Singkawang: City of a Thousand Temples
Singkawang According to the data from the 2010 Census, the population of Singkawang was 186,306, most of which are Chinese descents. The largest group of Chinese descent is Hakka people รข€" about 42% of the population. The other major group of Chinese descent is Chaozhou People which is better known as Teochew. The rest are Melayu, Dayak, Javanese, and other ethnicities. The distribution of the religion practically follows the distribution of the ethnic groups; the largest groups are Buddhism, Confucianism, Islam, Protestantism and Catholicism. From the middle of the 18th century the Chinese governed trading in the city. During the Dutch East Indies era Singkawang was a Roman Catholic main station and permanent residence of Roman Catholic clergy. The mission there was called the 'Apostolic Vicariate of Dutch Borneo' and founded among others schools, a hospital and a leprosy colony. Singkawang is also well known as the City of a Thousand Temples since there are so many...