Engaging and revealing, this chronicle of Victor arriving in Shanghai with the global economy in a slump and nothing more than a suitcase and a pocket full of dreams is a story about opportunity, determination, pursuing love and finding your way in the Pearl of Asia. It's September 2008, and Victor is an International Business and Management graduate with study and internship experiences gained in four continents. With the global economy in a slump, the job market for graduates is doomed. Where powerhouse China is still delivering substantial economic growth, Shanghai might provide him with the best opportunity to establish a successful career. He has only one objective though; re-joining Philips, the company where he did his graduation internship. But moving from a village with three-thousand people to Shanghai with it's twenty-four million people is quite a significant change. And thereby his height, blue eyes, and long eyelashes provide him with a high profile presence. Join Victor on a journey of starting over in China's biggest city and a global financial hub. A city where the gap between success and failure is extremely close and family traditions weigh heavier than love. A part-time teaching job can open the door to a billionaire's office, and a random Shanghai subway ride can lead to a meet and greet with your favourite British rock band in Beijing. Can Victor resist the temptations of a city that never sleeps and pursue his dreams?

When author Alexandra Khoo landed at the Shanghai Pudong International Airport in the fall of 2007, nothing could have prepared her for the culture shock of living in China. In Living in Shanghai, she narrates the experiences of living in the most cosmopolitan city in China, a place she came to know when her husband accepted a job assignment in this metropolis of twenty-three million people. As an overseas ethnic Chinese woman fluent in both English and Mandarin, Khoo tells about her in-depth contact with the local people and provides insight into navigating the daily issues commonly facing expatriates in Shanghai, including housing, dining out, shopping, currency, religion, social interaction, transportation, medical care, and communication. Including many photos, Living in Shanghai paints a broad picture of what it was like living in a large country that is developing at a breakneck pace. Khoo provides practical advice and useful directions for adjusting to life in Shanghai.

Long a source of migrants, China has now become a migrant destination. In 2016, government sources reported that nearly 900,000 foreigners were working in China, though international migrants remain a tiny presence at the national level. Shanghai is China’s most globalized city and has attracted a full quarter of Mainland China’s foreign resident population. This book analyzes the development of Shanghai’s expatriate communities, from their role in the opening up of Shanghai to foreign investment in the early 1980s through to the explosive growth after China joined the World Trade Organization in 2000. Based on over 400 interviews and 20 years of ethnographic fieldwork in Shanghai, it argues that international migrants play an important qualitative role in urban life. It explains the lifestyles of Shanghai’s skilled migrants; their positions in economic, social, sexual and cultural fields; their strategies for integration into Chinese society; their contributions to a cosmopolitan urban geography; and their changing symbolic and social significance for Shanghai as a global city. In so doing, it seeks to deal with the following questions: how have a generation of migrants made Shanghai into a cosmopolitan hometown, what role have they played in making Shanghai a global city, and how do foreign residents now fit into the nationalistic narrative of the China Dream? Addressing a gap in the market of critical expatriate studies through its focus on China, this book will be of interest to academics in the field of international migration, skilled migration, expatriates, urban studies, urban sociology, sexuality and gender studies, international education, and China studies.

Above the Sea: Expat in China is a personal account of the author's experiences living, working, and traveling in China. It is a valuable resource for anyone destined for China for business or pleasure. Living in Shanghai with his wife, a native of Guangzhou, the author shares insights into a dynamic and complex nation. Besides Shanghai, the couple have visited more than two dozen cities, towns and villages in China, from Harbin in the far North to Guangzhou in the South, and as far west as Xi'an, the ancient capital. In Above the Sea: Expat in China, the author has managed to be both informative and entertaining. The book contains his impressions of the challenges, the friendships, and sometimes the frustrations of living in a country that is both ancient and modern, and always changing.

Featuring entirely original writings written exclusively for this work, this anthology is filled with 28 essays from foreigners who live or have lived in China for a significant period of time. The book contains beautiful and enlightening stories about China from such noteworthy writers as Simon Winchester, Peter Hessler, Susan Conley, and Alan Paul, among others. Through their personal stories, they illustrate the many sides of Chinese life--the weird, the fascinating, and the appalling--and share what it's like to live, learn, and love as an outsider in a land unlike any other in the world.