Considering China?

1. Find a champion. ?It?s very important to identify a Chinese senior scientist who is a good fit and is willing to look after you in the early days,? says Sarah Perrett, a principal investigator at the Chinese Academy of Sciences? Institute of Biophysics in Beijing. She has been working in China since 2000 and says her boss was a great help in the early days, when she had to navigate a whole new system in a foreign language. ?She gave me freedom to do science with limited [managerial] responsibilities,? Perrett says.

2. Plan ahead. ?Research equipment is often not made in China, so there are times when you buy something and it will sit in customs for three weeks,? says Alastair Murchie of the Institute of Biomedical Science at Fudan University, Shanghai. ?I think if you have a research program [that] you?re planning to move to China, then you have to have a detailed plan.? Those lead times can really put your research back, he says. ?Something you might be able to pick up quickly in the US or Europe you might not be able to get so quickly in China.?

3. Think location, location. China is a big place, and cities vary radically in their science base and friendliness to foreigners. ?For me, Shanghai is certainly preferable,? says Samantha Du, managing director of Hutchison MediPharma. For her, this has to do with her children; the city has a good number of well-regarded American-curriculum schools. Murchie also deliberately chose Shanghai. ?It?s one of the great cities of the world,? he says. Plus, hundreds of thousands of foreigners already live there.

4. Learn Chinese. Speaking the local language might not be essential in the workplace, but it?s still hard to get around in day-to-day life without a smattering, says Mark Bartlam, an associate professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing. ?I think the way I did it [arriving with no Chinese at all], I wouldn?t recommend,? he says. Fortunately, his university organized an apartment, and arranged for the electricity and phone to be connected so he didn?t need to cross those linguistic hurdles.

5. Choose your PI carefully. Funding is not always distributed equally in China. One researcher, who preferred anonymity, says, ?I would say, do lots of research beforehand, and find out who are the most active researchers in a particular field. It?s likely they?ll have a good source of funding.?