Chen credits two years spent at Brandeis University prior to Harvard with easing his adjustment to the U.S.

But the majority of the Chinese graduate students made their first trip abroad when they came to Harvard and, despite the instigation of mandatory English classes in the late 1970s, have struggled with the language barrier.

Some students have founded organizations to help alleviate feelings of homesickness and spread awareness of China.

Lee Zhang, a third-year graduate student studying genetics from Jiangu, founded the Harvard China Review--a new magazine that he hopes will encou rage scholarly discussion and present a balanced view on issues affecting China.

The first issue will be published in the next few months.

Three years ago, Karen Liu founded the Harvard Chinese Students and Scholars Association (HCSSA) in order to create a sense of community among expatriate Chinese.

Liu says that Harvard should provide more support and counseling to students, especially in terms of departmental issues.

"I think there is something done for the initial culture shock," she says. "But there needs to be more profound help: like dealing with the next four years."

A Long Road

Zhang says the history of Chinese studying in America is more than 150 years long, but with breaks in between.

"If you look back at Chinese students coming to the U.S., there's a long history," he says. "After 1949, there were no students until the beginning of the 1980s, when China under Deng started economic reforms."

Dongming Chen, a senior physicist at the Rowland Institute, who also studied at Harvard, agrees with Zhang's assessment.

According to Dongming Chen, while China allowed some visiting scholars and professors to go to America after Nixon's ground breaking visit to China in 1972, there were few channels open for the would-be student in general until the '80s.

China's allowing students to study abroad came about partly through the efforts of Chinese-born Nobel prize laureates C.N. Yang and T.D. Lee, who encouraged students to study abroad.

The two scientists were instrumental in establishing China-U.S. Physics Examination Application (CUSPEA)--the first study abroad program--for physics students.