They are young and have no family re-sponsibilities. Unlike the returning overseas students from a generation ago, on coming to Taiwan they don't need to worry about their children's education, and don't have very many psychological burdens. Just individuals, each carrying two suitcases, coming and going as they please. Some people describe them as having "one foot in the East and one foot in the West."

With black hair and yellow skin, they're not that different on the outside. These American-born Chinese and "little overseas students," equipped with fluency in English, are returning to Asia because of job opportunities. However, whether they stay or go depends on their cultural identification, ability in the Chinese language, and interpersonal relations.

Eight years after the fact, Larry Wang still remembers very clearly the day when he came to Taipei: September 23, 1990.

Then 30 years old, he was assigned to the Taipei branch of Wang Laboratories. At that time Larry Wang's Chinese was very poor, and even simple questions like "Where are your parents from?" he needed to have repeated for him. In high school he had taken a year of Chinese, and learned "dad" and "mom," but the word for "parents" was not in his textbook for that year.

Advancing into Greater China

All of the people working in the Taipei branch were local Taiwanese. During meetings, they spoke Mandarin Chinese. "If other people looked at me, it looked like I understood what was going on. But in fact I understood nothing at all. I just wrote everything down using phonetic symbols, and when I got home at night I would look in my dictionary. It was only then that I would know that during the day we had been talking about 'plans' or 'clients.' The first six months were really hard," says Wang.

When he went to Kaohsiung to introduce Wang An computer products to more than 100 clients, his fragmented Chinese was limited to "Wang Laboratories computers are very convenient, very fast, very good." But the clients still attentively listened to his briefing.

"This is because my approach was very American," he explains. He walked up and down, looking his clients right in the eyes. His voice was self-assured, and he used expressive gestures and body language to assist in his briefing.

Today, if the person he is speaking with is Chinese, and has some foundation in English, he prefers to use English while his counterpart uses Chinese. "We both speak our native languages, while listening to our second languages. Listening doesn't take as much effort, and so there aren't as many obstacles to communication."

Wang was born in the southern part of the US, and grew up and was educated on the East Coast. When he was 25, he accompanied his 72-year-old grandmother on a trip to mainland China to visit relatives. This brief experience of only a few days in Asia nevertheless left a deep impression, and he knew that "one day I would return to Asia."

After working in California for several years, and earning an MBA, he came to Taipei, a city he did not know, and where he had no relatives or friends. This would serve as his springboard for advancing into Greater China. Later, he set his sights even higher, on transnational corporations penetrating Asia, who need bilingual and bicultural personnel. He founded his own enterprise, to bring people of backgrounds similar to his own into Asia. He set up branch offices in Hong Kong and San Francisco. Today he lives in Hong Kong, and comes to Taipei once a month.

Chinese with a foreign accent

The bilingual, bicultural people of whom Wang speaks include not only American-born Chinese (ABCs), but also so-called "ABRs" (Asian-born returnees). The latter group refers mainly to "little overseas students," in contrast to "overseas students" who went abroad as adults for graduate school, but may include both.

In 1992, Wang gathered together a group of people not originally from Taipei, and formed the group called the "Chinese-American Professionals in Taiwan," known as CAPT for short. Within three years, the number of participants grew from a few dozen to 200. The services requested of the group steadily increased, from providing membership lists to holding cultural activities to sponsoring employment seminars. Since the people who worked there all had jobs, and not that much time to devote to this volunteer group, eventually they had to give it up and close.

Last May, a new generation took the baton, and began regular meetings. Each month, a group of 30-ish young people-including attorneys, management consultants, engineers from the Hsinchu Science-Based Industrial Park, reporters from International Community Radio Taipei, and salespeople from transnational corporations-come to a club located in a shiny new office building in the eastern district of Taipei. With the exception of a few foreign friends, the great majority of the more than 100 people who come to each meeting are ABCs or ABRs.

Christine Hsu, current director of CAPT, shares a similar background to Wang. She was born, grew up and was educated in the United States. "I have some problems with my Mandarin," says Hsu, who just early this year jumped from Citibank to the China External Trade Development Council. She has lived in Taipei for three years. For her, the hardest thing to understand is the TV news. On the other hand, she says, "When Taiwan students go to the US, don't they often feel that they can't understand CNN?!"

She is able to communicate in Chinese, but she has a very strong accent, speaking Chinese just like a foreigner. Having grown up in the American South, where there are relatively few Chinese people, she had few chances to speak Chinese. Several times she came to Taiwan during summer vacations to visit her grandmother, always thinking that one day she would learn Chinese really well.

"My work experience in Taipei will not necessarily be helpful when I return to the US in the future." It's just that she would have regretted it if she had not taken this opportunity now, while she is still unmarried and has no children. When she came to Taipei three years ago, she did not choose a foreign firm, in which internal communication is normally done in English. Rather, she entered a local urban planning firm, in which only Chinese was spoken, and learned her Chinese the hard way.

Although one major reason why she was able to become the special assistant to the assistant director at Citibank was because English is her mother tongue, she doesn't believe that her English makes her any better than her colleagues. She says that ABRs "also have strong English, but they also speak Chinese well. When I worked at Citibank, I was the only Overseas Chinese there."

Seeking success in Taiwan

There have never been any definite statistics as to how many North American Overseas Chinese there are in Taiwan, or how many ABRs have returned to their birthplace.

According to data from the Ministry of the Interior, as of 1990, emigration from Taiwan was about 20,000 per year. The peak of emigration came in 1995 following the Taiwan Strait missile crisis. Since then, Australia and New Zealand have changed their immigration laws, raising barriers to immigration, and the number of emigrants from Taiwan has fallen noticeably. Moreover, many emigrants began to return because the political situation in Taiwan has become more tranquil and because of limitations faced in the job markets in their newly adopted countries. Many of these people's children have already finished high school, university, or even graduate school abroad, and are now working in Taiwan.

Alex Hsia, a senior advisor in the Management Consulting Department at KPMG Peat Marwick Ltd., a talent search firm, provides this analysis: There was a clear watershed in 1989 and 1990. The US economy was not good, and Taiwan had just begun the Six-Year National Development Plan, construction of the Taipei mass rapid transit system, and other large projects. In addition, American firms also smelled out business opportunities with the opening up of the mainland China market.

"Before Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule, there were not many chances to study putonghua [as Mandarin is called in mainland China]. Thus many American-born Chinese and little overseas students came to Taiwan to study Mandarin while working at the same time," he says.

Alex Hsia, who went to the US at age 14 and stayed for 16 years, came back to Taipei in 1992 to get on the mass rapid transit bandwagon. The American firm for which he worked did not, however, get a contract for this enormous project. The company left Taiwan, but he decided to stay here.

As the focus of the global economy has shifted from the West to the East in the 1990s, at first "the little Chinas" (Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore) were in the lead, while now the main attraction is Greater China.

Land of opportunity

Overseas Chinese and ABRs share in common the beliefs that there are many opportunities in Asia and great potential for career development, and life here is fast-paced and exciting.

Benjamin Chu, a manager at AT&T Communications Services Taiwan, attended high school in the Philippines after his father went there to work, and thereafter went to the US for university and graduate school. He knows several little overseas students who like himself attended the Fuhsing elementary school in Taipei.

After graduating from college, he entered the Digital Equipment Corporation in Boston. There he met many people who had graduated from National Taiwan University or Tsing Hua University who later went to the US to receive advanced degrees and then entered large corporations with good benefits. From engineers, they became team leaders, and by age 34 or 35 had bought homes, built families and successful careers, and were preparing to bring their parents over from Taiwan to share in their good fortune. It seemed to him as if he were looking at the image of his own future. This kind of life appeared to him "quite boring, and too quiet."

The first step in changing his life was to transfer from the engineering department to marketing, in order to expand his knowledge of product sales, and increase opportunities to come in contact with clients. Thereafter, he returned to school, and got an MBA. In 1995, when the US company Anderson Consulting went to his school to recruit people to work in their Taiwan branch, he packed his luggage even before graduation.

At the time he was thinking, "It'll be much easier to make a name for myself if I return to Taiwan." Last year he literally "moved up," going from Anderson, whose offices on are the 14th floor, to AT&T, on the 16th floor of the same building.

Faves of foreign firms?

Today, it is not uncommon for people to have been abroad traveling, for study, or even as emigrants. Many people have been educated abroad, speak foreign languages, and have lived in both East and West. Is this what is meant by the bilingual, bicultural standard? Will these people become much sought after by foreign corporations in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China?

Larry Wang has a not very stringent definition of bicultural talent. He does not by any means think that such people necessarily have had to live or study abroad. In mainland China, he met a 27-year-old individual who spoke English so well that he assumed the person must have studied in United States. But it turned out this person had never left mainland China, but learned English as a result of spending a lot of time in pubs.

"It's good to have studied abroad. It's even better to have had experience in a foreign company. It is even easier when you have grown up overseas." "You might not agree with me, but American education encourages people to speak their minds, and trains people who are good at problem solving, without specific models." He feels that this is enough to adapt to the corporate culture of foreign firms.

What he wants to emphasize is that, for foreign companies wanting to develop the Asian market, Chinese are definitely an "asset." A decade or so ago, most of the overseas personnel of foreign firms were of European ancestry. To get them to go overseas with their families, it was necessary to pay them two or three times the salary they would get in the United States. There was also the problem of finding a successor when their contracts expired. But now foreign companies are emphasizing "localization"-understanding of local cultures and markets. They have recognized that young Chinese without families are helpful to developing the local market, and have the advantage of being much less expensive than expats.

MA is not enough

However, others argue that the idea that "anyone who has studied abroad can serve as a bridge between foreign firms and local customers" is too far-reaching.

Shermen Chiang, senior advisor at TaiMall, which is preparing to build a recreational complex in Taoyuan, went abroad to study in the 1970s. Looking at the generational difference, he notes that the number of people who went abroad at that time was very small-only a few thousand. Most of them stayed abroad for a decade or more after earning their degrees. American culture and values had already become part of their thinking, and had become deeply rooted habits.

However, even these people (like himself)-who spent the first 20 years or so of their lives in Taiwan-"must study diligently to learn how to do business in the Taiwan market." Overseas Chinese with no Taiwan experience whatsoever will have to put their noses to the grindstone all the more!

Chiang points out that, as they are planning to transfer cinema complexes and theme parks from American popular culture into Taiwan, they need people who have a considerable understanding of life and thinking in both America and Taiwan. Thus, he argues that only those who have lived in both places for a decade or more can meet his company's work requirements.

"When I look at the academic records of people coming back from abroad, I turn down those with MA degrees," says Chiang. He argues that those who go abroad only for "recreational study" or to get an MA degree have not lived abroad long enough. They can only be considered "people who have traveled abroad." "A PhD is great, and those who went abroad for high school or college also are clearly different," he says, adding: "The ability to communicate is something created by an environment in which one must learn to survive, and there's no absolute relationship with whether or not this is one's mother tongue."

As for American-born Chinese, he says, "They are 100 percent fluent in English, but their Chinese ability is only three percent"-they might as well not speak any Chinese at all.

English yes, Chinese meiyou

Many people, looking only at fluency in a foreign language, see ABCs and ABRs as being part of the same group. But actually they can be clearly distinguished based on their Chinese ability. Their Chinese ability becomes the indicator of whether or not they are able to assimilate into local society.

Sandra Yuan, who emigrated to Canada with her family at the age of 18 months, has been living between Eastern and Western environments all her life. Three years after moving to Toronto, her parents moved to San Francisco, where they preferred the climate, and started their own business. Three years later, the business was not going as well as they had hoped, so they moved back to Taiwan. But her parents were very afraid that Sandra and her sisters would not be able to keep up in Chinese, and sent her to the American school in Taipei. After graduating from high school in Taiwan, she returned to Canada for university.

But for both the US or Canada, says Yuan, "I always knew that it was only temporary." After college, she returned to Taiwan and went to work in the international department at China Trust Bank; she feels that her English ability was an important reason why she got the job. "Otherwise they could have hired someone from a Taiwan university." But in this job Chinese was also very important. Hsu, who couldn't write very well and who didn't understand a lot of idiomatic Chinese, had to hire a tutor in Chinese for a year.

"There is not a single employer who thinks that good English is enough by itself," says Alex Hsia. A lot of North American Overseas Chinese give themselves away as non-native speakers with their heavily accented pronunciation. And if they need help from their colleagues to read or write Chinese, this is a "handicap" at work. They are in the same position as older Chinese who move abroad without being able to speak and read the local language: They have trouble making it through daily life, much less holding a job.

English alone is not enough

Hsia takes his own experience as a case in point. He left Taiwan at age 14, and though he lived in the US for 16 years, he didn't forget how to speak Chinese. Nevertheless, after he returned and got a job, it was hard to write Chinese, and at first he had to rack his brains over each character. It was only after three years that he dared to formally present Chinese documents that he had written.

"The weakness of overseas Chinese is that their Mandarin is not very good," says Alex Hsia. Unable to read Chinese, overseas Chinese are in the same boat as foreigners, and it is especially hard outside of Taipei. Indeed, even in Taipei life is not always smooth. Foreigners in Hsia's company complain, for example, that the romanized spelling of the name of a given road seems to change from intersection to intersection.

Benjamin Chu says that he has discovered that in meetings with people from many companies, including petrochemicals firms, Chunghwa Telecom, and China Trust, "One is already at a disadvantage if one cannot speak Taiwanese. The higher the rank of a manager, the more they will want to deal with high-ranking Taiwanese in the client firms, while company owners in southern Taiwan speak only Mandarin and Taiwanese."

Alex Hsia believes that Overseas Chinese might feel more at home in Hong Kong or Singapore, but in Taiwan and the PRC, employers all have the same requirements for Chinese.

"With such bad Chinese, how can you say you are a Chinese?" "Besides your face, what about you is at all Asian?" Larry Wang has heard such queries. In the worst case, ABCs or ABRs may suffer from the prejudice that their English might not be up to that of European-Americans, while their Chinese cannot compete with that of native-born Chinese.

Yet there is another side to the story: "Is it possible that we could be helpful to both sides?" This is what Larry Wang felt after staying in Taipei for one year and then returning to the US. When he spoke with his US friends of his Taipei experience, he felt as if he had become omniscient. Moreover, he discovered that many foreign companies are very interested in Asia.

Raising the bar

But, true as these things are, Wang also agrees with Benjamin Chu that bilingual capability is vital: "We cannot just tell other people that we are 'assets.' We have to prove it with our abilities." At a time when more and more people are coming back, employers have more and more choices, and they are becoming more demanding. He describes it as being like the high jump competition in track and field, with the bar constantly being raised. The ability to read and write Chinese is increasingly important.

Meanwhile, the Asian financial crisis has led to a regional economic downturn. Will this affect demand for the bilingual, bicultural individual?

Benjamin Chu observes that over the last two years American firms have been focusing their strategy more on the States. They have been conservative about overseas business. This has to some extent affected the job market for ABCs and ABRs.

Larry Wang thinks that Taiwan is a relatively mature market, and its demand for this type of manpower has been saturated. However, one can still expect economic growth in mainland China, and there will be considerable need for personnel in the areas of information technology, public relations, marketing, and consultancy. Besides acting to find employment for local people who speak Chinese and English, each year right before graduation time Wang goes to the best known business schools in the US and holds seminars on employment in the greater China region. He puts information about people interested in coming to Asia into a data bank.

Alex Hsia warns, however, that whether it be little overseas students or Overseas Chinese, if they have no working experience, they're in the same boat as local university graduates just entering the job market. "They are on the same track, and there are no shortcuts."

Bridge between East and West

"An Asian face could be helpful, or unhelpful," says Larry Wang. He says that with such an appearance one can more easily gain the trust of local people. However, companies may be more forgiving of the mistakes made by Caucasian foreigners than by Asians. There may be extra demands put on an Overseas Chinese simply because he or she is accepted as a "compatriot." This is especially the case when one works closely with locals. One cannot, for example, display any sense of superiority just because one has received education abroad and speaks English fluently.

One manager at the Beijing branch of Motorola, an American firm, once told Wang about the company's experience in hiring three North American Overseas Chinese. As soon as they arrived at the company, the manager frankly warned them that the local employees would be watching their performance closely, because their salaries were many times higher than local hires. Thus they would have to work harder than local people, and demonstrate their worth through superior performance. Even more importantly, they could not be standoffish with local hires, and had to mix with local staff.

Unfortunately, whether in the office or after work, these three individuals always hung together, and became a little clique. They failed, because they didn't make every effort to assimilate into local society, so they could not win the trust of their colleagues.

To be a bridge between the foreign boss and local employees, a correct attitude is critical. One cannot always consider oneself to be part of the West, and remove oneself from the East.

In the end, there are also inevitably doubts about Overseas Chinese related to one more issue: "How long are they willing to stay, and when will they go back?"

"There is a contradiction," says Christine Hsu (who, tellingly, adds: "Is that the right way to say that in Chinese?"). Although she feels that the longer she stays in Taiwan the more she likes it, and she has no timetable for returning, she still says she will eventually go back.

Larry Wang relates, on the other hand, that his stay is open-ended: "Before I came, I only expected to stay two years. But now seven and a half years have gone by, and I'm still here. For me, it's no problem."

"Taiwan is only a stop" for overseas Chinese, "but it is our home," says Benjamin Chu, who was a "little overseas student." Alex Hsia agrees with this point of view. American-born Chinese lack the personal contacts in Taiwan of primary-school and middle-school classmates, and of friends and family. "They come by themselves, and lack an emotional support network, so in the end they will always go back."

The internationalization bandwagon

Perhaps it is common for citizens of the global village to be here today, gone tomorrow. As part of Taiwan's internationalization, there's also a push for increasing bilingualism. The Ministry of Education has decided that beginning in 2001, English will become a required course in primary schools, in order to raise the competitiveness of the next generation.

Moreover, every time school vacation arrives, some parents take their children abroad to participate in "recreational study camps" or language school.

The book English Magician tells the story of Pao Chia-hsin, who scored a nearly perfect 780 on her GMAT exam. The book describes how she learned English, beginning as a small child. Both of her parents had studied in America, and were convinced that foreign language study was vital. They decided to take advantage of Pao's first two years of primary school, when she was not yet facing pressure of examinations for advancement, and sent her to live with relatives in the States, to learn American English.

But her parents did not want her to become a "little overseas student," and they were worried that once leaving an English-speaking environment she would forget her English. Thus, before they brought her back, they bought primary school textbooks used in the US, and hired a foreign teacher to tutor her at home. During summer and winter vacation they again sent her to the US to study English.

While some among the privileged send their children abroad, others have chosen to send their offspring to the Taipei American School. They want their kids to live in a bilingual environment.

Is bilingualism already a common phenomenon in Asia? "Carrying a foreign passport, and with a unique life experience, they return. Some are looking for their roots, some for opportunity." This is how one Hong Kong media report has described people returning from abroad.

When will their road come to an end? When their curiosity about Asia is satisfied, some people just go back. But others have a different end: Half of their heart will always be in Asia.

p.98

So-called ABRs-especially "little overseas students"-who are fluent in both English and Chinese, have become much sought after by foreign firms in Asia. Benjamin Chu of AT&T is one example.

p.100

The children of many Chinese who emigrated for political, educational, or environmental reasons, having grown up abroad, are now choosing to come back to Taiwan to work. (photo by Hsueh Chi-kuang)

p.102

Bilingual Overseas Chinese are looking to the employment opportunities and potential for advancement in Greater China. The photo shows the Legislative Council of Hong Kong. (photo by Diago Chiu)

p.103

"Little overseas students" have been abroad from a young age, and Overseas Chinese often don't fully understand Asian culture; both need to make adjustments when they come to Asia.

p.104

Hoping to jump on the internationalization bandwagon, young children today start English early to get a step ahead.

p.106

North American Overseas Chinese in Taipei have formed a contact group which meets regularly for friendly gatherings, employment seminars and the like, forming their own informal network.

The children of many Chinese who emigrated for political, educational, o r environmental reasons, having grown up abroad, are now choosing to come back to Taiwan to work. （photo by Hsueh Chi-kuang）

Bilingual Overseas Chinese are looking to the employment opportunities and potential for advancement in Greater China. The photo shows the Legislative Council of Hong Kong. （photo by Diago Chiu）

"Little overseas students" have been abroad from a young age, and Overseas Chinese often don't fully understand Asian culture; both need to make adjustments when they come to Asia.

Hoping to jump on the internationalization bandwagon, young children today start English early to get a step ahead.

North American Overseas Chinese in Taipei have formed a contact group which meets regularly for friendly gatherings, employment seminars and the like, forming their own informal network.