Beijing - To Tolkin Yunusov, June is a lucky month. The 27-year-old Uzbek student will graduate as an MBA from a Chinese university in two weeks and then start his doctoral research in product branding. Plus, he just learned that his Chinese wife is pregnant.

Four years ago, as a fresh college graduate, Yunusov left his hometown, Namangan of northeast Uzbekistan, to teach English in China's Shanxi province. Back then all he could say in Chinese was "ting bu dong" - "I don't understand what you're saying."

Four years later, Ding Tianxiang - his family name adopted from his wife's given name, meaning "flying freely in the sky" - drives his scooter with palm-sized Chinese and Uzbek flags floating above the handlebars, to his university in Chaoyang district daily. There, he has studied international marketing and now works as a development coordinator for his MBA program at the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE).