When he can, Yu returns to the quaint public gardens of his hometown of Suzhou-a relatively small city, by Chinese standards, of about 5.7 million people that lies about two hours west of Shanghai. The gardens have nothing to do with engineering, but they are engineered to offer a respite from the chaotic pace of development in China-and that's why Yu likes them so much.

When he was a kid, being raised by his grandmother, Yu would go to those gardens with his friends, mess around like kids do, go home and then do the same thing all over again the next day, not giving much thought to the fact that one revolution in China was soon to end just as another was to begin.

Yu was lucky: His adolescence did not overlap with the destructive isolationism of the Cultural Revolution. Quite to the contrary, just as Yu was coming of age, China was embarking on arguably its most significant period of engagement with the world since Marco Polo's time.

It would eventually allow Yu, like the great explorer himself, to crisscross the globe in search of opportunity-a life his parents and grandparents could not have begun to contemplate.

EE Times: You left China in 1990. What is your first memory of the United States?
Yu: I flew into San Francisco and was quite amazed by the modern look. I saw highways that you'd never see in China, and when I watched TV, there was so much information that you would never see in China. All the people, in general, were also very friendly.

Before you left for the States, where did your impressions of the country come from?

I got most of my knowledge from Voice of America. Most of my classmates listened to VoA, too, and to BBC News. The major purpose was learning English. We also got information from magazines.

Where did you go to school in China?
I went to the University of Science and Technology of China, which is in Anhui Province. It was one of the top schools in China. Most of the graduates from that university went to the United States, so we used to call it USTC-the United States Training Center. Last time I counted, 90 percent of my classmates went to the U.S. I transferred to the University of Houston and got my BS in physics there.

Mike Yu crisscrosses the globe between New Jersey and China.

You didn't return to China until five years after you left. And those were years of quite rapid growth, with tens of billions [of dollars] in foreign direct investment. How had it changed things?
When I got off the airplane in Shanghai, I couldn't tell whether I was in Shanghai or in New York. The change was huge. By that time Suzhou had two industrial zones, so the city was expanding very quickly. The area that used to be countryside was now factories.

In 2001, you decided to quit your job at Kodak and join Beijing-based Vimicro. Why?
I thought Vimicro had a good match to my skill set because we do imaging chips, and all of my [experience] at graduate school and at Xerox and Kodak was in imaging technology. Second, one of the founders, Tom Zhang, had been one of my classmates at USTC. So basically, he invited me to join. I came back to take a look, and I saw a lot of young guys who had graduated fresh from university. They work very hard, and I think that if you give them good training and good instruction they can do a very decent job. So I was impressed during my first visit.

The decision to join Vimicro has meant living in Beijing and commuting back to the United States to see your family. Was there any indecision about whether you should go back to China vs. looking for something else in the States?
No. Tom was a good friend; we had been in contact for all those years, and he always talked about his new company. He invited me to join when he founded the company, but at the time I didn't think I was ready. But after three years, I thought I had enough experience to take on the challenges.

How come you have decided not to move your family back?
If we did not have a kid, my wife and I would have moved back, of that I'm pretty sure. But the U.S. still offers a better education. From my wife's point of view, a kid that grows up in the States is happier, less stressed out. In the U.S., you basically have fun until you get into college, and then you have another kind of fun.

No one can deny U.S. kids invest a lot of R&D in fun. . . . Now that you are working in China, tell us what you think of the business environment.

Right now the government is very supportive, from the national level to the local level. They realize technology, specifically the semiconductor area, is key for the future development of China. So they have made the environment very good to start a small company. Ten years ago, you could not get this kind of treatment. Also, the good universities in China are catching up with those in the U.S., so recent graduates from the top universities are very decent, and that provides us with a lot of fresh blood each year.

The market is also growing. For example, more and more mobile-phone manufacturers are starting to design phones themselves and sell them into the local market. That opens up a lot of market opportunity for chip companies like us. Right now, the proportion of products shipped to domestic manufacturers is increasing each year, so the market is there.

What needs to be improved for private business in China?
It's not about improvement. I think the technology and venture-capital scheme are still young in China. There are not many successful stories about small companies' growing into big companies and becoming very successful, so these days we have to try very hard to convince people that when we give them stock options, that means a lot. Most of the engineers don't have a concept of what stock options are about, so it can be harder to attract top talent.

Sometimes we lose some talent to foreign companies with local offices in China because in general they give out better pay. It takes time. Once Vimicro be-comes successful and goes public and we make a few engineers millionaires, then that will be a different story.

There's been a lot of political squabbling between China and the United States lately, especially over outsourcing. As someone who has lived in both worlds, what do you think about the debate?
From my experience, engineers in the U.S. have better experience because they have worked on a lot of projects, and so they have good training. Compared with Chinese engineers, who may specialize in one area, U.S. engineers have broad training over the entire system. So in semiconductors, I would say there should be less concern. Software may be different.

The U.S. companies are also very resourceful, and they put a lot of effort into innovation. Right now, in Taiwan and China, most companies are doing development, not research. So in the long run, the U.S. companies still have a lot of potential because through all these years they have built up a lot of intellectual-property reserves.