Cinderella and Pandora’s box – Autoethnographic Reflections on My Early Career Research Trajectory between Australia and China

Abstract

In the last decade, the world has witnessed significant changes in terms of economic, educational, and cultural development both inside and outside China, creating valuable opportunities to better understand the cultural stereotypes Asians and Westerners have regarding each other. In this paper, I examine my immigrant experiences as a female, bilingual early-career researcher in multilingual and multicultural environments and my subsequent re-entry into China to work as a leading researcher within a span of ten years. My series of auto-ethnographic dialogues between a cast of characters, in which they recall experiences, perceptions, and emotions, provides readers with ample opportunities to actively respond to the text. Through this autoethnographic memoir and performance, I hope to contribute to new directions for narrative research in intercultural contexts.