I would submit, as a proud native, that Texas is no longer what it, and we, think it is, even after the state G.O.P.'s total domination in the midterm elections. Take its biggest city, Houston, which is also the fourth biggest in America. Today, like the state itself, the city is majority-minority. Thirty-five percent of its 2.2 million inhabitants are Hispanic, though the city’s fastest-growing group is Asian. Concomitant with these demographic shifts are political realities that were unimaginable two decades ago. Since 2010, Houston’s mayor has been Annise Parker, a gay woman. For that matter, Barack Obama carried Harris County in the past two election cycles, just as he did Dallas County. The urban cowboy has receded into the horizon. The Astrodome lies vacant. Apocalypse now: Texas looks like America!

None of which is to suggest that Texas has assimilated its way into banality. Its frontier tenet — if you can handle it here, you belong here — remains thoroughly in force. At the same time, its newest settlers swear no fealty to the rural Anglo culture that once prevailed. By now everyone knows, from these pages and elsewhere, how cool Austin and Marfa are. The alternative view is that these are manageably de-Texanized dreamscapes for Palo Alto and Brooklyn exiles, but let’s not have that argument here. Instead, the next time you’re traveling through the Lone Star State, gratify your imagination with areas in the following three cities that conjure up a Texas far more interesting than the stereotypes Texans themselves have long embraced.

Houston: Asia Town

Sequestered in southwest suburban Houston, a few miles apart from each other near Bellaire Boulevard, sit two Asian places of worship. One of them, the Jade Buddha Temple, was built in 1990 by a nonprofit outfit of predominantly Taiwanese-Americans calling itself the Texas Buddhist Association. The other, the Teo Chew Temple, attracts a predominantly Vietnamese congregation and was funded by Hai Du Duong, one of the thousands of destitute “boat people” who arrived on the Gulf Coast in the late ’70s and ‘80s and scrapped their way into Houston’s labor force. Both are lovely, dignified structures and well worth a visit. (Sunday services at the Jade Temple are offered in both Mandarin and English, as are Dharma lessons for children.)