1. Introduction -- 2. Contexts: Singapore’s foreign talent programs and the Chinese middle school as a recruiting ground -- 3. Selecting scholars for Singapore: the SM2 program -- 4. Singlish and the Singaporean: cross-cultural encounter and othering -- 5. Being “very China”: self-consciousness and identity transformation -- 6. Desiring an education: scholarly idealism and anti-scholarly entrepreneurialism. .This book examines the Singapore government’s controversial practice of recruiting students from China and granting them full scholarships on the condition of a service “bond”. It offers detailed ethnographic accounts of the Chinese “foreign talent” students’ educational and cross-cultural experiences in Singapore to illustrate the complex intersections between international mobility and educational desire. In doing so, the book presents contemporary Singapore society’s concerns over immigration and cross-cultural encounters from a unique perspective.