Lotus Hill with Young Children?

More the opposite. Many Taiwanese obtain an overseas passport, one way or another, and then return to Taiwan and call themselves a ‘foreigner’ when it is convenient, though they almost always retain their Taiwan passport. Acculturation hasn’t taken root, and unless they announce their passport status, you would never mistake them for a foreigner.

Another difference that may not be obvious if and until you move here: Most westerners in Singapore are professionals, expat or PR. In Lotus Hill the foreign community is primarily single, 20-something ESL teachers. All nice people for sure, but a very different crowd.

Is that it? Is that what you had to say that was supposed to have Maoman get naked in a puddle of mud with you? :laughing:

marboulette

Interesting. There’s a whole bunch of nationalities represented in people living there who Vanessa knows as foreign. Only a handful are from nations that would be allowed to teach ESL here.
I’ve never seen many 20-something ESL types up there – they’re nearly all older fat bastards like maoman, as far as I can tell.

In Taiwan, locals can never become foreigners? Are there many at Lotus Hill trying? I don’t know of any “returned Taiwanese” or locals with foreign citizenship passing themselves off as “foreigners” at Lotus Hill, but again, we don’t socialize that much with local families at Lotus Hill, except for some neighbors that we know in our immediate building. Most of the families in our circle have at least one spouse from another country, with bi-cultural kids. A few of the families have two foreign parents. ~shrug~

I don’t know what the big deal is. The lingua franca with these families is still English. I just wanted to point out that there are a great deal more than the “1 to 2” English speaking toddlers you mentioned. Many of them are not lily-white because of their parents, but so what?

You’ll find different demographics of the Lotus Hill foreign community in the different sections. In the “A” Buildings, which have more, smaller, and cheaper apartments, there is some truth to your generalization. In the “B” and “C” Buildings, the foreigners tend to be married, with families, and in more diverse careers.

[quote=“StuartCa”]does anyone have a google map location of Lotus Hill, it sounds like a good place when we think about moving to a house.

Thanks

Edit - Before I get a barrage of abuse for not searching. I have now searched (all be it on Google) and found this link with a map on it.
wikimapia.org/1772984/Lotus-Hill … Shanzhuang[/quote]

You can also get it by going to Google Maps and pasting [quote]25° 4′ 31.11″ N 121° 37′ 59.6″ E [/quote]into the search box.

Edit: I should have taken a better look at the Wikimapia map. It lets you see street names, so there was no need for my post.

[quote=“Bugis”]That being said my parents and I get referred to as ‘Local Angmohs’ in Singapore because we have been here for over ten years and have Permanent Residence. We do not have Singaporean passports, no one in the family receives an expat package, and employers have to pay into our pensions so our local friends think of us as local instead of as foreigners.

It sounds like in Taiwan foreigners can never become local, is that true?[/quote]

Well sounds like you have not really ‘become local’ because then you would be referred to as, say, ‘Bob’ instead of ‘Local Angmoh’. The fact is no matter how ingrained you feel in the local culture you are never going to be considered a ‘local’ if you look different to 99% of the population. Does it matter? Not really.