THREE kinds of people live in the world, a joke says, bilinguals, multilinguals and Americans. But that’s not the case with Paul and his family.

　Paul Duffy, a 41-year-old from Boston, is learning Chinese at Shenzhen University and feels very proud of his wife and son who are both fluent in Chinese.

　The family has been in town for six months after his wife, Mae, was sent here by her company.Mae was born in Beijing and migrated to the U.S. at the age of 13, Paul said. But he was unaware of her fluent Chinese until the family transferred to Taiwan three years ago where her company opened a new branch. “We spoke English all the time back home,” Paul said.The couple has been together for 16 years, and Paul still remembers the first time they met.

　“I was managing a night club in the navy, and she was a special guest that night.” Paul asked three times before Mae agreed to dance with him.

　“She came to visit me in my training base a month later and that was our first formal date,” he said.They decided to move to Asia for a better family life. Back in Boston, Paul had been engaged in the restaurant industry all those years and spent most of his nights and weekends at work.

　“It’s time to make up for my family,” he said. They traveled a lot in Asia after settling in Taiwan, and welcomed their first child on the island. Paul taught children in an international kindergarten and helped train teachers there.

　“Troy is the only non-native kid in his kindergarten and he is doing well with the others, ” he said. Born in Taiwan, the boy naturally took up Chinese. He is already a multinational. He likes Chinese food but gets very excited at the sound of “pizza.”