Astronaut family Astronaut family An astronaut family is a family unit where the members reside in different countries across the world—in contrast to a "nuclear family". The astronaut family represents the growing transnationalism of peoples' identities that accompanies the growing globalization. The term was coined by Aihwa Ong in her publication "Flexible Citizenship: The cultural logics of transnationality" in 1999. The term is especially used to describe Chinese families, who have spread across the globe. Astronaut families was a new economic source started in the early 80s for Chinese to migrate abroad and work under contracts or settle down and then send
Chinese as a foreign language were studying the language in US colleges and universities. While far behind the more than 800,000 students who study Spanish, the number is more than three times higher than in 1986. The Institute's report includes graphs and details on the popularity of other languages. As of 2008, China had helped 60,000 teachers promote its language internationally, and an estimated 40 million people were studying Chinese as a second language around the world. Other than Standard Mandarin, Cantonese is the only other variant of Chinese that is widely taught as a foreign language. It is the official language of Hong Kong