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Foreigners returning to the home of their ancestors can experience identity issues, Peng Yining reports.

Being an expat in China can be tough if you happen to look Chinese. When John Kung, a 50-year-old Chinese Canadian, first arrived in Beijing in 2002, the only Mandarin phrases he knew were ni hao (hello), and wo e le (I'm hungry).

Chinese-Canadian John Kung interacts with students and a colleague at his school in Beijing. Kung says he will stay in China for at least another five years. Photos by Zhang Wei / China Daily

"When I wanted to order in a restaurant, I had to nudge my friends for help," he said. "Waiters must have been confused, especially when I was having dinner with other foreigners, because I was the one who looked Chinese but couldn't speak the language."

Now, after 10 years in Beijing, Kung can deal with basic conversation, but said he still finds himself at a loss when the topic of his origins arises. If he speaks English, people might think he's strange, he said. If he switches to Chinese, people usually want to know where he's from, because of his accent.

"When they find out, they tell me, 'No, you are not Canadian. You are always Chinese'," Kung said. "It's very hard to explain, so sometimes I tell people I am from South Korea and they're satisfied."

China's surging economy has prompted an increasing number of descendants of Chinese emigrants to return to the home of their ancestors. However, for most, looking Chinese doesn't make them any less foreign. Their background certainly helps, but also brings cultural frictions that other ex-pats don't experience.

"After speaking with me, people in China would say, 'You're not very Chinese'," said Mary Chang, a Chinese-American who studied and traveled in China in the mid-1990s. "I'd sometimes get mini-lectures on how I should be able to speak and write Chinese better."

Chang said her ethnicity and language skills helped her navigate the actual traveling - how to get where, what dishes to order at a restaurant, that sort of thing. But she didn't understand some of the cultural clues - When is it OK to haggle? Is it OK to buy train tickets from a scalper if the ticket window is sold out? She wasn't clued up on how the systems worked and what was expected and what wasn't.

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Expats face question of origin