It is certainly true that most cities and towns of any size in Indonesia have their Chinese area in around the business centre. Densely populated, these have long contained large concentrations of Chinese, many of them shopkeepers with their families living in their shop house dwellings behind and above the stores. In the same area could be found a Chinese temple and, in more recent times, a cinema. This same area was usually the quarter (wijk) to which the Chinese were confined when the quarter system was still in force. Since that system was abandoned, Chinese have scattered to other parts of the cities and towns. Some of the wealthier joined members of the Indonesian elite in moving into the more prestigious residential areas which, in the later 1950s, were being vacated by departing Dutch residents. At the other end of the social scale, poorer Chinese have lived cheek by howl with poorer Indonesians in the kampung areas of the towns. The WNI Chinese, who have been longer settle in Indonesia, are usually more widely dispersed through the town; the alien Chinese, more recent immigrants, have tended to be more concentrated in the business district or Chinatown area.
Thus the Chinese population has been distributed in different areas in ways which distinguish them from indigenous Indonesians. The limited extent to which they have settled in rural areas has been considerably influenced by pressures from outside Chinese society, such as government regulations. The same has been true of the Chinese quarters in the towns and cities. In absence of outside pressure to live in ghetto areas, the Chinese have shown little reluctance to leave them. Many, if not most, if those who have remained do so for business convenience; that is, because their livelihood is there, rather than from any desire to isolate themselves.