By: Kellye Deng, University of Victoria, winner of the Winter 2026 BC Study Abroad: Stories from Abroad Scholarship
Study Abroad Destination: China
Shanghai hits you in unexpected ways. Now in a city with a population more than 25 times my own, the difference felt jarring and incomprehensible at times. Familiarity, I realized, was not something that I could easily search for. Blurred street signs, distinct chatter, and crowded streets filled with rows of impatient drivers inching forward with their vehicles— every moment outside felt exhausting. But the worst of it all was the gnawing on the inside: a slow, private erosion of confidence that comes from having to let someone repeat themselves, from ordering wrong and feeling too embarrassed to take the dish back to the waiter, from understanding just enough to know you’ve missed something but not enough to know what. Even amongst fellow international students, I felt like an outsider, because my heritage was always something I needed to explain.
Naturally, I was hesitant to travel south to Fujian.
I was travelling to my family’s home village—a place so small I couldn’t even find it on the map. But my worries ceased once I met my cousins at a rest-stop, who took me on a treacherous, cli-side drive up the mountain. What I found was a group of cherry blossom trees in full bloom, their branches flung wide over a narrow land between modest concrete houses. The bright colors and vast open sky were in such contrast to what I perceived in Shanghai.
When I expected cold indifference, I experienced the collective warmth of my relatives, who accepted me regardless of my language capabilities. I had spent so many years treating my heritage as a wound, something that had cost me things, that I had forgotten it was also mine to claim and able to cherish.
When I reached the peak of the mountain, I gazed upon the same rolling hills my father once looked at, before he realized it would be something he moved away from. Being there, high in the mountains and amongst family, I realized that some things were waiting for me long before I thought to go looking. Sometimes, belonging is something you must walk toward. While I can’t say that things have fully been resolved, I returned to Shanghai with a renewed sense of self—finally ready to explore the city and continue my studies.