Bingfeng Teahouse

received a mail:

I'm a chinese girl who was born and raised in *** (an european country). I'm coming this *** to work in Shanghai, and I'd like to know how chinese people consider people like me, I mean huoqiao ren. Are we considered as strangers, even if we look like asian, and talk chinese ?

returned overseas chinese are still regarded as "chinese" and therefore a "zi ji ren" (people of our side), no matter what passport they hold. however there are some changes in recent years. overseas chinese are no longer seen to hold those advantages over the local chinese in fields such as language, skills or working experiences, in fact, the trend is that many executive search firms favor local talents over those returned from overseas because of their extensive experiences and knowledge of china.

interestingly, the chances are greater that local chinese got frustracted in socializing with overseas chinese than with foreigners. i don't understand why. but in general, returned overseas chinese can fit into shanghai quite well, and they are viewed as a member of shanghai and chinese community.

good luck to you!

via: investment u

revaluation, hot money, commodities ... what interests me is a following section:

Our child is bilingual. We have a 25-month-old baby girl, and she’s bilingual. We got her a Chinese nanny from the beginning, whose instructions were to only speak Mandarin to the baby.

So she is literally bilingual, at age 25 months, and we’re doing everything we can to encourage and develop that. It doesn’t do any good to be bilingual at 25 months if you don’t keep it up; you’ll forget everything you ever knew by the time you’re 25 years old, or even 12 years old.

There are a lot of exciting things going on in China, and in Chinese-speaking areas. And even if I’m wrong about the baby – teaching her Chinese – even if China’s not going to be the next great country in the world, there’s still a billion and a half people in the world who use Chinese, so it’s not a complete waste. It’s not like I’m teaching her Danish or something.

so it's kind of "investment" too. but i am not sure i will do that if i were her dad, even teaching my kid of a foreign language like english in that age seems something unreasonable to me. my expecations are higher, i hope my children are less stressed by intelligence development but more successful in spiritual growth ... being a blue collar is fine, but being a happy and independent blue collar.