The popularity of learning Languages Other Than English (LOTE) has been growing in recent decades in many contexts, and China is no exception. While top-down language planning measures aimed at reducing the influence of English in Chinese society may explain part of this trend, there are other factors at play, especially for parents from higher socio-economic or socio-cultural backgrounds who may see advanced LOTE competence as a way to enhance their children's social status as well as their own. This study examines the motivations of parents in Beijing and Suzhou who enroll their children in LOTE language programs through in-depth interviews (n = 10 for each city). We use the concepts of "imagination" (Wei & Hua, 2019) and "projected desire" (Kramsch 2006, 2009; Van Mensel & Deconinck, 2019) to analyze how parents imagine their children's linguistic future and how they project their own desire in language learning onto their offspring. The findings shed light on the complex motivations behind the growing interest in LOTE education and its potential impact on social status in contemporary urban China. For instance, different from learning English, which has become a ‘staple skill’ among Chinese middle classes, the motivation to have their children learn these other languages extends beyond creating more or better future opportunities, even if that remains an important motivation. It also indexes a desire to construct the family as culturally open, sociable, and cosmopolitan. On a theoretical level, we will briefly discuss how the concepts of imagination and (projected) desire in language learning are related and how they can be usefully applied to study family multilingualism.