[Lilongyue]

Thanks everyone for sharing your experience. It's actually quite hard to find foreigners living long-term in China, with families, etc. I posted a similar question around the same time on a similar forum for foreigners living in my city, and haven't had one response so far . . .

I was hoping that the bi-lingual thing would come naturally with my children. I think that if both languages are present throughout their childhood they will pick them up naturally. My wife and I want our children to speak both English and Mandarin. Languages are very valuable, and being bi-lingual would be very useful to them in the future - in terms of work, and being able to speak with both sides of their family, haha. My wife has learned English, and so we could speak to our children in both languages. Honestly, I for one hate the fact that I grew up so language deprived, as most Americans do.

Naturally, I wouldn't want my children to resent Western culture, but I feel that it has valuable things to offer, so I want to try and teach some of it. I'm not sure if I'll have much control over how much Western culture my children absorbs, if they grow up in Asia. Hopefully, they will only get the best of both worlds.