Guest Column: Monterey Park’s Legacy Should Be Cultural Empowerment, Not Tragedy

On Jan. 21, the night before the Lunar New Year, a gunman killed 11 people and injured nine others at a ballroom dance studio in Monterey Park, California, frequented by immigrant elders. For many across the country and even the rest of Los Angeles County, the town became simply the latest American city to host a mass shooting. But for Asian Americans, particularly those in southern California, Monterey Park represents the epicenter of a multiculturally rich San Gabriel Valley region that is home to long-established ethnic enclaves, recent newcomers, as well as a generation of creatives melding traditions to create new genres of food, film and art. The Hollywood Reporter asked Philip Wang, co-founder of early YouTube adopters Wong Fu Productions, current Netflix host and a longtime resident of the area, to reflect on his hopes for the legacy of the community.

On Lunar New Year’s Eve, my wife and 13-month-old son were on our way home from visiting our PoPo and aunties when we hit some traffic coming down Garfield Avenue approaching Garvey Avenue in the late afternoon. “Oh yeah, today is Monterey Park’s Lunar New Year festival,” I said. We decided to park and check it out so we could introduce our son to the colors and smells of the vibrant community ringing in the Year of the Rabbit (and the Cat). Thousands of people in the predominantly Chinese and Vietnamese city were out enjoying the festivities. The main street was closed to motor vehicles, and dozens of vendors were out selling lamb skewers, boba drinks, bubble waffles and auspicious decorations. I paused at one booth to observe two Chinese seniors, one molding clay into cute characters, another making lollipop art with melted sugar. 

It’s no secret that the last few years have hit the Asian American community hard, with a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes brought on during the pandemic. So to see all this joy — Asian joy — at this wonderful event, I had to soak it in. This is Monterey Park, I thought to myself. This is why “the 626” — my chosen home for the past two decades — is so special.

We left the festival feeling connected to our city and as though the Lunar New Year was off to a great start.

I could never have imagined how that would change just a few hours later when news broke of a mass shooting at the very intersection we had just passed. I immediately contacted other local friends to check on their safety and see if there was any inside information that hadn’t made it onto social media yet. Rumors and theories were already swirling on Chinese-dominated WeChat among parents about possible causes, and soon, nationwide attention was falling onto this little neighborhood in the middle of the night.

I have a feeling that many people reading this piece heard of Monterey Park for the first time that weekend. I wouldn’t blame you. Even many Angelenos aren’t familiar. And for a lot of those working in the entertainment industry, specifically, for decades Asians sort of only existed in Chinatown by Hollywood standards. Only recently have we finally gotten to break out beyond the “Chinatown episode” (the only time Asians typically ever got to appear on a network TV show) to tell more unique stories. But Monterey Park is not Chinatown — not in the Hollywood sense, at least.

Now, this isn’t meant to be a full history of Monterey Park, although it has quite an interesting timeline that’s been influenced by geopolitics and its share of local racism and xenophobia. But its most notable characteristic is its demographic. Monterey Park was the first city in the continental U.S. to have a majority population of Asian descent. Starting with Japanese and Chinese Americans who were pushed east, the 1980s and ‘90s saw an influx of ethnic Chinese refugees from Vietnam, affluent Taiwanese and mainland Chinese. With more and more immigrants moving to the San Gabriel Valley, other nearby ethnoburbs like Alhambra, San Gabriel, Arcadia and Temple City spawned from Monterey Park. Mixing with the existing Latino population, these demographically and culturally similar towns together gained the nickname “the 626” (for its area code), a melting Sichuan hotpot of taco trucks and tea shops, fruit stands and massive Asian plazas. Food is likely the reason most outsiders have even been out this way, but there is so much more to Monterey Park and the 626 than soup dumplings and dim sum. Here, the working class lives next door to new-money immigrants. A generation from a distant past and home buys groceries alongside a new, modern generation that could never fully comprehend the poverty and war these elders saw just a handful of decades ago.

This dichotomy is something I had to learn myself as a transplant who moved to the area 17 years ago to explore the film industry. Back in 2006, YouTube was brand new and social media essentially nonexistent, but my UCSD college friends and I had a small but growing internet following for our little video company, Wong Fu Productions, and we felt we had to be in L.A. to have any shot. A friend’s mom set us up in a small townhouse off Garfield in Alhambra, which we soon realized was not anywhere close to where “the biz” was. But as Asian American filmmakers, we learned firsthand that being closer in proximity wouldn’t have helped us anyway.

With so few mainstream opportunities in the 2000s and early 2010s, we weren’t really missing out, so not once did we feel like we should move West to be closer to studios and other production companies. Instead, we doubled down and put down roots, set up our first offices nearby and started making independent films with Asian businesses and the lively streets of the 626 as our backdrop and inspiration. We even met other Asian creators and invited them over, and it felt like we had our own little creative hub out here in “Far East L.A.,” separate from Hollywood’s marginalizing boundaries. Plus, I had grown up in a predominantly white Bay Area town, where Chinese food and groceries were always a 40-minute drive away. So, to now live in a city where I could get a BBQ pork bun and fresh soy milk just down the street was a dream. When I realized I could get beef chow fun and passion fruit iced tea at 2 a.m. from a variety of late-night Hong Kong-style cafes, I knew I was gonna be here for a while. At the time, friends who grew up here saw it as a bubble, but I saw it as a backbone. Some say it’s “comfortable” staying close to those like you, but I felt empowered. 

You see, what I love most about this city is that it’s unapologetically Asian, which matched my mindset, the tribe I sought after and the philosophy of my content and businesses. I never had to feel othered in my craft or my city because here, I was the majority. This confidence allowed me to be my most authentic self and creator, and so I found a community here, made it home and even opened a cafe. I’ve now spent nearly 20 years showing off the 626 and its denizens onscreen long before Hollywood ever thought to explore beyond Chinatown or Asian stereotypes. (In the past year, with the rise of Asian American-created projects, the industry has made it to the other end of the 10, shooting at least parts of Netflix’s upcoming Brothers Sun and Disney+’s American Born Chinese on location in the SGV.) Monterey Park has given me so much, and I can only hope my work has made some positive impact on the local community and youth here so that more can grow up feeling empowered, especially in this changing cultural and social landscape.

In recent years, the 626 has evolved into more of a “sanctuary” in my eyes. Throughout the pandemic and all the news of anti-Asian hate, I felt safe here. My neighbors and I obviously stood together against API hate, no one complained about masks — culturally, we were relatively all on the same page. But there’s one part of American culture that has infiltrated ours with devastating results: guns. Our Asian elders have been so vulnerable since the start of the pandemic, from physical attacks in the streets to being isolated from family, and now, being susceptible to gun propaganda and violence. Only in America can our secluded, radicalized and distressed have such easy access to weapons designed to obliterate life at a high capacity. When I think of the victims of the dance studio shooting, I see immigrants who likely endured a lot of hardship coming to the U.S. I see elders who found happiness through dancing at this later stage of their lives. They had come here for a version of the American dream, only to be ended by the American nightmare.

When the shooting happened, I knew Monterey Park was about to become infamous, and it pained me to think that this is the reason why people were going to know us. With all mass shootings, the cities they take place in become synonymous with those incidents, and to outsiders, they are frozen in a snapshot of grief and tragedy. I’ll admit that’s what I think at the mention of Uvalde, Aurora, Parkland, Sandy Hook and too many others to name. But I’m writing to make sure people know that Monterey Park is, was and will be more than “that city where that mass shooting happened.” I urge you to seek out positive stories from this city’s history, from those who have been here even longer than me, so that the next time someone mentions Monterey Park, you know it’s a city full of strength and dreams. This city is forever changed, but it will always be a beautiful place of different cultures thriving with each other, a locale that has touched millions of lives (and stomachs), and a home away from home for hopeful immigrants trying to settle in a foreign land.

Philip Wang currently lives in “the 626” and is the co-founder of Wong Fu Productions and Bopomofo Cafe, from where he hosts Netflix’s digital interview series Spill the Boba Tea. He also co-authored the New York Times bestseller Rise: A Pop History of Asian America from the Nineties to Now.