A Long Way From Home

When Hu Chen, a first-year engineering student, came to Harvard right after graduating from Tsinghua University in Beijing, he not only faced an academic barrier, but a cultural one as well.

"For a person out of college, it's hard to take the initiative, but you must be very confident. Another thing is the language barrier," he says. "Here, every student is very bright and is trying to be the best, so it's very competitive."

And while Chen has faced many of the cultural dilemmas that the dozens of Chinese graduate students studying science at Harvard see daily, he says that he has not had the time to dwell on them.

"I think right now I'm just trying to figure out what interests me," he says. "Sometimes I feel lonely, homesick, but I certainly don't regret coming here."

As part of the second largest foreign group studying at Harvard, and the U.S. in general, Chinese graduate students continue to grow in size in the United State at a rapid rate.

According to a Sept. 5, 1996 article in Nature magazine, there were 120,000 scholars and students from mainland China in the U.S., the vast majority having arrived since 1980.

By the early 1990s, the number of science and engineering Ph.D.s awarded to Chinese in the U.S. exceeded the number awarded in China itself, the article said. Chinese students also became the single largest group of foreign students in the U.S., receiving 2,751 Ph.D.s in 1995, about 10 percent of the total.

Harvard has mirrored the national trend.

According to Director of the Harvard International Office Seamus Malin, there are 165 Chinese students in the University, 96 of whom are in GSAS. They comprise the second largest foreign group in GSAS.

In an era when science jobs are drying up even in the U.S., Chinese graduate students are faced with the question of whether they should stay in the United States to pursue a career or return to their homeland.

Chinese graduate students such as Xiaobing Chen, a third-year graduate student in biophysics from Langzhou, say they decided to study science in the United States because there are more opportunities for them.

"Like a lot of Chinese students, I wanted to come to the U.S. because it's advanced in a variety of areas, particularly science and technology," he said. "I wanted to be in an environment where I could develop myself."

Chen added that another consideration was the increase in job opportunities that came from studying in the U.S.

Another key consideration for Karen Liu, a sixth-year student in immunology, was Harvard's fame and prestige.

"In China, anyone knows the name Harvard," she says. "But you have to be another scientist to know, say, Caltech."

Xiangsan Liang, a first-year graduate student in fluid dynamics from the city of Hangzhou near Shanghai, says that he was attracted to Harvard by the high caliber of the University's faculty.

"My adviser is the founding father of physical fluid dynamics," Liang says. "I just wanted to study with the best adviser in the best university in the world."

Liu contrasts the interdisciplinary nature of the University with Chinese universities' academic and social focus on one subject.

She says she enjoys the opportunity to meet a diverse student population and the freedom to take classes and attend seminars on disciplines far from one's field.

"In my dorm, I'm living with musicians, anthropologists," Liu says. "I find the mix very nice.... I feel myself becoming much more open and tolerant than I used to be."

A Different World

For most students, life in the U.S. and Harvard has been a positive experience, but not without its own travails.

Xiangsan Liang brought up cultural differences that Chinese students face in a foreign country as well in a reference to Hailei Ge, a Chinese graduate student who committed suicide early December.

"Asian people tend to be shy. When they have problems, they do not speak up... they are not brought up to be individualistic, like Americans," Liang says. "So, dealing with freedom can be extremely hard."

But Huang Haibo, a seventh-year physics student from Shanghai, said he had no hang-ups about life in the U.S.

Haibo credits his ease adjusting to his background growing up in an academic milieu where travel abroad was common.

"Both my parents are professors at Fudan University," he says. "So many [at Fudan] went abroad, I was fortunate enough to get an accurate picture of what life was like before I actually came here."

But he added that students from Central Chinese cities less international than Shanghai might run into difficulties.

Xiaobing Chen mentions the possible advantages of some time spent in the U.S.

"You need language practice," he says. "It's very difficult at first."

Chen credits two years spent at Brandeis University prior to Harvard with easing his adjustment to the U.S.

But the majority of the Chinese graduate students made their first trip abroad when they came to Harvard and, despite the instigation of mandatory English classes in the late 1970s, have struggled with the language barrier.

Some students have founded organizations to help alleviate feelings of homesickness and spread awareness of China.

Lee Zhang, a third-year graduate student studying genetics from Jiangu, founded the Harvard China Review--a new magazine that he hopes will encou rage scholarly discussion and present a balanced view on issues affecting China.

The first issue will be published in the next few months.

Three years ago, Karen Liu founded the Harvard Chinese Students and Scholars Association (HCSSA) in order to create a sense of community among expatriate Chinese.

Liu says that Harvard should provide more support and counseling to students, especially in terms of departmental issues.

"I think there is something done for the initial culture shock," she says. "But there needs to be more profound help: like dealing with the next four years."

A Long Road

Zhang says the history of Chinese studying in America is more than 150 years long, but with breaks in between.

"If you look back at Chinese students coming to the U.S., there's a long history," he says. "After 1949, there were no students until the beginning of the 1980s, when China under Deng started economic reforms."

Dongming Chen, a senior physicist at the Rowland Institute, who also studied at Harvard, agrees with Zhang's assessment.

According to Dongming Chen, while China allowed some visiting scholars and professors to go to America after Nixon's ground breaking visit to China in 1972, there were few channels open for the would-be student in general until the '80s.

China's allowing students to study abroad came about partly through the efforts of Chinese-born Nobel prize laureates C.N. Yang and T.D. Lee, who encouraged students to study abroad.

The two scientists were instrumental in establishing China-U.S. Physics Examination Application (CUSPEA)--the first study abroad program--for physics students.

Some years later, a companion program in biology, CUSBEA, was also added.

CUSPEA was organized by U.S. universities and supported by the Chinese government, which issued passports and travel fare for the students. The first year it was established, 500 students applied and 100 were accepted to the program. Dongming Chen was one of those accepted.

As a member of the first wave of graduate students in the Deng era, Dongming Chen says that even then it was acknowledged in China that the U.S. was the best place to go study science.

"At that time [when he first arrived in the U.S. in 1981], we were just coming to the U.S. to study," he says. "But even back then, even with relatively little exchange, people knew that the U.S. was at the forefront of technology and research. We knew that because each year U.S. scientists won all the top prizes in science."

CUSPEA and CUSBEA lasted for several years until the TOEFL exam was gradually introduced. Students then began to apply to American universities and colleges on their own, and in disciplines aside from physics and biology.

But even now, most Chines grad students who come to the U.S. to study concentrate in the sciences.

Chen says, however, that great changes have occurred over the years in terms of the mentality of Chinese graduate students studying science. Chen says that most of this is a result of the rapid pace of China's economic development recently.

"The younger generation--a lot enter into science, and then switch to MBA programs. We call them 'strays,'" he says. "That never happened to us. When they come to the U.S., they reevaluate their goals."

Chen says that this situation is different from the time when he was a student in America.

"[In the early '80s] we just expected to get a doctorate degree, back then China didn't even have the doctorate degree," he says.

Chen acknowledges, however, that much of the current trend toward business and applied sciences has to do with the contrast between opportunities in science and opportunities in business in China.

"Returning [to China] is a very complicated matter. Once you get to a place like Harvard or Brookhaven [Laboratory], you're exposed to the best of the best," he says. "It's very unlikely that you would be able to have the same amount of equipment and financial support in China."

Another problem that Dongming Chen notes was that after a while, the expatriate scientist would marry and start a family.

"Suddenly, it's not just about yourself, but also about your entire family," he says.

At the same time, Chen says the work of the scientific researcher ultimately transcends nationality, and the majority of Chinese scientists that he knows have not returned to China.

"After a while, science really has no borders," he says. "Your contributions are to mankind as a whole."

More Harm Than Good?

But despite the opportunities that Chinese graduate students say are made available to them in the U.S., many express concern with how the increasing popularity of going abroad may affect China.

"In my field, many excellent people are in the U.S. now," Liang says. "There are still top people in China, but not that many."

Dongming Chen echoes Liang's comments, addressing the looming problem of the lack of qualified members of the younger generation to take over positions left by retiring professors.

"Sometimes, graduate students [in China] have trouble concentrating because they are trying to figure out how to get abroad," he says.

At the same time, Chen notes the crucial role that returning scientists could play in China.

"There are so few well-educated scientists in China that your impact is much greater [than in the U.S.] in terms of education," he says.

Haibo says that he will remain in the U.S. for the foreseeable future, because "all the jobs are in the U.S."

"At this moment [in China], I don't see a demand for basic research scientists," he says. "They're so involved in business development."

But Haibo says he believes that the focus on business has not helped basic research.

"In China, there's a lag in research, they're more interested in importing technology than doing the research. It's much more profitable in the long-run and much easier to do," he says.

Haibo adds that he did not have special connections in China, often crucial for the few positions that do exist.

But Haibo says he believes establishing a fair system to compete on equal ground would help check China's brain drain.

For the Chinese student in applied sciences or considering a switch to business, the future seems rosier.

Liu, who says she feels a cultural and social need to go back to China to reorient herself to all the changes occurring there, will return to China as soon as she obtains her Ph.D. However, she will not be doing science.

"I'll be working in a very different capacity in China from what I'm trained for," Liu says. "I'll be doing management consulting, and feel I have more opportunities for making an impact."

Liu says that she would have some opportunity to use her immunology Ph.D., but that her research would not be cutting-edge.

"You need a strong economy for that," Liu says. "But I think that will come [in China]."

Zhang says that he is convinced that more Chinese students will be returning to China in the future, and that scientific research in China does not have a gloomy outlook.

"It's true that China is still struggling to upgrade basic research," he says. "But there are growing numbers of labs in China supported by Western foundations and collaborating with Western institutions. And lots of pharmaceutical companies have operations in China."

In the end, Zhang says that he is a "patriot."

"I'd like to see a prosperous and once-more splendid China again," he says.