ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the linguistic habits of the Chinese of the province of West Kalimantan, with a focus on Singkawang based on interviews conducted in West Kalimantan in January-February 2013, news materials, existing secondary scholarship and ongoing correspondence with informants in Singkawang and Bengkayang. The coastal city of Singkawang is the second-largest city and probably the Indonesian urban area with the highest proportion of Chinese. The multilingualism of the area continued unabated throughout the colonial period. Multilingualism finds expression in Singkawang daily life in numerous ways. However usual multilingualism may get, its practice far from universal. Whereas proponents of linguistic diversity and multilingualism can regard present-day West Kalimantan, as indeed all of Indonesia, as a cause for celebration, the future of Hakka and Teochew as important local languages is in doubt. Singaporean anthropologist Hui Yew-Foong's work Strangers at Home explores the dichotomy of West Kalimantan Chinese as being from West Kalimantan but always estranged from it.
