In the span of the past six weeks the wives of three Western friends of mine in Suzhou have had babies. The guys didn’t do much during the nine months preceding the births – nights out with the lads, business trips throughout China and even to India, punctuated with a few more nights out with the lads – and then BOOM! now they’re fathers.

Their wives are all Jiangsu Province natives, bright, articulate Chinese women. All the newborns are girls. I am genuinely happy and excited for my friends and their newly expanded families. In particular, I’m glad to see the maternal instincts sprouting in these hard-drinking, mono-syllabic fellows: hurrying home directly after work; forgoing pub crawls to curl up with baby; taking just three more rounds instead of the perfunctory five to run errands before dinner. They’ve all been in China at least eight to ten years, and are all committed to staying for as long as China finds a use for them.

One of the things in particular that excites me at the prospect of these special births is that my mates’ children are BOTH Western AND Chinese. NOT six of one and a half-dozen of another. The children -whether they and their parents like it or not – are genuine bridges between cultures: in their blood, into their bones and sinews. These children are the ones that through the simple act of being themselves in both worlds will present to others that many of the differences we fight about across borders are ideological – mythological, even.

In-betweeners, outliers, the liminal – whatever you choose to call them: all of them will re-shape if not completely erase those borders that create so many conflicts between cultures and traditions. They are the true leaders and inspirations of the world. Not the politicians, not the great and the good, not the preachers.

Welcome … and thanks already for your contributions.