We met online. I was just getting over the end of my relationship with the University of California – Berkeley, and looking for something new. You had always been there, across the Pacific Ocean, and in the veins of so many of my fellow Golden Bears, but I had never really considered you. My heart had always steered me south of the border.

From Colleen’s book and my subsequent Google searches, I learned you wanted someone like me, a native English speaker with a college degree.

After just a few conversations, I decided to move in with you. I remember standing in Kinko’s, speechless and still, passport in hand — for a full hour — looking for the courage to FedEx in my application for my first Chinese visa. I sent the package, and then spent the summer preparing for you.

In August I landed in Shanghai, then Jiaxing. You showered me with attention, in the classroom and in the market, on the train and on campus (especially since there were few of my kind in that village of a million people.)

Umbrellas in the sun — something I’d never really seen before China.

With my students at Jiaxing University.

The next summer, we switched things up. I moved to Shanghai. I took on a new role in our relationship, interviewing top executives about corporate social responsibility strategies. I liked learning about this side of you, China.

This was my walk to work in Shanghai.

I started to question our relationship just before Christmas that year. My internship, lease, and visa all ended, and I had a one-way ticket home. You and I had been together a year and a half. We had learned a lot about each other in this time, but I didn’t feel ready to make a commitment. You didn’t quite touch me like my first love, Latin America. I asked myself, “Should we break up, or get married?”

We went on a break. At home, in the suburbs of San Francisco, reverse culture shock hit me hard. Wow, Trader Joe’s has so many choices, and I can read all the labels! Wow, at Bank of America they understand me, apologize when I have to wait five minutes, and bring me free coffee! Wow, everything is so efficient! What am I supposed to do with the rest of my day? Where are all the people!?

Soon, I found a job and a quaint flat in the city and new friends, and began to really enjoy my hometown. But gradually you seeped back into my life, in the form of a Mandarin conversation group and a China-focused nonprofit. Then the financial crisis hit, and I threw myself back into your arms.

I flew to Beijing. I’m not sure if you really noticed. Those first months in Beijing were rough, cold, and lonely.

I met these girls on a cold winter day during my first months in Beijing.

I found a new niche for myself, and studied your language with a wonderful tutor. Thanks to her patient guidance, I graduated from toddler-speak to that of a nerdy 10-year-old with an unusual command of environmental jargon. I enjoyed extended conversations with patent attorneys, who gave me new ways to think about you.

I drifted from Chinese classes to consulting assignments, and learned to discuss employment contracts your way. Or so I thought.

I stepped feetfirst into your corporate world. I took a crash course in advertising (80% Mandarin / 20% biz jargon in English). I enjoyed the challenge of describing product features into succinct, easy-to-translate headlines.

And then, you slapped me in the face. Every other day, at an undetermined point between 4 and 7am, I staggered out of the office with my colleagues. The wind howled through my too-thin clothes, and we stood for too long on the ring road, waiting for a cab. Exhausted, I took bureaucratic hassles too personally. I failed to stand up for myself. It hurt.

So I quit, and searched for a new way that China and I could live together, on my terms. I tutored, and wrote, and led events, and read out loud. I gave personal tours of Beijing. I rode my bicycle. I feasted on spicy mushrooms and grilled fish on lantern-lit rooftops.

But I also spent too many days alone, in my apartment, clicking mindlessly through personal blogs of people I don’t know. I slept in too late. I waited for the phone to ring. I withdrew from you, China.

My first love, Latin America, was teasing me from afar, in a way that distracted me from making any rational decisions about you, China.

For too many months, I merely existed, in an ambitionless malaise. Blah.

Then suddenly, that teasing from the Southern Hemisphere began to materialize into a workable plan. (More on that in another post.)

I hesitated. I nearly accepted a safe job in Beijing. But when I tried it on for size, I knew that I needed to listen to that urge, the one babbling in my head in Chilean slang.

I’m 27 years old. I have started to envision a lifestyle that would make it difficult to move across the world for an opportunity like this. But now I have none of those things: no boyfriend, no baby, no mortgage, no furniture, no car … yes, yes, yes.

I bought a one-way ticket home, which gave me less than two weeks to pack up all of my belongings and say goodbye. I wrote this letter from the plane.

China, I still love you. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to reinvent myself over and over. Thank you for challenging my tastebuds, for pricking my back with acupuncture needles, for strengthening my stomach. Thank you for teaching me to appreciate squat toilets and hot water.  Thank you for giving me space to learn to communicate in the universal language of gestures, and gradually build from there.

The 4+ years we have spent together have shaped me as a professional, and changed me as a citizen of the earth.

It’s not you. It’s me. Let’s be friends forever.

We will meet again.

Love always,

Leslie

Updated February 28, 2014 with real photos. This is the most popular post on my blog and I think it deserves real photos rather than a stock image found online. Enjoy!