The mainland may be ringing in the changes, but those who have been away and returned often feel out of tune.
When Chen Ling went back to Beijing after six years in Britain her friends were astonished to find out she could not sing. The karaoke culture had sprung up while she was away.
'Everyone I knew could sing, as if all the people in the room were their lovers. But I could not. People suspected that I was not really from China,' she said.
Ms Chen is one of thousands who have given up a comfortable life abroad to return home, reversing a trend of 1,000 years, of Chinese emigrating in search of a better life. According to official figures, 320,000 students have gone abroad in the past 20 years and 110,000 have returned.
Ms Chen was one of three returnees who spoke at a lunch yesterday arranged by the Foreign Correspondents Club of Beijing.
A reporter at Xinhua for six years, she won a Reuters Fellowship to study at Oxford University for one year. She stretched the time in Britain to six years through a scholarship at the London School of Economics. In 1996, she came back to work as a business consultant and writer.
'After I returned, people no longer called me 'comrade' but 'Miss', which was embarrassing since I am over 40. And the way you greeted people had changed from 'have you had lunch?' to 'have you divorced',' she said.
