Originally posted by the Voice of America. Voice of America content is produced by the Voice of America, a United States federal government-sponsored entity, and is in the public domain. California's San Gabriel Valley a Mecca for Asian Americans Elizabeth Lee LOS ANGELES - When billboards in Chinese start appearing, along with Korean and Japanese grocery stores and restaurants that span tastes from almost all of Asia, they are signs that you have entered California's San Gabriel Valley. For some people, it is a bedroom community of Los Angeles. For others, the Asian enclave is a home away from home. Known to the locals as the "SGV," San Gabriel Valley spans 36 kilometers east of downtown Los Angeles, with [1]close to half a million Asians living there. Nine cities in the area are majority-Asian. They include the city of Walnut, where Mike Chou's family settled in 1989 when they immigrated from Taiwan. Walnut already had an established Chinese community. "My parents, they didn't speak English at the time, so it's made it easier for them to kind of get around," said Chou, who was 5 when his family arrived in the United States. "It's so close to all the shopping. It's so close to the (Chinese) grocery stores. It made fitting in there a lot easier." References 1. https://sgvpartnership.org/resources/Documents/2019_Econ_Summit_final_w_appendices.pdf