HTLA- Episode 55: Monterey Park Holds a Special Place in LA’s Asian Community and Far Beyond(1)

Josie Huang  00:00

Monterey Park is food, it's family, it's community. [music in] It's not where you'd expect a mass shooting.

Newscaster  00:00

[audio clip] When the fire department did get into the business, they did pronounce 10 of the victims deceased.

Newscaster 2  00:08

[audio clip] A shooting inside of a dance studio in Monterey Park last night killed 10 and injured 10 more.

Public Official  00:16

[audio clip] We had a vehicle that was described as a white box van, I guess you'd say. A van of interest.

Newscaster 3  00:24

[audio clip] Authorities are investigating an incident in nearby Alhambra where a man with a gun entered another dance... [duck under]

Brian De Los Santos  00:31

[sighs deeply] Okay, I need to take some time today to talk about the mass shooting that happened this weekend in Monterey Park. A lot of us here at work, including myself, are still grappling with the news. If you haven't heard, here's what we know so far. A man opened fire on Saturday night at the Star Dance Studio in Monterey Park, at the end of a long day of Lunar New Year festivities. 10 people were pronounced dead at the scene and about as many people were taken to the hospital with conditions ranging from stable to critical. On Sunday, a man was found dead in a van in Torrance. Authorities say that he is the suspected shooter. As a journalist, mass shootings are one of the hardest things to cover. You can break down the facts, what we know, and what we don't know about the event, but eventually it can start to feel like just another statistic. Another name on a never ending list of mass shootings in this country. What I want to do today is talk about the community in Monterey Park, its history, its culture, its people. We're gonna hear from some longtime residents and some experts who can help us make sense of this diverse, thriving Asian American community, and give us some context as we continue to learn more about this tragic event. I'm Brian De Los Santos, and this is How To LA, the show where we talk about this wonderful, complicated city, and its communities, and how we come together in times of tragedy. [music out]

Christina Wong  02:07

My name's Christina Wong. I just thought it was a big car accident. I was parked in the street moving my car when I saw the engines flying, and running, and then all of a sudden the helicopters upstairs. [helicopter ambi]

Cha Zhi  02:20

My name's Cha Zhi, and I've been living in the US for nine years now. Ever since I've stepped my foot onto the US, I've been hearing people talk about gun control, and all kinds of regulations on firearms, but I don't think the society's making any progress at the moment. At least when I used to live in China, I felt safe. That's the big difference.

Christian Yang  02:39

My name's Christian Yang. I am the owner and chef of Yang's Kitchen in Alhambra. We decided to close for brunch. Obviously, it's a huge blow for us business wise to lose our biggest brunch service, but, you know, with the uncertainty and even though the chances are probably like really unlikely or slim, we put the business second because we put safety and how people were feeling first.

Josie Huang  03:03

It's really hard seeing this local community that I've covered for years torn up like this, you know. Just a really special place for a lot of people. A lot of Asian Americans across Los Angeles will, you know, travel through LA traffic just to come to Monterey Park and it's just, it's just very heartbreaking to see this community shaken up by yet another act of gun violence.

Brian De Los Santos  03:24

This is Josie Huang, our Asian American communities reporter. She spent Sunday in Monterey Park talking to people in the community.

Josie Huang  03:32

This is a time when a lot of people get together with their families and friends, and have meals, but you know, the people I've talked to have just not been in any mood to celebrate. Their city is overrun with TV crews. There's like helicopters circling above. [helicopter ambi] [woman speaks Chinese] One of the people I spoke to was this woman named Hong Liu, who was grocery shopping Sunday morning and learned about the incident during her shopping trip. [helicopter ambi] [Hong Liu speaks in Chinese] She wanted to go home because she didn't feel safe out on the streets. You know, there's just this pall that's been cast over the city, [music in] not just for residents here but the people who come from all over the SGV to celebrate in Monterey Park. I actually talked to this woman who had come from Arcadia, just a few towns over, but she was saying today that she and her husband probably are just gonna stay home, not out of fear of something happening, but just feeling somber. You know, she couldn't believe that the attack was happening at the start of this time that is just so special to many folks across Asia, and the Asian American diaspora as well, and she said it was just so terrifying that it appears that it was an Asian suspect who was involved in attacking a largely Asian community. [music out] The word I heard a lot from people is just [Chinese], you know? It's just like terrible, terrifying, shocking.

Brian De Los Santos  04:58

Yeah, I actually- I wanna pivot to what we know so far, and you know, this is a developing story. So, things might be updated later on, but can you just give me some details? I- I believe that, you know, the shooting took place at a dance hall, like I'm sure community gathers there as well. What do you know about this place and what role does it play in the community?

Josie Huang  05:19

Well, my understanding is that this dance hall is part of a rich ballroom dancing culture in SGV. You know, the west part of the Valley is heavily Asian and heavily immigrant, and the ballroom dancing scene here reflects that. Ballroom dancing students are coming from all over Asia, including China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam. These ballroom dancing classes have become a way for the students who tend to be middle-aged and older to relax and, and do something for themselves, you know, after working so hard to make it in the US, and even though many of these students don't have the same native tongue, they're able to connect over dance over, over the Cha Cha.

Brian De Los Santos  05:54

I wanna go back to the people. We're talking about community here and the fact that it happened on a big Lunar New Year festival. Violence is not what the city is known for. Can you talk to me a bit more about the city and its residents, as you were saying earlier?

Josie Huang  06:08

Yeah. So Monterey Park is a very storied part of Asian American history, not just in California, but beyond. [music in] I spent the early part of my life in Maryland. I heard about it back then on the East Coast. It was known as "Little Taipei" at some point because it was drawing a lot of Taiwanese immigrants. Also people from China and lots of folks as well from Southeast Asia live here too. It's now two-thirds Asian making it one of the most Asian places in the entire US. It's not just a hub of Asian or Asian American culture, but also where a lot of Asian American political power is centered. This is where a lot of the best known Asian American politicians got their start. For example, Congress member Judy Chu- She served on the Monterey Park City Council for years, and was once the mayor, and if you look at today's City Council in Monterey Park, four out of five council members are Asian American. [music out]

Brian De Los Santos  06:08

I want to go back to your personal ties. You said that when you were living in Maryland, you knew of this place. It seems like it's significant in the Asian, Asian American community in the United States. I'm just thinking about how this might impact you, and your family, your community, I don't know. Any thoughts?

Josie Huang  06:08

Well, I can tell you that I've just been getting texts all day. Asian American friends from California, but also, you know, in other parts of the country, just expressing total shock. You know, this is a day where we'd all be like sending texts to each other saying, [speaks in Chinese], which is Happy New Year, or [speaks in Chinese] and we're all saying, Oh, my God. [laughs nervously] This is so terrible. This is so terrible. And I haven't had a chance to respond to all the texts, but I can see them flying around, and people just expressing their disbelief, and just, um, sorrow, and for those with children, just wondering how they tell them, you know, talk to them about what happened. A lot of Asian American families with young kids make a big deal out of Lunar New Year. Like, for instance, myself- I was just in Chinatown getting my daughter a new outfit for Chinese New Year because she's going to have a Lunar New Year celebration at her school, and you just have to wonder, you know, what, what's gonna happen to some of these events. But Sheriff Robert Luna did say that he strongly encouraged everybody to go about their Lunar New Year celebrations as they would, but it's hard to imagine that there wouldn't be some folks who are having second thoughts.

Brian De Los Santos  08:38

[music in] As you heard there from Josie, Monterey Park is a special place for the Asian American community. To understand its history, I wanted to talk to history professor Yong Chen at the University of California at Irvine.

Yong Chen  08:56

My first reaction was profound sadness. This is a very important occasion for many Chinese Americans and Asian Americans, is the New Year celebration. [music out] In addition, we are slowly coming out of our pandemic that has had a devastating impact on the world for more than two years, and all of a sudden we have this very tragic event. Monterey Park is a suburban city 10 or so miles east of Los Angeles. After the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act, it has been a very, very important community for Chinese Americans. It was the first major suburban Chinatown and has also been a very important community for many Asian Americans, including Japanese Americans.

Brian De Los Santos  09:47

So, tell me a little bit more about that early history.

Yong Chen  09:51

Well, it was a city that was incorporated around the time of World War I and it started to expand pretty rapidly in the 1940s and '50s, but there were racist housing covenants that were intended to bring large numbers of Caucasians, and those covenants also worked to prevent the arrival of new Asian people. But that changed gradually as the racist housing covenant had been rescinded and US immigration policy changed. And what happened in the, uh, early 1970s was that a key individual from Taiwan, who came to the US, they started to market Monterey Park, the, the city itself, as the Asian American Beverly Hills. You know, that turned out to be very successful attracting a large number of new immigrants, especially the ones from Taiwan.

Brian De Los Santos  10:44

And correct me if I'm wrong here, but Monterey Park was once known as "Little Taipei," right? How did the city get to that name?

Yong Chen  10:51

Yeah. Until the end of the 1970s, most Chinese immigrants who arrived in the US came from Taiwan. So the people, the Chinese immigrants, who flocked to Monterey Park, came from predominantly Taiwan, especially the city of Taipei. They, uh, established small businesses, and opened restaurants, and the food culture that they brought to the US was not simply Taiwanese, so to speak. They also introduced the cooking of Sichuan, Hunan food, and other regional cuisines of China.

Brian De Los Santos  11:26

That's very unique, you know, and I think if, if you live in LA or beyond LA, y- you know, the interesting cuisine of, of Monterey Park or, or the uniqueness it brings, you know, to, to our greater Los Angeles community. I just wanna go back to the history of Monterey Park. What was happening around this time, like what, what made it spurt, you know, into a, a suburban town that it is now?

Yong Chen  11:48

Well, I mean, the lifestyle of the suburb- That was a very important attraction for many newcomers, the Caucasian, uh, Latino, this is also a city that is very important for Japanese Americans. [Brian: Mm hmm.] Uh, during, during World War II, Japanese Americans in California, as well as other states on the West Coast, they were forced to move to the internment camps. After the end of World War II many of them returned back to California, and this marked again, the growth of the Japanese American population. For them, the city offered a lifestyle different from that in Los Angeles. They did not have to experience the same kind of discrimination that they encountered elsewhere. This is a relatively more welcoming and tolerant place.

Brian De Los Santos  12:35

[music in] Back to the news of the mass shooting. At the time we're talking now, we don't know the motive, or why this happened, but can you tell us the significance of this mass shooting for the residents in Monterey Park?

Yong Chen  12:51

Well, I mean the impact is going to be felt by the families of course, but also by the residents in Southern California, in the state, and across the nation. And uh, you know, it remind yourself a question that the nation has been, has been debating, uh, for decades- how to reduce violence. You know, I hope that, um, this debate will continue and will move in a- in a more productive, more fruitful direction in the near future. [music out]

Brian De Los Santos  13:39

[music in] That was UCI history professor, Yong Chen, talking to us about the history of Monterey Park. News like this can be hard to process and even harder to talk about. If this is something you're struggling with, we have some resources on LAist.com where we will also be updating this story as we know more. That's it for today. We'll be back on Wednesday with an episode on meditation walks you can do here in LA. Thanks for listening. See you later. [music out]