In August 2013, a sweltering Nanjing was living up to its reputation as one of the Three Furnaces of China. Visiting businessmen hole up in luxury skyscraper hotels downtown. At the Starbucks caf\u00e9 at the Westin mall, twenty-somethings wearing hip, chunky black glasses sip iced green tea lattes.<\/p>\n
Lily Lingxiu Ge, preparing to join Boston University\u2019s College of Engineering<\/a>\u00a0as a freshman,\u00a0is in her bedroom at her family\u2019s modern, air-conditioned apartment, sorting through her new winter clothes.<\/p>\n \u201cI heard Boston will be very cold,\u201d says Ge (ENG\u201917), who\u2019s wearing the black-and-white panda slippers she\u2019d exchanged for her pink Converse sneakers at the front door. \u201cI heard it snows up to your knees.\u201d<\/p>\n She hugs her dog, an exuberant white Samoyed named Rice, and goes to the dining room to help her mother, Helen Xu, make tea. Her father, Alan Ge, is due home soon from the high-tech company he started on a shoestring when Lily was a little girl. She plans to major in computer engineering so she can help run the company\u2014or who knows, she might end up working in the United States.<\/p>\n \u201cI heard not many Chinese girls study engineering,\u201d Ge says. \u201cMy mother is worried it will be hard for me, that I\u2019ll be lonely.\u201d<\/p>\n The outgoing, self-assured Ge declares that she is not at all worried. \u201cI want to be like my father,\u201d she says. \u201cHe\u2019s brave, he challenges everything. I don\u2019t want to be a traditional Chinese girl.\u201d<\/p>\n It is August 20, three days before her 18th birthday. In seven days she will get on a plane in Shanghai with her backpack and two suitcases and travel halfway around the world to a country her father has visited once, 14 years ago, and that her mother has never been to.<\/p>\n \u201cBU,\u201d Ge says, \u201cis the dream school.\u201d<\/p>\n To get an idea of the demographic shift that has taken place at BU in the past few years, consider a few numbers: in fall 2008, 42 of 4,131 freshmen were from China. In fall 2013, the numbers were 410 of 3,807 freshmen. (By fall 2014, BU was home to 1,484 students from China out of a total of 15,834 undergraduates.)<\/p>\n The demographic change has been even greater at other campuses across the country. In the 2012\u20132013 academic year, the number of undergraduates from China in the United States rose to 109,604, up from 79,989. With undergraduate and graduate students combined, students from China numbered 243,623 in 2012\u20132013, an increase from 202,051 in 2011\u20132012, according to the nonprofit Institute of International Education<\/a>.<\/p>\nDid You Know?<\/h3>\n
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