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Postmedia reporter Cassidy Olivier recently discovered that the person listed as the new owner of a $31-million house on Vancouver’s west side is a “student.”

It’s another indication that some students in Metro Vancouver do not fit the stereotype — they’re hardly living in basement suites, barely making ends meet. More students are scions of wealthy transnational families, with multiple motives for wanting to study in Canada.

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Metro Vancouver has far more international students per capita than the rest of Canada.

B.C.’s minister of advanced education, Andrew Wilkinson, recently boasted in aSun opinion piecethat the province, but mostly Metro, now hosts about 110,000 foreign students, about one third of the national total. The largest group is from Mainland China.

Although B.C.’s Liberal government continues to refuse to provide the information that would allow a researcher to ascertain whether any house buyer, including Tian Yu Zhou, the new owner of the $31-million mansion, is a foreign student, migration specialists say that’s likely the case.