I was seventeen when I landed in China with two suitcases and honestly no clue what I was walking into. I thought I was just going there to study, get a degree, come back home eventually.
What actually happened was quieter than that. And it took years for me to understand it properly.
Yinchuan wasn’t the China people picture when you say the word. It wasn’t loud or fast or overwhelming. Hot, dry summers. Winters cold enough to see your own breath. At seventeen I didn’t think twice about the place, it was just where I happened to be living. Looking back now though, that city taught me how to slow down. How to sit with silence instead of needing something to be happening all the time. Some evenings I’d just stand by my dorm window with a cup of coffee, watching the snow fall. Didn’t feel like much back then. Now I know those quiet nights were teaching me how to actually breathe.
The campus was its own little world, and that’s really where I grew up without noticing. Morning runs to breakfast before 8, rushing to class in the freezing cold, evenings on the sports ground, badminton whenever I could get to the gym. Felt like nothing more than routine at the time. Turns out that’s exactly what built my discipline, my ability to show up on the days I really didn’t feel like it.
Mandarin came slowly too. The early days were all pointing at things, hand gestures, using a calculator to talk about money, trying to explain being vegetarian without half the vocabulary I needed. Slowly zhè ge, nà ge, duōshao qián turned into actual sentences with some rhythm to them. Learning to express myself in a language I barely knew gave me a quieter kind of confidence, the kind that only comes from trying and failing and trying again anyway.
And then there were the small things that stuck with me more than I expected. Chopsticks never left standing upright in a bowl. Elders addressed properly, Ayi, Shūshu, Lǎoshī. Nobody wasting food. Care shown through what people did rather than what they said. Felt like rules at seventeen. Feels like values now.
But honestly, when I think about China, I don’t think about the city or the degree first. I think about the people.
There was an Ayi in the mess hall who wouldn’t hand me my coffee until I’d actually eaten something. She’d stand there, arms crossed, watching me pick at my food, and only slide the cup over once my plate was mostly clear. She’d try to look stern about it, but I could always tell she was just worried. On the days I barely touched my food she’d ask, “not feeling well today?” Such a small question, from someone who barely knew me, and somehow it made the day feel lighter.
Another Ayi at the serving counter seemed distant at first, like she had walls up and no interest in letting anyone past them. That changed slowly. She started giving me extra rice on the days I looked tired. Asked why I was late if I missed my usual time. Smiled this soft, quiet smile, the kind only certain older women seem to know how to give once they’ve started caring about you without meaning to.
The Ayi who collected our trays was strict about it. If we tried to throw away food that was still good, she’d send us straight back to finish it. Felt like she was just being difficult at the time. Now I understand it was discipline coming from care, not control. And she’d smile anyway if we told her something was too spicy or too salty, like even that small complaint made us a little more hers.
Cherry was our coordinator from the international education department, and she was the one who picked us up at the airport when we were scared seventeen year olds who’d barely left home, and the one who saw us off years later once we’d somehow turned into adults. For her our batch probably wasn’t the first group of students she’d looked after. But she made it feel like it was. I didn’t fully appreciate that back then. I do now.
There was an old uncle who taught a few of us kung fu and jianzi in the evenings. Didn’t talk much. Didn’t need to. He had this grandfather energy that makes you feel safe without ever having to say so out loud.
And professors who stayed back after class, tired as they were, just to explain something one more time. Who’d ask if we were adjusting, eating properly, doing okay. They taught us more than anatomy and physiology. They taught us what it looks like to actually show up for someone.
My Chinese friends made all of it easier too, in their own way. They’d patiently repeat words I couldn’t catch the first three times, drag me along to things I’d never have found on my own, and somehow made a foreign campus feel a little less foreign just by including me in the ordinary parts of their day. Nothing dramatic about any of it. Just people who let me belong.
If Yinchuan is where I grew up in the everyday sense, Shanghai is where something else woke up in me. I went twice, once alone and once with friends, and both times the city felt alive in a way that shook my quiet Yinchuan world a little. Standing at the Bund at night, watching the skyline light up building by building, the wind coming off the river, it felt like the world had suddenly gotten bigger and brighter than I’d let myself imagine. At the time it was just a beautiful night. Now I think it taught me how to dream bigger without losing the grounding Yinchuan had already given me.
Looking back, I don’t remember the exams or the stress or the chaos of those years first. I remember the warmth. A cup of coffee withheld until I’d eaten. An extra scoop of rice. A question about where I’d been. A grandmother’s watchful eye across a canteen counter. A coordinator who looked out for us like we actually mattered to her. A city that taught me patience and another that taught me to dream.
This is my China. Not the tourist version, not the version that fits neatly into a caption. Just the everyday people who, without ever meaning to, helped raise a seventeen year old girl into someone she’s actually proud of.
If I ever get five minutes with each of them again, I don’t think I’d need much to say. Just, thank you.