VANCOUVER — Bonnie Ye, 42, left China four years ago to marry a Vancouver man she met on a Chinese matchmaking website. Soon, her husband was shuttling between China and two homes in Vancouver, leaving her alone for long stretches to care for their young daughter. Now, the two are divorced.

Valerie Ng, 19, was so distraught as a child when her father left Vancouver to go work in Hong Kong, she bit his ear until it bled. But she and her mother came to dread his sporadic visits home: He was a “yeller.” After Valerie finishes college, her mother hopes to return to Hong Kong while her daughter plans to remain in Canada.

These are just two of the “astronaut families” who have made Vancouver a global hub for tens of thousands of people whose lives straddle Canada and China. They are known as “astronauts” because at least one parent — usually the father — spends so much time in the air, flying to and from mainland China, Hong Kong or Taiwan to financially support the family.

Drawn by Canada’s education system, passports for their children and a refuge outside authoritarian China for cash and kin, these transnational migrants are transforming the social fabric of Vancouver and pumping billions of dollars into the local economy while creating challenges for families pulled between two continents and two cultures.