ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses expatriate community established by more global cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Xiamen did not have an organized and established expatriate community because Xiamen made an ideal location for a community study of a city and a migrant community at a point of change. Upon arrival in Xiamen, the experience of being an outsider or a 'stranger' was linked to feelings of invisibility and anonymity. The increase in migrants in Xiamen from the 'West' was reflected in the city landscape. The international labour migrant's social and spatial dislocation transports the worker into a temporal limbo of sorts. The hesitancy of Greg and many other Western men responds to questions about gender differences strongly contrasted with Western women, who spoke often at length about gender issues. For these Westerners, community was being both constructed and contested in the form of a desire for freedom and anonymity.
