As Tijuana was a border town, it was an important city towards the establishment of the Mexicali Chinatown, where at the time, the Chinese community would outnumber Mexicans 2 to 1. Though the numbers were far fewer in Tijuana, thousands would come through Tijuana on their way to Ensenada and Mexicali, a journey usually by foot for 120 miles to the east.[7] By the 1920s, the Chinese numbering around 15,000 would concentrate in Mexicali to avoid the Mexican civil war. Racism would keep the population small for many decades until the early 2000s when Aeromexico would first offer direct flights from Tijuana to Japan.