Last year, 285,000 Chinese students went abroad to study, a 24 percent increase from 2009. Every year, many choose to stay overseas to gain work experience, but some come back, armed with a foreign education and experience. They are known as haigui or “sea turtles” (in Mandarin, haigui is a homonym for both returnee, 海归, and sea turtle, 海龟).

Traditionally, haigui have trained in the sciences or business, but more and more creative haigui are returning, determined to use their overseas experience to transform industries such as fashion, food, wine and e-commerce.

Yang Lu

Typical of this new wave of haigui is Yang Lu, the sommelier at the Peninsula Hotel. Yang became the first internationally certified sommelier in China in 2007, and in 2008 was the first person in China to pass the Certified Sommelier Exam of the Court of Master Sommeliers.

“I was born in Xinjiang,” he says. “But I lived in Shanghai from a young age, then moved abroad when I was 17 and ended up in Canada, where I studied physics and astronomy. But in my final year I decided it wasn’t for me. I loved nature, so I joined a course to learn to make wine. After that, things just snowballed.”

Yang and others like him are returning to China with experience in fields that are just starting to blossom here. “The golden time for haigui was in the 1990s,” says Hugo Zhang, a haigui himself and the Shanghai managing director of Bo Le Associates, a recruitment firm with offices in 22 countries. “Those first returnees typically had experience in economics, the sciences or running large firms, and those were the skills China needed at that time.”

Zhang says certain industries, such as consulting and finance, still aggressively recruit haigui, but an overseas education no longer means a high starting salary or a fast-track into the boardroom, which is why many haigui are, like Yang, choosing to ditch traditional careers and focus on those that are just starting to boom.

Yang says he knew wine was going to explode in popularity in China and trained as a sommelier as a route back to Shanghai. “Part of me wanted to stay in Canada, but eventually I wanted to come back and be with my parents and my friends. I knew wine had a big future here and so it was a way for me to return to China. It may seem strange to move back to a country with such a young wine culture, but that’s why it’s so exciting. China’s wine market is exploding and it changes every day.”

Yang says his Western experience is what sets him apart. “Many local sommeliers who have not trained overseas do not really understand their role. They think they know everything about wine, but if you’ve seen experts working abroad you understand the limits of your own knowledge. I have international standards, and so I know how much there is to learn.”

Yang’s aim is to educate wine buyers and customers, but also the sommeliers already working in Shanghai. To this end he’s set up a regular meeting of sommeliers who get together every few months to taste each other’s wine and discuss tips of the trade.

“In every big city in the West, the top sommeliers form a community. I am trying to forge one here in Shanghai. I hope I can raise the profile of the profession in China.”

Wei Jiang

Recent years have seen haigui flooding into China’s high tech fields, most prominently e-commerce. More than 80 percent of Nasdaq-listed Chinese high tech enterprises were started by students who had studied abroad, including Jack Ma, who runs Alibaba, China’s biggest ecommerce company, Robin Li, the co-founder of Baidu, Tao Zhang, the founder of restaurant review site Dianping and Dr. Charles Zhang, head of internet portal Sohu.com.

Recently appointed Google’s director of marketing for greater China, Wei Jiang is another haigui. He spent 14 years in the States, first studying for a masters in statistics and an MBA, then working for FedEx, Intuit, GE and eBay before returning to China. He agrees that the nature of haigui is changing.

“I think when Chinese students went overseas 20 years ago, most had to rely on a scholarship, which were mainly awarded for studying physics, maths and engineering. But some of us became interested in business and took MBAs and, if we were lucky, we managed to get a job overseas, but it was very hard to do that. Recently, as Chinese people have become more affluent, students can choose to study what they like, so their academic achievements are more diversified.”

Wei says these new returnees may not have as much senior-level experience or as prestigious qualifications, but they are prized if they’ve been able to grasp Western corporate culture.

“In the States I worked with some pretty large companies,” he says. “So I had the privilege of climbing the management ranks and getting management training in those big companies. My colleagues in China didn’t have that exposure. Working for a multinational, you need to understand corporate culture, how people interact and build professional relationships. Those things work very differently in a Chinese company and if you’ve only experienced the way Chinese firms operate you may struggle to understand the culture of a multinational.”

Wei says haigui who have learned to think creatively are also at an advantage. “I worked at a software company in China before I went to the States. It was a long time ago, in the earliest days of the industry over here, but I don’t think the office culture has changed that much. In a Chinese office, whatever your boss says, that’s what you do. And that’s not really market-oriented. For new haigui, maybe experience isn’t so crucial any more. Multinationals need recruits who are bilingual but can also work well within their culture.”

Echo Zhuang

A case in point is one of the world’s largest online high fashion retailers, YOOX, which has recently moved into China to launch Thecorner.com.cn, an online boutique showcasing fashion and accessories from designers such as Alexander McQueen, Dolce & Gabbana and Z Zegna. Its merchandising manager is Echo Zhuang, a haigui who studied in England, earning a post-graduate degree in marketing before working as a buyer for Lane Crawford and Chanel.

“To be a fashion buyer, it’s necessary to have international experience,” she says. “You need to get into the fashion buyers’ circle, which is very hard to do.” Echo says her job involves building relationships with vendors and fashion houses. “I go to Europe about six times a year. I buy for 15 or 20 brands and I have to understand both what the designers have created and what our Chinese customers will want to wear next season. The market is huge here and complex, but most of the designing still goes on in Europe, so I need to understand both the complexities of the Chinese market and also the way the industry works in Europe. Overseas experience is crucial.”

Ya Ming

Home-grown fashion is also being transformed by returnees who have studied and worked in London, Paris or Milan but chosen to return to China to start their own lines. One such designer is Yan Ming, who is originally from Jiangsu but studied in Paris before working there for international fashion houses such as John Galliano and Adeline André.

“I went to Paris in 2001 to study,” he says. “I worked there until 2007 and then decided it was time to come back because there was a much better chance for me to start my own company over here. I don’t have a rich family and in Paris it’s just too expensive to start your own line. The industry is crowded and mature. But here in China there are plenty of opportunities. I can employ people to help me, which I never could over there, and the future of the luxury market is here in China.”

Yan set up a studio with some other designers when he first returned, designing for other brands before launching his first collection last year. This year he opened a design studio in Shanghai but he says the future for high-fashion sales are online stores. He also thinks his international experience sets him apart.

“Because I studied in Paris, I have a different attitude to many designers in China. The beauty of my designs is also in the beauty of the fabric and the workmanship. Some designers who have not trained in Europe do not understand the importance of high quality materials. This is what we learn from studying abroad.”

This sentiment is echoed by another of our favorite Chinese designers, Vega Wang, who studied in London at Central St Martins before returning to launch her own label. “I went to England in 2001 but I always thought I was going to come back. I didn’t even know what I wanted to do when I was first in London and I fell into fashion almost by mistake.”

Wang says she never paid much attention to other designers in China and still isn’t interested in marketing or the direction of the Chinese fashion industry. “I don’t want to understand how the market works,” she says. “I just want to create.” But she does acknowledge that her experience in London distinguishes her from home-grown Chinese designers. “There’s a big gap between the way design is taught in China and in the West. Here the teachers just instruct you. In the West they prefer you to learn by yourself and give your own opinions. Chinese designers are always interested in doing something about our history or our culture, something that is ‘very Chinese,’ but I’m not interested in that. Using one Chinese symbol or a traditional pattern doesn’t make a design Chinese. No matter what type of design I create, it will always have a Chinese spirit, because that’s who I am. Design should be totally free and take inspiration from one’s daily life.”

Wang notes that there are challenges for designers who trained overseas. “We’re currently setting up relationships with suppliers and manufacturers but they often don’t understand the importance of high-quality materials. They want to do large quantities, whereas we are looking for quality not quantity.”

Wang says Western markets are now almost full, but here the terrain is still wide open. “In China, you can be part of history, not just following it. Here we can make history, and that’s more fun.”