When Pan decided to leave his homeland in early 2023, he did so with a conviction that his future no longer belonged there.

As he headed to America, he dreamed of a freer society, a fairer economy, and a life lived with dignity – things he said he could never claim in China, where his home had been forcibly demolished by the local government to make way for real estate development.

To chase that dream, he embarked on a journey of thousands of miles from China to Ecuador in 2023, from which point he trekked jungles as part of his long route. About two months later, he finally made it to the US.

Pan, a soft-spoken man in his late 50s from a small village in Jiangxi province in eastern China, is one of tens of thousands of Chinese nationals who have made the same journey in recent years.

Known colloquially as zou xian ke, or "those who walked the line", they represent a new wave of migration driven by authoritarian tightening at home and the belief – sometimes naive, often desperate – that the US still offers a fair shot at a better life.

Their reasons for exodus varied, but their experiences once on American soil follow certain trends: many have ended up isolated by language, burdened by debt and surviving on gig work as they wait for their asylum claims to crawl through an overwhelming immigration system.

Some remain hopeful. Others are unravelling.

And all of them, now, are living in the long shadow of President Donald Trump's political return - during which the poor US-China relations of recent years have soured even further.

Pan is one of several Chinese migrants who I first met two years ago. Like many of the group who he travelled with, he now works in a Chinese restaurant, even though back home, he prided himself on his farming know-how.

In America, those skills don't translate, since the soil conditions are different and he doesn't speak English. Past lives hold little currency.

For a while after arriving, Pan wandered from city to city, sleeping on borrowed couches or bunking with fellow migrants. Eventually, he landed in Barstow, California, a dusty industrial town.

His life today is penned within a tight radius. He cooks and sometimes waits tables at a restaurant during the day, video-calls his wife and children in China at night, and repeats the routine the next day. He lives in a room attached to the kitchen.

To outsiders, and even to his family back home, Pan's life might........

© BBC