BEIJING - Biologist Zhu Heng lived the ordeal that Chinese students dreaded because of U.S. visa restrictions imposed after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Zhu was on a fellowship at Yale University when he returned to Beijing for a visit in 2002. He waited in China for a year — away from his fiancee, his fellowship and his lab — while the U.S. government did a background check ordered for visiting researchers in sensitive science fields.

Zhu lost the fellowship, the fiancee, his credit rating, car and apartment. "It screwed up my life totally," he told a Yale medical journal in 2003.

But that was three years ago. Now, Zhu's life has turned around, and so has the U.S. visa system for Chinese students.

Procedures have been simplified and waiting times slashed. Visa approvals are up and American campuses are again growing in popularity among Chinese.

The number of Chinese students granted U.S. visas rose 25 percent last year to 20,244, returning to pre-2001 levels for the first time, according to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. China had more than 61,000 students in American universities last year, more than any country except India.

"The U.S. has a rich source of creative ideas and high-tech," said Di Luyi, 24, an assistant producer for a Shanghai talk show who is applying to American universities.

"If we want to be more creative ourselves, then going to learn from the U.S. is a better way than only staying here," she said.

The United States was once the top choice for Chinese who studied abroad.

But anti-American sentiment following the U.S. bombing in 1999 of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and the tightening of visa restrictions after the 2001 attacks made some applicants think about other destinations — or consider staying home.

By 2003, the number of U.S. visas granted to Chinese students had fallen to 12,455 — 35 percent below the 2001 level.

"I think there are still quite a number of people who want to study in the United States," said David Chen, a 24-year-old television reporter in Shanghai. "But I believe it is not as popular as it used to be because there are now a lot more choices, like European countries."

Also, Chen said, returnees can have a hard time in the Chinese job market because there is the impression that they are out of touch with what's happening in China now.

Fang Jingyi, 23, disagrees. He completed a one-year program at Pittsburg State University in Kansas last year. Now he's in Beijing working for a company that helps U.S.-bound students file visa applications.

Last summer, the United States extended student visa terms from six months with two entries to one year with multiple entries.

Since then, "it's (been) getting better," Fang said.

"Now more and more students are interested in going to the United States," he said. "The American education is the best in the world and after they come back they can find a good job and their English will be very good."

The changes were a key factor behind a 21 percent jump in the number of Chinese students applying to U.S. graduate schools in 2005, according to a March report by the U.S. Council of Graduate Schools. It said that was the first increase in three years.

Background checks, though inconvenient for many, are quicker.

"The fear of getting 'stuck' has lessened," Ann Kuhlman, director of the Office of International Students and Scholars at Yale University, wrote in an e-mail.

"Delays are not nearly as lengthy and unpredictable as they were a couple of years ago," she wrote.

There is some grumbling about fingerprinting — a requirement for every Chinese visa application since 2004. China initially called the measure discriminatory. But the U.S. Embassy in Beijing says it helps prevent passport fraud and notes the requirement is not unique to China.

And what about Zhu Heng, the biologist who waited in Beijing for 13 months and wound up without a job or fiancee?

He met another woman in Beijing who became his wife. And in 2004, he took a job as an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

"The overall impact to my personal life came out positive, believe it or not," Zhu wrote in an e-mail from Baltimore. "It has been a happy ending for me."