Expatriates in the Middle Kingdom

Shortly after my arrival in China, during my first brief stay in 1997, it became apparent to me that there were very distinct types of expatriates living and operating in the country. The main differences between them did not seem to stem from different nationalities but appeared to be collections of traits generally applicable across cultures. The distinctions became more obvious once I started living in Shanghai in 2002 as a postgraduate student and even more so when I began my career there shortly afterwards. However, the peculiarity of this classification and how topical it is only really struck me once I became an expatriate in the UK and noticed how the typologies that could be identified and applied in China could not be made to fit the expatriate reality in England, which is nonetheless very varied and multicultural. Being conscious of the fact that I approach this matter from a European point of view and from personal experience, I included mention of this in the vignette I used as a prompt for my interviews. Other topics I had included such as national identity were not picked up by many interviewees, but all of them discussed the idea that there are very obvious and distinct types of expatriates living and working in China.