Over the past decade, an increasing number of overseas Chinese PhD graduates have returned to China to develop their career. For these academic returnees, one of the challenges is to (re)construct an academic identity in a familiar context that is also strange because they have been absent for a few years. In this autobiographical paper, the researcher describes and reflects upon the pains and gains experienced when re-entering and working in Chinese universities as a PhD returnee, revealing the process of his academic identity (re)construction when adjusting to different academic assessment policies. This writing offers an individual perspective on the challenges to returnees' academic identity (re)construction and argues for the need to set up in-between spaces for inter/cross-disciplinary academic discourse between returnees and local scholars at Chinese universities. This paper aims to contribute to pedagogic debate on the development of more open research practices in Chinese universities.