This paper attempts to reveal a wide range of East Asian ethnic landscape that has been added to the traditional Auckland cultural landscape during the last two decades. Perhaps the most obvious sign of the expanding East Asian cultural landscape in Auckland is in the growth of the ethnic populations themselves and in the number of ethnic restaurants operated by them. Since 1992, more than 100, 000 East Asians have been approved for residence in New Zealand: mainly Chinese (more than 90, 000) from Taiwan, Hong Kong and China as well as Koreans (about 14, 000) from South Korea. Asian restaurants, which include Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, and Indian, have represented more than 50 percent of the total number of restaurants in Auckland in 1999. This new East Asian immigration expanded the multicultural features significantly in Auckland.
The New East Asian immigrant groups' most preferred residential areas do not overlap and they tend to occupy different suburbs of Auckland: Howick Pakuranga, Epsom-Remuera and Chatswood for Taiwanese; East Coast Bays and Glenfield for Koreans; St Heliers and Remuera- St Johns for Japanese; and Mr Roskill, Henderson and Royal Oak-Onehunga-Ellerslie for Filipinos; Manurewa, Papatoetoe and Otahuhu for Vietnamese.