《我不是留学生，也不是本地人：身份空白的痛》

When I was fourteen, I stepped into a Vancouver School Board classroom with a backpack from Fuzhou strapped tightly to my shoulders. That bag was the only thing in this unfamiliar city that still carried the scent of home.

I spoke broken English, drifting between ESL and mainstream classes. My classmates came in every shade and from every background, making me feel like I had been dropped into a film without subtitles. My soul floated like duckweed on a foreign sea—adrift, rootless, and unseen.

That classroom was packed, two-thirds full of international students. They looked familiar but felt distant. It was as if I’d been cut out from my old timeline and pasted into a cold, unfamiliar reel of film. The teacher warmly called me a “new immigrant.” Some students asked if I was an “international,” saying we could look out for each other. But deep down, I knew: I wasn’t here on a glamorous exchange. Nor was I born and raised here like the local kids.

I was caught in between—a blank space in society’s categories, a person who didn’t fit anywhere.

I tried to get close to classmates whose skin color was different but whose families had also started over here. Their parents mowed lawns, delivered takeout, washed dishes, renovated homes. It was hard work, but they accepted it. And me? I came from a family in China that had once owned businesses, held status, and had stories worth telling. I used to sit beside my mother while she did the books, or play hide-and-seek in my grandmother’s two-story courtyard house. But now, my mother woke at 5 a.m. to soak her hands in dishwater—just to hold onto a life that didn’t look too hard from the outside.

I knew I had to get close to those who had immigrated before me. I needed their survival strategies to make sense of this city. But I also knew that the version of my mother who once tallied accounts in China was long gone. The woman beside me now had back pain from standing too long in a restaurant kitchen, but she still smiled as she asked, “How was school today?”

I didn’t belong with the international students from China either. We spoke the same Mandarin and shared memories of entrance exams and cram schools. But while they debated winter trips to Tokyo or Paris and stressed over ballet competitions, my family was calculating next month’s rent—and how far we were from affording a down payment. Their parents wired tuition and living expenses on time. My mom worked two shifts a day, from dawn to night, just to give my brother and me a future with a little more stability.

Nor did I belong with my cousins—the children of my uncles and aunts. From the day they were born, their parents had already paved their path. They were the classic middle-class Vancouver kids: fluent in English, naturally confident, comfortably rooted. As long as they graduated on time, life would catch them gently.

They moved with ease in any room, their social media full of ski trips, scholarships, and “gratitude posts.” They were polite and friendly. Sometimes they even invited me over, telling me to bring my homework so I could study while I stayed for dinner. But they never saw how I discreetly pulled out painkillers at the table, trying to hold myself together long enough to finish another assignment.

Sometimes, they’d even smile and say, “You’re so lucky. At least you have your mom with you.”
But they never knew my mother used to get up at five every morning, worked all day in pain, just to maintain the illusion that our life was “doing fine.”

They would never understand how I smiled in front of them while counting coins in a cramped Chinatown rental to pay tuition.
They would never know that every dip in my grades was the aftermath of nights spent battling headaches and panic attacks alone.

I felt like a ghost floating between two cultures—
Too “bitter” to be understood by international students,
Too “put-together” to be embraced by working-class immigrants,
Too “mature” to be needed by peers,
Too “silent” to be noticed by mainstream society.

I speak two languages, yet have no one to truly confide in.
I’ve tried to belong to every group that might accept me, but I never truly fit.
Not because I wasn’t good enough,
but because my starting line was never on their map.

Sometimes, I envy those who can easily say, “I’m going home.”
For them, identity is clear.
Belonging is simple.
But for me?

The house in Canada feels like a hotel in China.
The home in China feels like a dream from Canada.
I stand between two worlds—
one blurred, the other distant.

And all I long for
is to find someone who truly sees me,
and a place
where I can finally lay down my soul
and simply—belong.