Moving Family to China

[Guangxi Shane]

Hi Everyone,

 

My wife, 6 year old daughter and I are planning to move to China sometime in the next couple of years, and we're looking for advice on where to live, cost of living, visa strategies, options for our daughter's and our own education while in China, etc...

 

Our goals are to spend a year somewhere in China, possibly longer, studying Chinese language and learning about Chinese culture. We're all complete beginners at Chinese. We've purchased a textbook and ordered Pimsleur tapes from our library to begin our study of the language at home before we leave for China. In addition to learning the language, my wife would like to learn Chinese cooking and Tai Chi, and I might be interested in studying some sort of martial arts as well, if lessons were available. My wife and I aren't planning on working at jobs, although if the opportunity presented itself, we wouldn't mind helping out and earning some extra cash doing informal English tutoring on the side. We both have college degrees: I've got a B.A. in Communications and my wife has a B.A. in English Literature and an M.A. in Creative Writing, and both of us have experience, albeit dated, at teaching ESL and learning foreign languages in Europe and Japan.

 

Part of the reason for our trip is that we'd like our daughter to be able to experience the culture and learn the language of her birth country. Our daughter was only 10 months old when we adopted her in 2009, so she has no conscious memories of her early life in an orphanage in Guangxi, but we've always shown her photos of China and talked positively to her about her birth country. Recently I read an article, which I found a link to on this site, where researchers said they'd found that even very young children who left China as babies and grew up in Western countries not speaking any Chinese, when they were asked to differentiate between tones in language, their brains processed the sounds in a different way than people who had never had exposure to a tonal language like Chinese. I'm sure, just because of her young age, our daughter will have an easier time learning Chinese than my wife and me, but it'll be interesting to see if it's true that somewhere in her brain she has the ability to recognize Chinese tones. I guess there won't be any way to prove it, one way or the other, but I'm curious to see how she does. When we talk about China our daughter seems most interested in our descriptions of the food. We've told her about the amazing noodles and dumplings that we enjoyed during our trips to China, and since those are two of her favorite foods, she's excited to go to China, if only to try the noodles.

 

My wife and I have been to China twice. The first time was in 1995, just after we'd first met, when we spent two months backpacking from Shanghai to Beijing, Lanzhou, Urumqi, Turpan, Kashi, and then over the Khunjerab Pass into northern Pakistan. Our second trip was for two weeks in 2009 when we adopted our daughter in Nanning and then went down to Guangzhou to complete paperwork for the adoption.

 

For our next trip we're open to living anywhere in China. Looking around on this forum and elsewhere we've recently gotten the idea that maybe Kunming might be a good fit for us. It sounds like Kunming's got a nice climate. We like the idea that it's a little higher elevation and therefore not too hot. But we're open to any suggestions you guys might have for us of places you think might be good for us to live.

 

It looks like, possibly, the Chinese visa situation for U.S. citizens may be improving. Hopefully, now that the Chinese government has agreed to maximum 10 year visas for Americans, maybe we can reliably hope to get at least 1 year multiple entry tourist visas at the Chinese consulate in Honolulu? Right now, we're thinking that we'll initially travel to China on tourist visas, maybe go to a language school in Kunming for some intensive one-on-one tutoring for a month or so, and then travel around for awhile before deciding where we'd like to settle down for a year or more.

 

My wife and I could care less about getting university credits for our study, but it sounds like signing up to be university students might be one way for us to get visas, residency permits and not have to leave the country every 60 or 90 days? It's unclear to me how important it is to get a residency permit? It sounds like some people just travel to China on tourist visas and take private lessons or study at language schools and then leave the country every two or three months? Is it possible to rent an apartment without a residency permit? We wouldn't mind signing up to be students, maybe at YNNU, if we were likely to get something out of it as far as progress in learning Chinese, but if there were a way to stay in China for a year straight, without having to make visa runs all the time, and we could just take private lessons for a couple/few hours a day, that seems like it would be better. Any suggestions?

 

Right now our daughter is in kindergarten. Academically school is pretty easy for her. Most of the things she's learning at school are repetitions of things she already learned in preschool and/or we taught her at home. We have no worries about her missing a year of formal education in the U.S., as we feel confident that, at her grade level, my wife and I will have no trouble teaching her reading, writing and arithmetic at home, on our own. We'd like, though, for our daughter to have the opportunity to have friends and to play with kids her own age. From what I've read, it sounds like a regular, public school in China might be challenging for a Western kid with no Chinese ability. We're not interested, nor could we afford to send our daughter to an expensive international school. If we lived in a place in China where there were an affordable "bilingual" type school that maybe had some foreign kids and some Chinese kids, we might consider that. Assuming that there won't be a suitable school for our daughter, we're thinking that while my wife and I are are at university or taking private Chinese lessons, maybe we could hire a Chinese speaking tutor/babysitter for our daughter. Ideally, our daughter's "teacher" might have a child at home whom our daughter could play with in between some informal Chinese lessons. Our daughter also likes sports. It seems like if there were some way that we could sign her up to play soccer or volleyball or ballet or whatever, that that would be a way for her to make friends, get physical exercise and have fun. We've read that many Chinese parents send their children to after-school English cram schools. Would it be possible for us to find some parents who might let their kids just play with our daughter after school instead of paying to send them for English lessons? Maybe we could alternate days. One day the kids could speak English, and then the next day they could speak Chinese... Would it be feasible to find parents who would agree to something like that?

 

We'd be excited to hear any/all of your suggestions on our plans to move to China. How much should we budget/month to live in a city like Kunming? Here in the U.S. people are amazed to hear how little we live on, so we're not typical Americans in that sense. We've always saved and invested 1/2 or more of whatever we've earned. That's why we're able to go to China and not have to worry about working for a year. We are planning on living in a modest 2 bedroom apartment, hopefully within reasonable walking/biking distance of whatever school we end up attending, and we'll eat primarily local food, cooking at home some and eating out sometimes too. We're looking forward to not having to own a car, so for us the location of our housing will be more important than having a big, fancy apartment.

 

Thanks in advance for any help/suggestions you can give us.

 

 

Shane

 

 

[Simon_CH]

Hi Shane

 

I see that you have rather ambitious plans with your family, and wish it all turns out as you plan. But keep in mind that many things are probably not exactly as you imagine them to be, so it might be a good idea to have a solid backup plan.

 

Personally if I were in your situation I'd strongly consider a coastal town in Taiwan, where the air is much cleaner, the food is safe and delicious, locals are friendly and Mandarin is still spoken. So why not research on a few destinations that meet your criteria in both the mainland and Taiwan, and visit them for a few weeks at a time before committing to a place?

 

Another thought: Children in China at your daughter's age generally don't have that much free time for playing with other kids in the neighborhood, so not going to school might isolate your daughter from her environment, especially if she doesn't speak (good) Mandarin.

 

You seem to have the right attitude to approach this, but I would really recommend on doing as much on the ground research and exploring before staying in a location for one year. I'd try really hard to find a good (social) environment, especially for the sake of your daughter, as you don't want your daughter to return to the US truly alienated from Chinese culture.

[kdavid]

I had intended on making China my permanent home until I had children. That changed everything.

 

Go check it out on your own for a bit before leaving everything behind. China is not an ideal place for young children for a number of reasons.

[msittig]

While I echo kdavid's sentiment, I think that while your daughter is still preschool-age is a good time to do this. Given that you have the funds to support yourself without working, I would probably go the student visa route for both you and your partner, then put your daughter in a local preschool. Like Simon_CH said, this would be an ideal way to meet other friends, set up playdates, get in on group outings, etc. Chinese kids tend to go to preschool until they are 6-7 and even 8 years old, so as long as you are in a city like Kunming where pressure on the kids to get ahead early is low (for example, I wouldn't recommend doing this in Shanghai) then she might stand a chance of catching up to the other kids as far as language ability.

 

On the other hand, you might have horrible experience with your daughter's schooling. A colleague of mine sent his daughter to the same public preschool (in Shanghai) as my daughters, the difference being that his family was a pure American, English-speaking family while my family is mixed Chinese-English with two bilingual parents. His daughter had behavioral issues that the teachers didn't know how to manage, plus she was resented for holding the class back in their last year before competitive elementary school admissions (TIC!), plus she had trouble participating in lots of activities because her Chinese was so poor, plus her parents had trouble communicating with the school staff and integrated almost not at all with other parents in the class because of the language barrier, even though he was a very outgoing and friendly guy. His daughter had to repeat a year of preschool, and he put her in an international school the next year for first grade, where everything is going much more smoothly.

 

So it could go either way.

 

Have you considered just going to China for a couple months vacation, and then sending her to Saturday Chinese school in your home country?

[imron]

and then sending her to Saturday Chinese school in your home country?

This is probably one of the best ways to make a child resent learning Chinese.

[owlzyd@]

     China is a developing country but a most attractive country.i am a Chinese,live in Chengdu sichuan where is next to Kunming.

     First,think about what kind of city do you prefer?history,food,scenery,fresh air or others.Don't be worried about local people,we are as friendly as you are and i guess you know it.There some international school in my city that your daughter can learn chinese and something in school.i think a energetic enviroment is more important for her.She likes noodles that means there are some attractions in her mind.I have known she is a smart girl so give her a chance to find out what she really like in China.That must be a precious experience in her brilliant life.

    Finding some Chinese friends can help your family live easier.They are local person when you have problems they know how to deal with.In universities,some volunteers whose major is English will glad to give you a hand.

    Finally,you'd best to ask someone who has been China before.HOPE a WONDERFUL trip in China.

[Guangxi Shane]

@Simon_CH, Taiwan is definitely another place we're considering. As you said, it sounds like there may be many advantages to living there as opposed to Mainland China. A Canadian friend of ours has been back and forth to Taiwan teaching English over the past few years, and he highly recommends Yilan in NE Taiwan. Our friend says the surfing was good, with big, beautiful beaches that are mostly deserted except for a few fishermen, low cost of living, safe, good food, etc... So we're definitely open to that possibility. Our plan is to take as long as we need to scope out the places we're thinking of living BEFORE we commit to anything long term.

 

@msittig, Thanks for your insights on schools in China. Since neither my wife, my daughter, nor I have any Chinese language ability to speak of now, it seems unlikely we'll get to a high enough level before going to China that we'll be able to effectively communicate with teachers in a preschool or that our daughter will be able to participate in school activities in any sort of a meaningful way, at least in the beginning. We wouldn't want our daughter to be resented by the other kids and their families because she was holding the class back from preparing for the entrance exams to get into elementary school. You're probably right that if we don't enroll our daughter in some kind of a school that it will be harder for her to make friends. It seems that we're in a kind of Catch-22 situation. Do most Chinese kids attend preschool? Are there any kids who stay home with their mothers until they're 7 or 8 years old when they start school? It seems like it would be ideal if we could find a place where our daughter could hang out every day with a child or children who have not yet started school, even if the kids were a year or 2 younger than her. Our daughter could teach the kids English and she would learn Chinese from them. I guess if all Chinese kids are sitting in preschools studying for entrance exams to get into elementary school, then this won't be an option.

 

@kdavid, if we don't find a place in China that feels right for us to settle down and stay for awhile, we won't do it. We'll just travel around the country on a 1 year multiple entry tourist visa, hopefully visit some cool places, eat lots of good food, take some intensive one-on-one Chinese lessons, and leave the country every 60 or 90 days to go to some other cool places like Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, etc... We have 2 Canadian friends who've been living for the past 17 years in Hong Kong with their 2 kids who were both born there, and they seem to love it. But my friend says she would NEVER live on the mainland...

[liuzhou]

 

Do most Chinese kids attend preschool? Are there any kids who stay home with their mothers until they're 7 or 8 years old when they start school?

 

In the cities, yes. In the countryside, no. In fact, in parts of the countryside many kids never go to school - especially girls.

 

I think you need to do a lot more research. Backpacking and living in China long term are two very different things. If were just you and your wife, I'd say go for it. But with a 6 year old child I'd hesitate a lot.

 

I also notice you include her in who is planning the move. How true is that? 

[Guangxi Shane]

@liuzhou, You're right, our 6 year old daughter isn't actively involved in the planning of our trip to China. She's busy learning addition and subtraction, learning to read, watching My Little Pony clips on YouTube and making little Pilgrim hats and necklaces out of cranberries and popcorn for Thanksgiving. We've told our daughter that we're thinking of going to China for a year to study the language, learn more about Chinese culture, travel around and eat lots of good food. She nods her head, smiles and seems to be on board with that plan. She's asked me if we'll be able to go to a noodle shop if we go to China. Then she asks if it's alright to play with the iPad.

 

We don't want our daughter to stress too much about changes that may happen years in the future. For her 2 years from now is a LONG, LONG time. It's a third of her life. We'd rather that our daughter concentrate on enjoying the wonderful life we have now in the present, so we're not bombarding her every day with updates on our research on China.

 

I agree with you. If it were only me and my wife, we wouldn't hesitate to pick up and move to China for a year to study Chinese, but because we have a 6 year old daughter we need to work harder to find a good situation that works for our family. As I said above in an earlier post, if we don't find a place where we can connect with a community of people and feel comfortable that our daughter isn't going to be isolated and lonely, then we won't settle down and stay in any one place in China. We'll just be backpackers exploring around China on and off for a year interspersed with side trips to other nearby countries, which I think will be a pretty cool experience for a kid to have. I'll bet our daughter will learn more in a year backpacking around China and Southeast Asia with her parents than she would in an American public school in 1st or 2nd grade.

 

BTW, I've been enjoying reading your blogs on Liuzhou. Do you travel much around Guangxi? Have you ever been to Guiping? It looks like there's a lot of relatively sparsely inhabited countryside up and down the three rivers that come together in Guiping. Do you have any idea if it would be possible to hire a boat and explore around the little villages that I can see on Google Earth in that area? Would the people be friendly and open to foreigners visiting? Would we be allowed to camp? Our daughter was found near a maternity hospital in Guiping in 2008. We've heard that she may have come from a village near Guiping. It seems like it would be cool to explore around that area a little bit and see what it's like there. I'll bet our daughter looks a lot like the people who live in that area. Chinese people have told me that my daughter has a "Guangxi nose." Other people we've talked to have said they think our daughter is Zhuang. Do you have any idea if freely exploring around the countryside there would be possible, advisable, safe?

 

Thanks,

 

Shane

[kdavid]

There's a very big difference between traveling and living. When you travel through any area, you're likely to see through rose-colored glasses. You also don't spend enough time in the area for it to begin to feel like home.

 

I lived in China for eight years and loved it for the first three, tolerated it for the middle two, and hated it the last three.

 

Additionally, when you're just passing by, you may hit a good season or a time when the pollution isn't bad. I'd hate for you to decide on a place during the spring/summer/early autumn only to learn that during the winter the AQI is >250 every day. This would be devastating for your family, especially your daughter, and especially since you're accustomed to beautiful Hawaiian weather.

 

I admire your spirit, and I think the travel route is the best route to go--though I see long-term travel being hard on a six-year-old. I'd initially be hesitant to commit to any more than that without extensive personal experience.

 

I have two boys. My oldest did 2 years of preschool in China. I spent eight years in the educator sector in China (including ESL), and I'm currently doing my PhD in the US focusing on Chinese education. Given a choice between China and the States, America is the much better choice. 

 

If you do decide to take the leap, make sure you take with you plenty of educational materials to keep your daughter caught up with what her American peers are doing. This way, when you return to the States she won't be behind the others.

 

Good luck!

[gato]

Kunming is probably much more livable than Harbin. The logistics of education/childcare is likely to be difficult for someone who doesn't speak Chinese, though. It's going to be challenging if you do it.

[Lu]

We've heard that she may have come from a village near Guiping. It seems like it would be cool to explore around that area a little bit and see what it's like there. I'll bet our daughter looks a lot like the people who live in that area. Chinese people have told me that my daughter has a "Guangxi nose." Other people we've talked to have said they think our daughter is Zhuang. Do you have any idea if freely exploring around the countryside there would be possible, advisable, safe?

I can't comment on Guiping specifically, but generally China, including the countryside, is a very safe place for travelling and exploring. The main crimes you need to worry about are pickpocketing and being ripped off.

It would of course be very valuable if you could take your daughter to visit her place of origin. Since it's only six years ago, chances are her birth mother is still around there. Do you have a plan to try and find her (or let her find you)? This is something to take into account if you go to that area.

[liuzhou]

 

BTW, I've been enjoying reading your blogs on Liuzhou. Do you travel much around Guangxi? Have you ever been to Guiping? It looks like there's a lot of relatively sparsely inhabited countryside up and down the three rivers that come together in Guiping. Do you have any idea if it would be possible to hire a boat and explore around the little villages that I can see on Google Earth in that area? Would the people be friendly and open to foreigners visiting? Would we be allowed to camp? Our daughter was found near a maternity hospital in Guiping in 2008. We've heard that she may have come from a village near Guiping. It seems like it would be cool to explore around that area a little bit and see what it's like there. I'll bet our daughter looks a lot like the people who live in that area. Chinese people have told me that my daughter has a "Guangxi nose." Other people we've talked to have said they think our daughter is Zhuang. Do you have any idea if freely exploring around the countryside there would be possible, advisable, safe?

 

I have been to Guiping, but only on a short working trip, several years ago. As with so many places in China, it has probably changed out of recognition.

 

I'm not sure about boat hire, and camping is not generally possible in China. But travelling in the country side is possible and generally safe.

 

There is a strong possibility that your daughter is Zhuang. Many people here are!

 

Glad you enjoy the blog!

 

[Guangxi Shane]

@owlzyd@, thanks for your kind words of encouragement. If my family and I meet nice people like you, I'm sure we'll have many good experiences in China!

 

@kdavid, You're right that living in a place is often very different from just travelling through on vacation. Visitors to Hawaii often remark on how the pace of life is so much slower here and everyone who lives here seems so laid back and relaxed with no worries. I guess there are some people in Hawaii who have no worries, but many of the people I know work at multiple low-paying jobs just to make ends meet every month, and they seem pretty stressed to me. Maybe they're just good at covering it up. Like you said, people just passing through tend to see things with rose colored glasses. I agree that long-term travel may end up being hard on our daughter. My wife and I have, in the past, usually gravitated towards slower travel anyway. We have gone to rural Third World places before and just stayed put in one place on an island or a small town or village for 3 weeks or a month. We like to get to know the local vendors and shop owners. Sometimes people have invited us into their homes to eat meals. We've volunteered before at rural schools to teach impromptu English lessons. For our daughter, structure is important in everyday life. We definitely don't want to be travelling long distances on trains and buses every day or even every week. We'll take your advice and make sure we plan ahead and prepare books and other educational materials for us to use with our daughter during our travels.

 

@Lu, We don't have an explicit plan to try to find our daughter's birth family, but I think it would be interesting for us and hopefully a positive experience for our daughter if we were able to meet them. Recently we saw a documentary film in which a teenage girl who had been adopted from a rural part of China as an infant went back to China with her parents and posted signs around the village where she had been found 15 years earlier. Within a few hours of arriving in the village the girl and her parents were approached by a woman who said that the girl looked a lot like her brother's children. The woman told the girl to wait while she retrieved her brother and one of his children who spoke some English. They Fedexed a DNA test kit off to a lab somewhere in the U.S., and a few days later they got back positive proof that it was actually the girl's birth family. It was kind of a surreal experience for this Chinese born, but very American girl to actually get to meet her birth family who looked just like her but were very, very different otherwise. Our daughter may still be too young for an experience like that, and it may not be possible to actually find her birth family anyway, but exploring around in that area, in the types of villages where she probably would've grown up had she stayed in China seems like it would be exciting and interesting for all of us.

 

 

Thanks to everyone for your helpful advice on our plan to move to China. It's interesting that, so far, no one who actually has kids or knows of anyone who is raising Western kids in China has replied to my post. I guess maybe I should take that as a sign that what a lot of you have said is probably true, that China may not be a great place to take children, at least not for people like us who have lots of other options open to them. I've also been following a forum on Taiwan (forumosa.com), and there seem to be tons of Westerners raising their kids over there. Some people grumble and complain about Taiwan, but it sounds like there are a lot of people doing it anyway.

 

Is it possible that this is just the wrong forum for questions about raising Western kids in Mainland China? Do any of you know of another forum where I might find a whole community of Western parents who are all happily raising their kids in 2nd and 3rd tier cities in China? I'm sure there are lots of Western kids of expats whose corporations are paying $20K+/year tuition for them to go to international schools in Shanghai and Beijing, but as I mentioned above that wouldn't be an option for us because we couldn't afford to pay that much money, and it would kind of defeat the point of going to China in the first place. If we wanted our daughter to have an American education, we could just stay in the U.S. and let her go to school here for free...

 

Again, we appreciate all of your help!

 

Shane

[gato]

There are many expats with children in Shanghai, but as you mentioned, they tend to ones with corporate jobs.

You can take a look at the Shanghai Expat forum below:

http://www.shanghaiexpat.com/phpbbforum/

[陳德聰]

I hope you're willing and able to engage in discussion with your child about racism as the need arises.

Edit: I actually think you might be better off asking parents you can find in the States about their experiences having left everything behind back home to become immigrants and see how many of them had a super happy fun time not being able to speak English, and then ask them how their relationship with their children is... I don't think it's a good idea for you to put your daughter through that if you have the means to get your act together before going over.

[Simon_CH]

I know some expat families here in Beijing, and a few lonely expat fathers who raise their kids abroad. Generally the consensus is that Beijing is a terrible place to raise kids, and few want to stay with their family longer than needed.

 

My boss relocated his family (Chinese wife) back home as soon as she got pregnant, it's pretty irresponsible to expose a newborn to AQI 300+ on a regular basis, or to make them stay indoors all the time.

 

China is a great place to visit, a good place to work and live but a really bad place to have a family in, with a few exceptions perhaps that I'm unaware of. So many people around me are constantly coughing up phlegm, respiratory diseases are extremely widespread and cancer rates are skyrocketing. If it effects healthy adults that strongly imagine what it does to a young child.

[Herberbt]

Hi Shane,

 

 

My name is Bryan Herbert. I am the Director of Engagement at the Chinese Language Institute (CLI); a Chinese language training school based out of Guilin, China. Guilin is located in the northeastern part of Guangxi province and the natural scenery here has been inspiring Chinese poets and writers for thousands of years (as I’m sure you discovered when you adopted your daughter in 2009). CLI is a small, American owned training schools whose founders have spent a combined 16 years in China.

 

 

I myself am a former student of CLI and have been intensively learning the Chinese language for almost three years now. One of the clear disadvantages of living in a larger coastal city in China is the sheer number of English speaking Chinese people you will meet. I have known foreigners who lived in Shanghai/Beijing for years without speaking a word of Mandarin. A smaller city (like Guilin) provides a perfect learning environment for foreign students in China.

 

 

CLI can provide you and your family with a completely personalized learning experience in China. We assist our students with almost everything: visa acquisition, housing accommodation, finding part-time work, a customized educational curriculum, and much more.

 

 

As for the educational aspect of you and your family’s stay in China, CLI provides immersive one-on-one Mandarin classes that allow learners to excel at a pace well beyond what you would receive at a traditional Chinese university. Our one-on-one classes are designed to put learners on the fast track to fluency while catering class content to the language goals of each individual student. Some who study at CLI have more of an interest in becoming conversational and proficient in their spoken language abilities, while other students would rather focus on the written language. On our website under our testimonials section, you can read the reviews of dozens of students and watch the videos of those whose CLI experience was all they could have hoped for and more.

 

 

In light of you and your family’s unique situation, a few former CLI students come to mind. One is an 8 year-old boy and his mother who have now been to Guilin twice to learn Chinese (you can watch his video testimonial on our website). The boy learned Chinese with CLI when he was 5 years old, and just recently returned when he was 8. In total of less than one year, the boy has become completely fluent in Mandarin (as you know, children absorb language like a sponge). The boy and his mother lived in a comfortable apartment (provided by CLI) just down the road from our school and enjoyed relaxing weekend trips to Guilin’s beautiful countryside.

 

 

Another two students (girls ages 7 and 9), were here in Guilin with their mother in the fall of 2013. One of the girls was also adopted in China, and the mother brought them to Guilin to expose them to the Chinese language. In the fall of 2016 we will also be hosting another family and their two daughters (both adopted in China, ages 9 and 11), to intensively learn Chinese language and culture. We would be happy to put you and your wife in touch with some of our former students to learn a bit more about their personal experience learning Chinese in China (let me know if you are interested).

 

 

We help all of our students acquire visas for their visits to china. As you already read elsewhere on the internet, it is common for students to temporarily come to China on a tourist visa and then switch to a long-term (one-year) student visa. There are several viable options for acquiring visas, another method would be for either you or your wife to secure a job teaching English (CLI can assist in locating jobs in Guilin), acquire a working visa and then register you/your wife and daughter with family visas.

 

 

As for aspects of daily life, CLI has a chef that comes by every weekday to prepare an authentic Chinese lunch for all the students and teachers. Our chef rather enjoys practicing Chinese with our students and showing them how to cook Chinese food. We could also help your wife arrange more formal cooking classes if she would like. Marital arts classes for yourself would be very easy to arrange. There are several local expats who have been studying for years, and are always encouraging more foreigners to learn “the way”. Instruction in either English or Chinese shouldn’t be a problem.

 

 

As for your daughter, there is an international primary school in Guilin called the Sunny School (which is owned and run by the Chinese wife of a local Guilin expat). There are several western students enrolled at the school, and at the very least there would be plenty of opportunities for your daughter to interact with other students her own age. As mentioned by another poster, young Chinese students do have less free time than your average western student; however that is not to say they have no social life at all. Chinese kids enjoy relatively active lifestyles, full of soccer, badminton and ping-pong. Yoga is also becoming a popular hobby among Chinese adults. We have also helped students and families arrange day-stay programs where they can interact with Chinese families and learn about Chinese culture.

 

 

As mentioned above, feel free to check out the testimonials and videos on our website to learn a bit more about CLI and Guilin in general. I would be happy to answer more of your questions if you are interested. I live and work at our school in Guilin, so if you find yourself in southern China, I and the rest of the CLI Team would be happy to give you a grand tour of the city.

 

 

 

All the best,

 

Bryan

[imron]

Hi Bryan,

 

Your reply contains a lot of information directly related to what the OP asked, which is good, but it also contains a lot of stuff that just seems to be marketing spiel for CLI that probably doesn't need to be there (which is bad).

 

As a community of people interested in Chinese culture and language we want to encourage engagement with firms that can provide products and services our members might find useful.  On the other hand, we don't want the forums to be overflowing with advertisements and marketing.  Balancing those needs can be quite a fine line, and your post above is walking right on the edge.

 

I'm leaving it up for now because you at least made some effort to address the OPs needs.  You'll be able to tell by the red/green votes whether the community thinks you overstepped the line between useful information and marketing.  If you haven't already, make sure you read our Guidelines for Commercial Posters, and feel free to get in touch if you have any specific questions.

 

Also, please use the signature feature (configured in your profile) rather than adding a signature manually to the end of your posts (which I've now deleted).

[Lu]

It's interesting that, so far, no one who actually has kids or knows of anyone who is raising Western kids in China has replied to my post. I guess maybe I should take that as a sign that what a lot of you have said is probably true, that China may not be a great place to take children, at least not for people like us who have lots of other options open to them. I've also been following a forum on Taiwan (forumosa.com), and there seem to be tons of Westerners raising their kids over there. Some people grumble and complain about Taiwan, but it sounds like there are a lot of people doing it anyway.

I don't have any hard numbers on this, but I have the impression that many westerners who live in China happily for years start leaving when their children approach school age. Chinese schools are as a rule not really equipped for foreign children, foreign parents often don't like the Chinese education system all that much, and international schools are expensive. One friend of mine, who has lived in China for years, speaks Chinese, has Chinese friends, met her (third-country) partner there and has two kids with him, is currently considering coming back to Europe because she doesn't want to send her children to a Chinese school and can't afford an international school. And all this is even apart from the pollution, unsafe food etc.

The good news is that you can give your child a background in Chinese language and culture without moving there full-time. Find a good Chinese tutor or Chinese class, make connections with Chinese immigrants and let her make Chinese friends, let her watch Chinese movies and read Chinese books...

Not saying going to China is a bad idea (it's a great idea), but I wouldn't recommend moving your child to the Chinese school system.