The Journey of Seagulls and Sea Turtles

Chinese professionals utilize their intellectual cultural capital and flexible citizenship for their lives in two localities: the western suburban metropolitan Philadelphia area and Shanghai, China. This book discusses modern Chinese culture-Chinese nationalism,consumerism,and mass media-through Chinese returnees’ eyes and the author's fieldwork in Shanghai. In addition, this research analyzes migration of skilled intellectuals under globalization and the change in these Chinese professionals’ transnational identity in different localities. This book presents the impact brought by neoliberal ideology in the US and by policies of privatization in modern Chinese society to these transnational professionals as part of the global process of migrating professionals. This book contains two parts. The first part of this research studies Chinese professionals’ lives in the western suburban metropolitan Philadelphia area—the Philadelphia Mainline, West Chester, and Exton. The second part of this research studies these Chinese professionals’ return experience in Shanghai, China.