This Journey, Both Fast and Slow, Is Still Continuing

Vancouver

01 Vancouver: light returned to her eyes

Time passes so quickly. Before we knew it, our family has been in Vancouver for more than a year.
And the girl standing in front of me now is completely different from the one who first arrived here: confused, uneasy, and even a little frightened.

These days, there is always a light in her eyes.
Even though she is already in middle school, she still acts out Jerry the mouse's funny walk at home, and still discusses with us what kind of person might not receive a gift from Santa Claus.

Since 2022, we have been living away from home for four years. This year, we chose Vancouver.

Seaside question

02 White Rock: everything here is slow

On the last day of May 2026, on the road by the sea in White Rock, I asked her against the ocean breeze:
Do you like Vancouver? Is this the life you wanted?

She said, yes, I like it.
Everything here is slow. Winter is not too cold, and summer is not too hot. I can do the things I like and listen to the songs I want to hear. And the clouds here look like something from a fairy tale.

She said this just after we had walked out of the art studio, after her weekly Sunday afternoon art class.

Drawing

03 Drawing: she began affirming herself

She said, drawing is something I have loved and kept doing since I was little.
And I have always been improving at it. Look at me recently, I really am improving all the time.

When she said this, she was calm and certain.

In the past, I rarely heard her affirm herself so clearly. More often, she would ask us:
Can I do it? Am I good enough? What if I don't know how?

But now she often gives us her own comments and suggestions about our life and studies here.

English learning

04 English learning: she explained her methods to Mom

Actually, just before we left the art class, she suddenly said to me:
Do you want to hear an English-learning tip from me?
I said, of course.

She said:
After you finish reading a book, you can write a story summary in English.
If there are parts you don't understand, go back and read them again. You improve very quickly that way.

I explained my difficulty:
But I may not even be able to finish a whole book. Or rather, I worry that I won't be able to keep reading, or that I won't understand it.

She said, that's okay. I have a second method.
I was curious: tell me.

She looked at me and said:
When you read, write down all the words you don't understand and look them up right away.
I asked, what if there are too many? What if one sentence has several unfamiliar words?
She said very firmly, then look them up too. Write them down one by one and find out what they mean.

I asked, and then?

She continued:
After you finish a chapter and record all the words you don't know, go back and read it again. If there is still something you don't understand, write it down again.

I watched her continue to share enthusiastically, chattering away, and felt completely surprised.
I asked, is that how you read?

She smiled and said, yes. Then I write an outline of what the book is about. It feels great. I think the book responses I write can at least get an A- or B+.
As a non-native speaker who just exited ELL, I think those grades in my main English class are pretty good.

I looked at her certainty and was amazed. Yes, that really does sound pretty good.

Goals

05 Goals: work hard, but do not rush

She put her arm around my shoulder and asked:
Mom, if my grades are great next year, will you take me to another Zhou Shen concert?

I patted her and said:
Of course. I want to go too. If we work hard, feel happy, and get results, why shouldn't we reward ourselves? But you also understand why we can't go back to see a concert this year, right?

Yes. You need to study hard, and I need to study hard too. Our whole family needs to work toward the goals we want.
Our family is not kidding around. We are all people who can start over and work hard again at any moment.
We all need to become the best versions of ourselves.

Yes and no. For our own goals, of course we should work hard. But we do not need to rush too much, or push ourselves too aggressively. It is enough to know our goals clearly and keep trying. Going slowly is okay too. We just cannot give up on ourselves too easily.

If time went back four years, probably no one would have guessed that this girl would return to the confidence and openness she has now.

Thailand

06 Chiang Mai: the first rehearsal before life abroad truly began

Maybe it was the fear of just leaving our hometown, or the uncertainty of a new environment. In any case, when we left home and entered her first international school in Chiang Mai, Thailand, she was not doing well. Although she tried hard to adjust to new people and a new environment, none of us had much experience living in a foreign country. Everything was trial and error, and we were not always clear whether everything around us truly fit us, especially whether it fit her.

In the end, we left. It was like the first rehearsal before our life abroad truly began. With the reflections from that trial run, we entered the next part of the journey.

Before coming to Vancouver, however, we spent a transitional period in Bangkok.

Bangkok

07 Bangkok: language, weather, loneliness, and song

But for a child, the frequent changes in environment, unstable friendships, and the sense of cultural dislocation,
together with the hot, humid weather in Southeast Asia, left her in a poor state for a while.

We chose an international school with a Singaporean teaching model. The academic pressure was not light. The trilingual environment of Chinese, English, and Thai placed a lot of stress on her. Although she exited ELT within half a year and received recognition and praise from her teachers, it was still difficult for her to completely step out of the shadows of the past.

She went to school under pressure, adapting again to new courses, a new language environment, and a new social circle, while facing a loneliness that felt both new and familiar. She could easily feel hurt by other people's closeness or distance.

It was at this time that Zhou Shen's voice, and his own story of growth, returned to our home.
In 2024, under Bangkok's weather that alternated between heat and unexpected coolness, along with the distinctive calls of koels outside the window, Zhou Shen's singing began to slowly mend the sensitive and fragile parts of the child's heart. It also began to mend the emotional holes created by the misunderstandings between her and me.

The countdown to our departure from Bangkok slowly began.
Although we knew from the start that the city was only a transition,
we still felt reluctant to leave it.
Once again, my girl had to face goodbye and the uncertainty of a new environment.
Her emotions went up and down, with anticipation accompanied by anxiety.
Of course it was not easy. And were we not the same?

Parents

08 Parents also started over abroad

In middle age, a midlife crisis already existed. But because our new beginning was in a foreign country,
language, work, and new ways of earning a living
made things that once felt ordinary become no longer simple.

We had to use our already-rusty English to manage everything:
from paying utility bills, getting phone cards and bank accounts, to finding a home, finding schools, buying a car, and arranging insurance.
The fear adults carry may not be any less than what children feel.
It is just that we all have to pretend to be calm for one another.

We talked about Zhou Shen's years studying in Ukraine, about how he had to learn Ukrainian and English, about the pressure of studying medicine in unfamiliar languages when medicine was not what he loved. We talked about how he worked to change majors, and how he fought for the opportunity to learn from a national-treasure teacher.

When we laughed about it, we thought of the fact that we were about to face similar things again. Suddenly, it did not seem so impossible.

Concert

09 Nanning: a hidden gift

At the end of 2024, two months before we left Bangkok, my partner and I secretly discussed taking her to a concert during the Christmas holiday.
At that time, I had just returned to China to deal with an elderly family member's hospitalization. I was running between the hospital and home, overwhelmed by the complexity and danger of the illness.

When my partner discussed the concert with me, we also worried whether, morally speaking, the child should be brought back to stay by the elder's side.

I said that the things adults should carry should not be placed on a child as well. Having a child spend day after day in the hospital would not be meaningful. Neither the hospital environment nor the elder's mental state was something a teenager needed to face. If we needed to consider the elder's feelings, we could simply keep it from them. After the concert, she could return and visit. If the elder truly became critically ill, we would make new plans.

Later, my partner and the child flew to Nanning for Zhou Shen's final concert of 2024.
I also flew to Nanning and met them there.

We did not tell her that we had worked so hard to get floor tickets, paying several times the original price through a reseller.
We almost tricked her into going to Nanning, telling her:
We can try standing outside the venue and feel what it is like to hear Zhou Shen sing live, because tickets are hard to get.
As a student, she might not have many chances to return to China for a concert.
The Vancouver we were heading to was more than ten thousand kilometres from our hometown, with a time difference of over ten hours.
Since we had a few free days and were relatively close, why not go and join the excitement?

As I tricked her all the way into the inner area, pretending that we were somehow getting in with one ID card, her little hand became sweaty in mine from nervousness.

She is such a cute child. She was so worried that we would be caught. Only after we reached our seats and picked up the gift package did I tell her the truth.

It was the first time in her life that she was at a concert in person, able to truly see Zhou Shen, surrounded by tens of thousands of people on the same wavelength as her. She even saw many fans younger than her, and many much older than me.
I could feel how powerful that shock was, the kind of reality that imagination alone can never fully create.
That experience of more than four hours became, in the days that followed, another memory that continued to heal her.

Farewell

10 Farewell during an earthquake: one fragment lighting the future

Speaking of leaving Bangkok, the day before we departed, we happened to experience the 2025 earthquake. For the first time, we saw streets full of frightened people. Water from rooftop infinity pools shook from side to side and spilled down onto the streets amid people's cries.
The next day, the city came to a standstill. All public places stayed open through the night, and all public transportation stopped.

On the second day, while we were waiting to go to the airport, there were still aftershocks in the building where we lived. But people had smiles in their eyes again. That is the optimism and childlike spirit of Thai people, which softened the sadness of our departure.

My girl smiled and said that she would never forget the last day of school, because they had all gone through an unforgettable earthquake together. She, her friends, and her classmates sat on the playground for the whole afternoon, and it took almost half the night before the school bus finally brought her home safely.

The journey of life is really assembled from many fragments of memory.
When one fragment shines, it can light up some dark part of the future.

Belonging

11 One year in Vancouver: an unfamiliar city slowly became belonging

In the days that followed, my girl became stronger and more certain inside.
Now, we have been in Vancouver for one full year.

I still remember that first month after landing. It was Vancouver's most beautiful spring. By chance, we found the local Shengmi group, and this unfamiliar city immediately gained a sense of belonging.

All experiences seem to be both accidental and destined.
This includes the topics of youth that we all encounter when we are young.

Growing up

12 Adolescence, companionship, and continuing to be nourished

These years, my girl has been in the growing pains of adolescence. The movement of our journey, the conflicts and confusion that can arise across different cultural backgrounds, and the repeated need to rebuild friendships have made her experience more than many children back home.

So I can understand the emotions she carries in adolescence: joy, anger, sorrow, worry, and all the feelings in between. They all come from somewhere. There is no need to be overly anxious or troubled by them. Give everything to time. Give her time and space, and stay quietly beside her.

To this day, Shen Shen's voice and his smile are still healing us, accompanying us, and nourishing us.

Future

13 Each person found a direction

My partner and I have spent a year exploring our directions.
We have each become clearer about what we want to do in the future.
He continues his three-year passion for artificial intelligence.
I continue my seven years of studying and practicing Chinese medicine.
And we have each turned our passion into a clearer project model.
This surprise feels no less than being reborn in the confusion of middle age.

The child has finally found what she likes to do, and understands what she wants for her future, without being overly swayed by all kinds of well-meaning or meddlesome suggestions from the outside world.

In the blink of an eye, Vancouver's summer is about to arrive.
The blossoms of spring still seem to be right before our eyes, yet at noon we are already seeing girls on the street in camisole dresses and boys in flip-flops.

All along this road, we have been learning how to love this world. Of course, more importantly, we have also been learning how to love ourselves.

And as parents, what we still need to do is accompany our girl as much as possible before she goes out into the world on her own, and share with her what we know about the subject of life.

The past has become still images on the wall of memory. The future is still a scroll slowly unfolding.
And the background music of these images has always included Shen Shen's voice. That is, after all, something quite beautiful.