ABSTRACT
The ethnic Chinese in the Netherlands are an extremely diverse group, both linguistically, and in terms of their history of immigration and socio-economic position. This chapter helps the reader to gain a basic understanding of what it is like to be a speaker of Chinese in the Netherlands. Larger numbers of Chinese came to the Netherlands for the first time in 1911. In that particular year, Dutch shipping companies hired Chinese seamen in England to break a now-famous strike of Dutch seamen. Large numbers of Chinese from Zhejiang were recruited during the First World War by the allied forces to dig the infamous trenches in northern France. The demographic domination of the Hong Kong Chinese was translated into a cultural domination of Hong Kong Chinese culture and language amongst the Dutch Chinese working in the catering trade.
