Hi @straycat, I was born in Taiwan and grew up in Australia so I am always interested in other people/families with similar experiences and how they deal with the different cultures/languages/values as their life progresses. I am also happy to find someone who writes in both languages (but it's interesting how there are little differences in the way we express things in different languages) because I love reading in both Chinese and English. I follow @wentong-syhhae who writes about it from a non-native speaker's perspective which is also very interesting!
I have a few friends in HK and have visited the city on a couple of occasions, but happy to call Brisbane home when I am not working interstate.
I think now that you have started becoming a little bit more active (I really like your short stories by the way!), you'll find more of the Brisbane based people around on Steemit and I hope that we can all get to know each other better :)
Thank you for your long reply!
I love to read too, both Chinese and English. But finding the time to do that can be hard sometimes 😕
I am glad that you liked my short stories, thank you! I have my hands full with 2 kids but I’ll try my best to find time for more stories. 😀
Sometimes the best stories come from real life, and sometimes things that happen in real life are much more interesting (or stranger) than in fiction! Reading in both languages was very important for retaining my knowledge of Chinese, and I find that too much information is lost in translation so I always try to read in the original language if possible.
I am also interested in your experience with how your children are learning languages, I have friends that have tried different strategies when it comes to teaching their children multiple languages, so I wonder if you have any thoughts on this :)
Teaching my kids Chinese is very hard. My 6 years old understands what I say but can’t speak. He is slowly showing some interest though probably because i am reading Chinese books and he’s watching Chinese cartoons. Hope he would keep learning ...
What about some of the weekend Chinese schools that are around? That's how my parents made me learn Chinese... it does mean a little bit of sacrifice now but I can only imagine that Chinese will be even more important than it was before.