Zhanjiang city, located in the southernmost part of Mainland China, is one of the multilingual regions that has a rather complicated linguistic environment in Guangdong province. With the aim of obtaining an in-depth understanding of the language situation in Zhanjiang, this thesis takes the ethnographic approach in investigating: (1) how members from multilingual families make language choices in their daily life; (2) the attitudes towards various languages and local dialects often used in Zhanjiang; (3) whether these interviewed families increasingly shift to the majority language or the more powerful languages such as Cantonese, Putonghua or English, or whether they retain their local dialects.Also investigated are the factors that may contribute to language maintenance or shift among the interviewed multilingual families. It was found that members from multilingual families make language choice according to their interlocutors and language context. Local residents show positive attitude to Putonghua and English, but they use Zhanjiang Cantonese to symbolize their local identity. The other local dialects (i.e. Leizhou, Wuchuan and Yan dialect) are a way to create solidarity of an inner group. Factors such as parental attitude, instruction support, community support and the individual choice all contribute maintenance or shift of a particular language or dialect.