Overseas Chinese try to build a in homeland.

A foreign face in China is hardly unusual nowadays. But with tens of thousands of new expatriates flooding the country, a trend is emerging. Some of these newcomers are more or less indistin- guishable from most Chinese. That is because they were either born in China or have Chinese parents.

Every year, more and more of these people come "home," many with the aim of learning about their culture and background.

Aiwin Lee, 27, is one of these newcomers. He was born and raised in Australia, but has been living in Shanghai for four years.

"You can basically divide over- seas Chinese into two categories," Lee said. "First, there are those who were born overseas or emigrated to a foreign country at an early age. Their first language is probably not Chinese, and their culture is probably not Chinese either, having a Western upbringing and a Western lifestyle.

"The second type is the 'sea turtles' ... who speak Mandarin as their first language and who went overseas for an MBA or to work for a few years." Sea turtles, pronounced "hai gui," is a homonym for different characters that mean "returnees from overseas" - have been struggling of late in China.

They flourished at first because of the country's shortage of home- bred managers with global experience, but as domestic education has improved, not only are their skills no longer deemed so impressive. Their salary and job expectations are also considered too high by some employers.

Common experience

Like many people in this situation, Lee came to China to learn Mandarin and learn more about his roots. "When I came, I was going to do only one year, to learn Mandarin, and then decide whether I would stay or go back to Australia," he said. "But after a year here, I could speak enough Mandarin that I thought it would be a waste if I didn't stay." He ended up joining IBM in Shanghai as a business strategy consultant. "I had been here to China once before, on a government-sponsored excursion that was aiming to get overseas Chinese to come back," Lee said. "So, I think they achieved their objective with me." Lee saw many other overseas Chinese in Shanghai who needed support, so earlier this year he co-founded the Overseas Chinese Net- work (OCN). The group now boasts about 800 members. "We noticed that in Shanghai there are more and more overseas Chinese coming in, but we lack a sense of community," Lee said. "Our aim is to get overseas Chinese together, get them talking and get them building a community." At meetings, Mandarin is not often heard, and English predominates. French and Cantonese are also in the air. One of the big factions within the network is called the young China re-discoverers.

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