Where are you from?

This is Mona, mother of a newborn. Mona lives in Bandung. And because of that I assumed she was Sundanese (the major ethnic group of West Java, of which Bandung is the capital city). Mona is half Chinese, half Padangnese (West Sumatra) though. In the Netherlands the question ‘where are you from?’ is answered with the place of birth (perhaps immigrants give a different answer). But the same question asked in Indonesia provokes food for thought: is place of birth or the ancestral ethnic background the appropriate answer?