在中国定居的外国人，肯定一直都是有的。是不是“近年来越来越多”这种统计，也不是什么值得关心事。引起我注意的其实是我身边的例子。一位特别典型的德国人，两年前左右到深圳大学当全职教授——是那种真的住在了深圳的，完全只属于深圳大学，而不再在任何国外大学挂职的“中国教授”（见他在ResearchGate的页面）。他还没来中国之前，我在LinkedIn和他有过一些讨论。2014年的复杂流体研讨会上和他见面，他竟然因此记得我。之后在2015年的复杂流体研讨会上又见过一面，今年1月深圳IWEAYR-11则由他组织承办。

就这样，国内的流变学圈子里就多了一个可能会经常参会的外国人。而且我个人觉得他是国内复杂流体这个小圈子的重要新成员。

今天看到Nature的一个增刊Naturejobs Career Guide Asia-Pacific，这是给Nature的全球读者推荐亚太地区工作机会的增刊，里面有中国这一章。其中的Box 2专访了了另一位在中国定居从事科研工作的外国人，恰好也是德国人。里面有些访问题目非常“到位”：

How did your family react to your move?

How does your daily life contrast with living in the West?

What misconceptions do Westerners have about working as a scientist in China?

具体回答见原文。

实际上我觉得这篇访谈里的教授回答未免太乐观了。我从我深圳大学的教授中听到的都是我们意料之中的对各种中国特色的抱怨。我们长期在中国生存和工作的人，其实并不是麻木不仁，很多问题反而认识地比那些其他国家和地区的人的批评更深刻。听到这位教授的报怨，我们都会尽可能给出本土智慧（无论是如何看开看淡的大智慧，还是如何灵活应对的小智慧）。但这位教授说了一句话：I can handle it, but I don’t appreciate it.也就是说，他完全有这样的智慧。当然，多少中国特色的ridiculous之处过于微妙，无法摆上台面讨论。因此Nature上的这篇访谈当然也不会谈得很深入，只有一些十分明显和简单的困难被说出来了（见后文引用）。而仅是这一个困难，就已经十分麻烦了，更何况更多说不出的烦恼。所以，听说任何一个外国人竟然在中国定居工作，都让我很诧异。

Does the language barrier affect your working life?

At work Chinese – in principle – is not required. All faculty members of our college studied and worked abroad for some time and can speak English very well. All the teaching is supposed to be done in English. However, as all the students are Chinese, some of the professors switch to Chinese in their lectures. The communication with some of the students in my research group is a little difficult and they are de facto supervised by the Chinese associate professor in our group. The biggest problems are the written regulations and announcements. I get great help, but it is impossible for staff to translate all the documents for me, so they have to decide what is important. Sometimes their guesses are wrong, or reflect their opinion. Another problem is that most of the grant proposals have to be written in Chinese and consequently my proposals have to be translated, which does not enhance their quality.