by Tangqing (Jennifer) Zhang
I first arrived in Brisbane on a golden afternoon in late February 2024. The sun enveloped the city in warmth, as if welcoming me to the new land. I spent over two years in Sydney before coming to Brisbane. I was often rushing between school and my part-time job, trying to build a version of the life I thought I wanted. But when the plane landed at Brisbane Airport, I knew my life had shifted. I felt a strange lightness in my chest, a curiosity I had not felt in several years.
The taxi pulled away from the airport. On either side of the highway rows of low, red-roofed houses stretched into the distance, while tall palm trees yawned lazily beneath the sun. I sat quietly in the backseat; hands folded in my lap. The driver made a few friendly remarks in a thick, Australian accent. I smiled and nodded, careful not to mispronounce a single word. Outside the window, soft greenery and an almost too-bright blue sky blurred together, like a painting in motion. It was nothing like the vibrant, noisy “study abroad life” I had imagined. There were no welcome banners, no excited crowds, just a stillness that felt warm.
Brisbane looked different. It felt more surprising than any city I had visited. The streets rose and fell like waves; jacaranda trees hung like lilac wishes above narrow footpaths, even the air seemed to move at a gentler pace. I didn’t know it then, but I had entered what psychologists call the honeymoon phase of culture shock. I called it my quiet love affair with a city that, for the first time in a long while, gave me space to breathe.
Everything was quietly wondrous. I wandered along the river near South Bank, half-convinced I was dreaming. The strangers smiled. The buses were clean. I could walk into a bookstore and not be swallowed by a weekend crowd.
In Brisbane, I wasn’t somebody’s daughter, somebody’s expectation, or a friend who had drifted too far; I was just myself. I found a strange comfort in that. For a moment, it felt like I had arrived somewhere that could finally be called home.
That honeymoon feeling held for a few weeks. I filled my weekends with Saturday markets, art museums, and riverside jogging. I told my friends in Sydney, “I think I’ve found the place I’m meant to be.” But slowly, the colours began to fade. Like the afterglow of a sunset, the warmth lingered, but the light began to fade.
The change was gradual. It started with small things: an awkward silence in a tutorial, a group chat I wasn’t invited to, a joke that flew over my head. Then came the larger cracks—trying and failing to expresssomething personal in English, feeling my accent tighten around my throat like an apology.
I missed my mother’s cooking. I missed hearing Cantonese in the supermarket aisles. I missed knowing where to go without having to look it up. Homesickness didn’t arrive with a storm. It settled like a fog—thick, soundless, impossible to shake off. I had believed that Brisbane would be afresh. But the ache found me anyway. My parents didn’t quite understand. I felt like a shape that didn’t fit—too Chinese in Australia, too Western when I called home.
My birthday came and went without fanfare. It fell on a Tuesday in mid-semester, and I didn’t tell anyone. Not the girl who sometimes sat beside me in class. Not even my housemate, who barely said more than a few words to me since we had moved in. I wasn’t sure if I kept it to myself because I wanted privacy or because I feared what it would mean if nobody cared.
That day, I ate lunch alone on the patch of grass near the library, pretending to scroll through messages that weren’t there. The sun was almost aggressive in its brightness, as though it was trying too hard to make up for something. I laughed too loudly at the tutor’s joke. I thanked people with a little too much energy. But inside, something was brittle and close to shattering.
When I got home, the house was still. My housemate had left a note about a late-night group meeting. I heated a bowl of instant noodles, sat by the window, and watched the last orange light bleed across the street. That’s when it struck me, not sadness exactly, but a heavy, sinking feeling.
A few days later, I opened my fridge and stared at the emptiness. I didn’t want to feel hollow anymore. Not waiting for someone else to change it. Not expecting an invitation or a surprise. I started cooking for myself. Not to celebrate, but to reclaim a small part of myself. I made tomato and egg stir-fry, the way my grandmother taught me; fragrant, soft yolks barely set, tomatoes simmered until they tasted almost like jam. The smell filled the kitchen like a memory.
As I plated the food, I heard the door click open. My housemate walked in, dropped her backpack, and then paused. She sniffed the air and tilted her head.
“That smells so good. What is it?”
“Just a homemade dish,” I said, hesitating. “Tomato and egg stir-fry. Do you want to try?”
She blinked, surprised. “Can I try?”
I nodded. “Of course. There’s a lot.”
She took a bite from the plate I handed her. Her eyes widened. “Oh wow. This is really good! I’ve never tasted anything like it.”
I laughed softly. “It’s one of those dishes I grew up with. Everyone makes it slightly differently.”
She leaned on the counter. “It reminds me of when my mum used to make scrambled eggs with cheese and toast. I hated it when I was younger, but now I’d love to eat it again.”
We stood there for a moment, two girls in a shared kitchen, not quite friends yet no longer strangers.
I smiled. “Funny how food brings people together.”
She nodded. “And connects people, too.”
That night, something shifted, not loudly, but gently. A window opened where a wall used to be.
From that point on, I made small changes, ones that mattered. I didn’t wait to be noticed; I reached out. I started conversations, even when my grammar faltered. I raised my hand in class without rehearsing every word in my head. I invited my housemate to a Saturday market, and she said yes. I found a café that remembered my name. I gave directions to a lost tourist with confidence. I stopped trying to achieve something and simply began to belong.
One night, I called my mother. I told her about the rain, about the rice paper rolls I had finally tried, about how I had baked banana bread with my housemate that morning. She laughed. “You sound like you’re doing so well.”
I paused, the smell of bananas and cinnamon still in the air. “Yes, I think so.”
Adopting a new life in a new city does not happen as swiftly as an aeroplane’s descent. It arrives in increments in the ease of an unguarded conversation, in the quiet cadence of a routine that no longer feels borrowed. One day, you realise you no longer translate your thoughts before speaking. You no longer tense at the question, such as “Where are you from and what do you study”?
I still sometimes wake up in the dark, the homesickness pressing in like a question. Sometimes, I ache for Cantonese cuisine in Guangzhou and trams in Hong Kong. Adopting Brisbane couldn’t erase who I was; itinspired me to pursue who I might become. I am still learning how to hold multiple homes in one heart. I’m Still untangling how longing and gratitude can coil together; twin vines around the same trellis. I know now that identity is not a single choice; it is a slow gathering. A collection of moments, of places, of selves left behind and yet to be.
Somewhere between the hills and river, between bursts of jacaranda and the crumbling sweetness of lamingtons, between solitude and belonging, I began to reassemble myself. I felt no compulsion to force an actual answer; because becoming is not a finale, it is the quiet act of living, observing, remembering, even when the details fray or when the past bleeds at the edges, like watercolour in the rain.
Eventually, I realised this was the concept of the home.
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Jennifer Zhang (she/her) is a second-year Creative Writing student at QUT. Her work explores moments of emotional transition, memory, and the quiet resilience of ordinary lives. Drawing inspiration from Eastern and Western literary styler, she is passionate about telling nuanced human stories that resonate across cultures. You can find her on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tangqing-zhang/
This piece was submitted for the 2025 Annual Edition of Glass.
