Personal profiles of Chinese professors and students at the University of Michigan reveal the ups and downs of leaving China:

“Seth Yee left a Beijing law firm to come study in America because, as he jokingly puts it, he ‘wasn’t a good enough lawyer.’ Yee studied social work at the University of Georgia, then worked in Washington, DC, for an Asian Youth association, where he saw his first dragon boat festival. ‘I’ve been to more Chinese cultural events in the U.S. than I ever attended in China,’ Yee says. Yee, who has returned to U-M to study law, says that he has come to a more “complete” view on China since leaving the country. ‘Chinese legal studies at Michigan are 20 years ahead of Chinese legal studies in China,’ he says. Still, Yee worries that Chinese academics rely too heavily on Western models. ‘One sad thing is that no one reflects on what we’re adopting,’ he said. ‘It is assumed that a Chinese scholar is necessarily a Western scholar.’