Is there a noticable chinese Population in Columbus? (Cleveland, Cincinnati: transplants, home)

[vancouver_2010]

I am just curious as to the Chinese population and overall Asian population in Columbus. Is it quite noticeable, any Chinese/Asian food markets? If you know of any, could you give me some good Asian store "general" locations. Overall I am just wanting to get a rough idea of what the Asian, specifically Chinese population is like there.

What are your thoughts on it?

Thanks!

[streetcreed]

Columbus does have a decently sized asian population
Most of the asian population seems to have a presence around the NW section of the city, along Kenny Rd and Henderson Rd. there are a few plazas that have all asian markets/restuarants etc. I have actually attended a chinese church in columbus before, and see many around.

Like most things in columbus though, other than the Somalii population, most of the people of asian decent are spread throughout the metro, but like i said there is a concentration in NW columbus and the NW suburbs, Grandview area, Dublin.

There is a large Japense population here because of Honda having a plant NW of columbus in Marysville, and there is a decent Asian population around the Ohio State University. I know that the university village aparments NW of OSU off of olentangy has a lot of asian students.

[Cbusnewcomer]

I'm still new here in Cbus, but from what I heard, like streetcreed said, North and NW metro (Worthington, Hillard, Dublin) has the largest Chinese/Asian (Asian American) population. Around where I live (eastern edge of Cbus, between Gahanna and New Albany), I see a fair number of Indian, Chinese, and Korean folks, and I just found that New Albany k-1 elementary school has nearly 10% AsAm students. Not bad for suburb of a midwestern city not named Chicago or Mpls-St.Paul.

Outside of these areas, AsAms are not (yet) a visibly large group in Cbus, but Chinese and South Asian (Indian) immigrant population has been reportedly increasing fast (plus, a sizable presence of aforementioned Japanese transplants who work for Honda-related companies and a large OSU Asian/AsAm student population). I know there are both Chinese and Japanese Saturday schools here; not a small feat, I think. I'm still shopping around Asian markets around town, but I have already found several options.

No Chinatown, Koreatown, or Japantown for sure (unlike Vancouver), as the city itself is pretty spread-out to begin with, but as an Asian myself, I found it surprisingly comfortable here so far -- no intense staring as though I'm an exotic animal! That's a good start, right?

Hope it helps!

[yet_another_cmh_guy]

Just for kicks I ran the US Census stats for the northwest area of town (by zip code), here's how they come up:

43210 12.5% OSU
43016 10.6% Dublin
43202 10.3% N. Columbus/Clintonville
43220 7.5% NW Columbus/UA
43235 7.0% NW Columbus/Worthington
43017 6.8% Dublin
43221 3.2% NW Columbus/UA

US national average 3.6%

As said before, there's no one place in town where you could say "that's where the Chinese folks live". One of my coworkers and her husband are native Chinese (US citizens now), they recently hosted a lady Chinese golfer who plays on the US women's tour, and my coworker said that there was a Chinese-language school the kids went to so they could learn both cultures. Is there other Chinese-language stuff? Could be, don't know.

If I had to take a wild guess (since the census doesn't split out subgroups), I'd say there might be more Koreans here overall. Probably wrong about that.

Asian markets: Frankly they're all over town. I defer to a local blogger named The Restaurant Widow who keeps up this stuff quite a bit; check out her post on Asian groceries.

[vancouver_2010]

Has the Asian population there increased steadily or has it always existed?

Thanks for all your replies!

[Cbusnewcomer]

vancouver,
I am no historian, but I doubt AsAm communities in central OH are old; I mean I am sure there were some pre-WW II AsAm communities, until the last three decades or so, the city/metro area had been predominantly white & black. Only since the 1980s, Asian, Latin American, and African (Somali and Ghanian) immigrants began to move in (see the following link to a community newspaper article on a rising Vietnamese population in Northland neighborhood of Cbus).

ThisWeek Community Newspapers - Home Page -

So my guess is that while there were small AsAm population, likely secondary migrants from West Coast, in Cbus prior to the 1980s, most of Asian residents in Cbus today were relatively new immigrants (not US-born), coming to the area as (undergrad & graduate/professional school) students at OSU or directly came to work for corporations as professionals. A bit different from "old" (multi-generational) AsAm communities in SF, LA, Seattle, Vanc, etc., I would say.

This is, however, merely my speculation based on casual observations of the group and the area, not an official stat or a scholarly work. So take it as such.

[streetcreed]

In general most responses on here i would agree with.
Before Cincinnati was the immigrant desination then Cleveland, now the last 30 yrs. that pattern has shifted to columbus.

Columbus had some early immigrants in its founding and earlier years like Italians, Greeks, Germans, the usual. However, columbus wasnt a reconized major city and wasnt one of the top 20 places for immigrants to come to in the US

However, now Columbus and Cincinnati lead the immigrant growth in Ohio's metros, and Columbus' immigrant population is mostly the typical new immigrant groups, Indians, Chinese, Japense, Mexican, some other Latino groups.

The biggest difference in Columbus' immigrant patterns and those of other parts of America are that columbus has a huge Somalli population, which are considered refugees of their own country.

Columbus' somalli population is the 2nd largest in America, and will continue to grow,this has also created a very large muslim population in columbus.