Chinese diaspora spread far and wide; over 50 million of Chinese are said to be outside mainland China but the majority reportedly concentrate in Southeast Asia; in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Brunei and Indonesia. Indonesian Chinese, I often heard are extremely rich, don't have a Chinese name and couldn't speak Chinese. As not being able to speak Chinese is understandable, I suppose; since they had been there since a thousand years ago and Chinese language schools had been banned since 1966. It was therefore a surprise when I came across a video clip on a town in Pontianak with a Chinese population who could speak a Chinese dialect, Teochew. But then I shouldn't; according to a 2010 census, 24.07% of Chinese Indonesian still speak Chinese at home; just that it isn't the official Mandarin used in Chinese schools. Chinese often speaks dialects at home; Cantonese, Teochew, Hakka, Hokkien, etc; same here as in Malaysia and elsewhere; the parents being the unofficial teachers.
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