This is an interesting post. I had to start to click in because I'm of Chinese origin.
Been to Hamburg couple of times and that got me interested to complete reading the whole thing after you start your story.
Love the panda art by your mom - a good representive of Chinese culture. I had a chance to see the real deal myself in the zoo in Singapore and had some shots of one.
Chinese is not an easy to master with the 4 tones but the Cantonese dialects had 9 tones; don't know if the Shanghai dialect will be more challenging that that.
I visited Shanghai a few years back and could not understand much of what they said to each other unless they speak in putonghua.
I been to Hong Kong and like it - I have relatives there not much chance to see the rest of South East Asia as compared to you.
Few times I was in different part of Thailand - agree it's really the land of the smiles.