When Chin-ai Jin and her husband came to Northern Ireland early last year, it was the first time either had set foot outside China. Chin-ai's husband, a doctor, was offered a job at a clinic in Larne and they couldn't pass up the chance to see more of the world, despite knowing nothing about the North other than what could be casually gleaned from the internet, writes Ruadhán Mac Cormaic
Chin-ai is still thrilled by the experience, revelling in the retelling, laughing at the wonder of it.
She gave up a good job at a secondary school in her hometown in China's northeast and travelled here a few months after her husband.
They settled in a loyalist estate in Larne, although neither of them knew it as such at the time.
"All the kerbs are painted red, blue and white. At first I thought they just wanted to decorate the kerbs. I said to my husband: our local place is decorated and other places are not, so only we can enjoy it. Later, somebody told me it's not decoration," she says, falling back in her armchair with laughter.
"And also the flag, just near our house: it says UVF. My husband's English is even poorer than mine. My husband said: what does it mean? I said: 'it means You and We are Friends.' I was guessing. Then my husband mentioned this to his patients: 'does it mean You and We are Friends'? And the patient said: 'no, no!' It's an organisation's name. It's just the opposite of what I thought."
Chin-ai, refreshingly unaware of the local political-religious dynamic, reminds you of the most intriguing question posed by Northern Ireland's burgeoning immigrant communities: the way in which they challenge the binary sectarian framework that we often use to make sense of what happens there.
Belfast's ethnic diversity is apparent to anyone strolling through the city centre. As well as the ethnic Chinese who have been coming here since the 1960s and other south Asians (Indians and Pakistanis, mostly), there is a growing Portuguese community spread from the Antrim coast to the towns of Armagh and Tyrone.
Nurses come from the Philippines, India and South Africa. Since 2004 there has been a steady influx of central and eastern Europeans.
Most of these EU migrants - Poles and Lithuanians, predominantly - work in low- pay jobs (meat processing, manufacturing, catering and cleaning) in which locals have little interest.
Nearly one in eight applicants to the PSNI is Polish. Those chosen to train for the police service after the current recruitment drive will join officers on patrol in Northern Ireland with Brazilian, Canadian, Iranian, French, South African and New Zealand roots. Others come from the US, Australia, Britain, Singapore and Germany.
Migrants may be leavening the landscape of "post-conflict" communities but it is not only outsiders who struggle to tackle these new questions.
Sarah (not her real name) is from Belfast and was brought up in the Presbyterian church but converted to Islam three years ago.
Since she started wearing traditional Islamic clothes, she has suffered more abuse than any of her Muslim friends who came from overseas.
Sarah suspects people take offence at her because she muddies the traditional categories they have used all their lives to understand the society.
"They just take offence at it," she says. "Last week, a man who I'd say was in his 70s came up and started thumping my car. He called the police as I drove home and the next thing the police are after me. I hadn't got my tax disk up and he had called the police and told them I hadn't got my insurance, I hadn't got all these things. Two police cars arrived because they thought they were chasing some hoodlum. They were doing a bit of a chase after me. I pulled in when I realised they were following me. Then they saw me."
Not unlike Sarah, Northern Ireland's new migrants are forming new minority ethnic blocs, well outside the traditional dichotomies of unionist and nationalist. The experience is liberating, if not without problems.
"In this way migration has reconfigured the very basis of Northern Ireland society," according to researcher Robbie McVeigh.
"For all the old jokes about 'Are you a Protestant or Catholic Jew?' and its new incarnation in terms of 'Are you a Protestant or Catholic Muslim?', there are increasing numbers of migrants who cannot be forced into sectarian boxes, no matter how hard we push."