This chapter tells the sojourning story of Qiao as revealed in his Weixin blog (similar to Instagram) and in his own words. After introducing Qiao's personal background, I will focus on his motivation, his identity expansion and professional adjustment, reflection and personal growth.

Qiao

Qiao was in his early thirties. Compared with other participants in this study, he was very much a 'veteran' teacher, as he was in his fourth year in the UK. He had started as a CICT in October 2010; when he finished his first contract in 2012, he applied for a renewal and was then assigned to another CI in the same city. Qiao had a master's degree in English translation. Before he joined the CI programme, he had been working in a Chinese university for a few years and had been to South East Asian countries for business trips. At the time of the fieldwork for this study, he was responsible for Chinese language and culture at a local school. Qiao shared accommodation with another CICT in his host city.

I first met Qiao at a focus group interview conducted in December 2013; he kindly accepted my invitation to be a blog participant for this study. This chapter analyses his Weixin blog updates on everyday life experience during his last 10 months in the UK, a 20-minute follow-up interview and a two-hour repatriation interview. In order to offer a complete trajectory for Qiao's sojourn, data relevant to his motivation and adjustments from his participation in the focus group discussed in Chapter 5 will also be included.

Qiao used QQ space to record experiences in his first two years in the UK. He switched to Weixin when it emerged as a popular and more convenient tool for social networking among the Chinese. Weixin is a mobile picture blog. It handles picture and text by sorting them according to the time and date posted and presents them in a structured way.