michelin star in 2019, an extraordinary honour for a suburban San Gabriel Valley dining room, which it held through 2022.
Camellia Square, 5770 Rosemead Boulevard. One of the city’s anchor retail centres, the kind of multi-tenant plaza that defines San Gabriel Valley commercial life, with restaurants, bakeries, and services tuned to a Chinese clientele clustered under one sign.
Kang Kang Food Court, 9618 Las Tunas Drive. A beloved, unpretentious spot for northern Chinese street food and dim sum, the steamed buns and dumplings that draw weekend crowds and long counters of takeaway trays.
Tea Station, 9578 Las Tunas Drive. A branch of the Taiwanese tea-house chain, pouring boba and serving the casual cafe fare that anchors the social life of students and families along the drive.
Temple City High School, 9501 Lemon Avenue. The flagship of Temple City Unified, where roughly two thirds of students are of Asian descent and academic results sit in the top tier of California districts. For many immigrant families, this campus was the reason they chose the city at all.
Las Tunas Drive, the commercial spine. The east-west street that carries the city’s life, from the Camellia Festival parade route to a near-continuous run of Chinese restaurants, bakeries, pharmacies, and tea shops between Rosemead Boulevard and the eastern edge of town.
The Camellia Festival, centred on Las Tunas Drive each spring. Founded in 1944, the festival is one of the oldest community celebrations in Southern California. Once a thoroughly mid-century American affair, its youth parades and floats now reflect a city whose children are largely the grandchildren of immigrants from across the Pacific.
Where They Came From
Temple City’s Chinese residents arrived in overlapping waves, mirroring the wider San Gabriel Valley. The earliest were Taiwanese, many of them well-educated and middle class, leaving the political and economic uncertainties of the 1970s and 1980s. They were followed by families from Hong Kong, especially in the years of anxiety before the 1997 handover to China.
The most recent and now the largest stream has come from mainland China, accelerating through the 2000s and 2010s as China’s new prosperity sent students, families, and investors abroad. Cities like Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Beijing are all represented, which is why the food along Las Tunas spans Cantonese dim sum, northern dumplings, and regional specialities rather than any single tradition.
What united them was less a single home village than a shared destination logic: a foothold near family already in the valley, a Mandarin-speaking commercial world, and schools worth the move. A cousin in Alhambra, an aunt in San Gabriel, a college friend in Arcadia: the map of who settled where was drawn as much by kinship as by price, and Temple City filled in as the surrounding cities grew crowded and expensive.
Temple City Today
Today Temple City is, in the plainest sense, a Chinese American suburb. The signage on Las Tunas is bilingual, the supermarkets stock the staples of a dozen Chinese regional cuisines, and the median household income, above $100,000, reflects a comfortable middle and upper-middle class community rather than an immigrant gateway of first arrival.
It is also a city still negotiating what it is. Longtime residents and newcomers share the same camellia-lined streets, the same school board meetings, the same festival in spring. The transition has been quieter and less contested than Monterey Park’s, in part because it came later, after the valley had already become unmistakably Chinese.
There are tensions familiar to any maturing immigrant suburb: debates over new development and parking, the slow generational shift as the American-born children of the first arrivals leave for college and sometimes do not return, and the question of how a city keeps its civic traditions alive across a language line. The Camellia Festival, still going after eighty years, is one answer, an institution old enough to belong to everyone who lives here now.
For families who have made it home, Temple City offers something the older urban Chinatowns could not: space, schools, and ownership, with the food and language of home still within walking distance. The bakery line on Saturday morning is, in its way, the whole story.
To understand Temple City you have to read it alongside its neighbours, the dense commercial heart of the Chinese in San Gabriel, the affluence of the Chinese in Arcadia and the Chinese in San Marino, and the original suburban Chinatown of the Chinese in Monterey Park that started it all. Further east, the same story repeats in Diamond Bar and Rowland Heights.
Frequently Asked Questions
How large is the Chinese community in Temple City?
Asian residents made up about 63.9 per cent of Temple City’s population of 36,494 at the 2020 Census, up from 55.7 per cent in 2010. The great majority are ethnic Chinese, making the Chinese in Temple City one of the highest-concentration Chinese communities in Los Angeles County.
Why did so many Chinese families move to Temple City?
The settlement spread north and east from Monterey Park, the original San Gabriel Valley “ethnoburb,” through the 1980s and 1990s. Temple City offered affordable homes relative to Arcadia and San Marino, generous lots, and a strong independent school district, which drew immigrant families looking to raise children.
What are the best Chinese restaurants in Temple City?
Las Tunas Drive is lined with options. Bistro Na’s, which served Qing imperial cuisine and held a Michelin star from 2019 to 2022, is the best known, while Kang Kang Food Court is a longtime favourite for northern Chinese street food and dim sum.
When did Temple City become majority Asian?
The shift accelerated through the 2000s. Asian residents passed the halfway mark by the 2010 Census and reached nearly two thirds by 2020. As recently as 1980, the city was roughly 81 per cent non-Hispanic white.
What is the Camellia Festival?
The Temple City Camellia Festival began in 1944, when the local Women’s Club chose the camellia as the community flower. It remains one of Southern California’s oldest community celebrations, with a youth parade down Las Tunas Drive each spring.
How are the schools in Temple City?
Temple City Unified School District serves about 5,300 students and ranks in the top tier of California districts, with reading and math proficiency well above state averages. Roughly two thirds of its students are of Asian descent, and the schools are a major reason Chinese families chose the city.
If your family’s story passed through Temple City, or any of the places Chinese families have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From a village in Guangdong or a city in Taiwan, to a camellia-lined street off Las Tunas Drive, to wherever you are now.