Chinese native characters on outskirts of Philadelphia, for example (5)
I believe the answer is:
panda
'chinese native' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'on outskirts of philadelphia for example' is the wordplay.
'on' says to put letters next to each other.
'outskirts of' means to remove the middle letters.
'for example' becomes 'nda' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'philadelphia' with its middle taken out is 'pa'.
'pa'+'nda' is 'PANDA'.
'characters' acts as a link.
This may not be correct. It may be part of another bit of the clue.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for panda that I've seen before include "One reluctant to mate" , "Giant, red, Chinese mammal" , "Bearlike animal" , "Chinese bear-like mammal" , "One bearlike" .)