Time passes quickly. In the blink of an eye, two years have gone by. Walking through Sydney’s CBD after work, I find myself remembering how tentative, unfamiliar and curious everything felt when I first arrived.

A Countdown of Less Than Two Months

In 2019, while living in Hangzhou, I received my first passport. Before I had the chance to use it, the pandemic began. After the pandemic, my work visa was approved on 5 January 2023, and I started preparing to move. I landed in Sydney on 18 February and began my first day of work overseas on the twentieth.

Those final two months may have been the busiest period I can remember. Everything had to be packed, sorted and moved, and the cars transferred to new owners. The belongings going to Australia had to be packed and inventoried by the moving company. Of the things staying in China, some were sent by courier to my parents’ home in Qinghai; the remainder had to be driven back myself. And within those two short months came the Lunar New Year holiday.

The most difficult part was deciding what belonged in each category: what to take, what to leave and what to throw away. My employer was covering the move without a spending limit, so in theory I could have packed everything. In practice, some things would have been useless in Australia and were better taken home to my parents or given to friends. Australia also uses the same style of three-pin socket as China and a voltage of 230V, so most electrical appliances could come with me.

Letting things go was the most painful part, especially for someone with a strong memory for objects and the moments attached to them. I often forget exact words, numbers and names, but I remember scenes, spaces and when things happened. The result is that almost any object can stir a memory. A trinket found in a corner—even a piece of “rubbish”—can bring back everything that once happened around it. In the end, the only things I could discard were either utterly worthless rubbish or belongings I surrendered after a painful struggle.

Lunar New Year’s Eve fell on 21 January. By then, I had finished the first round of sorting. I used the holiday trip home to take some of my belongings back to Qinghai in my first car, a nineteen-year-old Honda Accord that I had bought at a court auction in 2018. It had taken me to many places and opened a new chapter of road travel in my life. All companions eventually part. I could not bring myself to sell it, so I transferred it to a close friend, allowing it to continue its life in good hands.

When I returned to Hangzhou after the holiday, the final countdown began. On 8 February, I returned my four-wheel drive to its factory configuration for its next roadworthiness inspection. On the ninth, I packed the last belongings, including my computer. On the tenth, I left Alibaba, and the first shipment went out by air. The sea freight followed on the eleventh. On the twelfth, I loaded the final things bound for home into the car and left Hangzhou. On the thirteenth, I set out from Yangzhou in Jiangsu and spent the night in Xixia, Shaanxi. Heavy snow in western China disrupted my plan to reach Xining on the fourteenth, so I stayed instead in Longxi, Gansu. On the fifteenth, I took ordinary roads around the snowbound highway and reached my family home in Xining at sunset. On the sixteenth, I said goodbye to my parents and flew back to Hangzhou. On the seventeenth, I took the high-speed train to Shanghai and departed from Pudong Airport that evening. On the morning of the eighteenth, I arrived in Sydney.

My first passport. My first journey abroad. Not a holiday, but the beginning of a life overseas that has now lasted two years and is still unfolding.

My First Day in Sydney

After a night on the plane, I was still dazed when we landed. I knew it was real, yet everything felt dreamlike. After decades of learning English, I finally had to use it. I had not expected the Australian accent to sound so different from the voices on American television.

I collected my luggage, passed through immigration and entered the arrivals hall. I bought a SIM card, then ate my first meal in Australia: McDonald’s. It was completely different from McDonald’s in China, and not as good as the version adapted for Chinese tastes. I remember ordering a Happy Meal, hoping it might make the life ahead of me a little happier.

My Uber driver from the airport to the hotel was from Nepal. I do not know how I managed it, but we talked the whole way. As he drove toward the CBD, he kept pointing out places worth visiting. He told me that he had come from Nepal and had lived in Sydney for many years. Looking back, I sometimes think my English may be worse now than it was that day.

Once I had checked in and dropped off my luggage, I headed for Australia’s best-known landmark, the Sydney Opera House. Everything around me felt new: unfamiliar advertising, people from many backgrounds, and all kinds of smells. I am particularly sensitive to scent, not simply in terms of liking or disliking one, but as a way of becoming familiar with my surroundings. Sydney had a smell of its own—perfume mixed with the dryness of a Southern Hemisphere summer—unlike anything I had known in China.

Although the Opera House was not far from my hotel, the CBD towers interfered with the GPS, and my curiosity kept sending me from one side of the street to the other. The journey took longer than expected. Yet when I finally stood before it, the surprise was less than I had imagined. The feeling was subtle, like the calm that follows when the mystery of the unknown has been broken. As a building, of course, the Sydney Opera House remains beautiful.

At the Opera House, I had my first taste of Australia’s changeable weather. Dark clouds quickly covered the sky, thunder rolled, and heavy rain followed. Sudden showers are common in Australia, but people here rarely seem inclined to carry umbrellas. I followed their example and walked through the rain in search of my first dinner: a Domino’s pizza. That was how my first day in Sydney ended.

The Cost

Many people have asked what the move cost. In fact, my employer covered almost everything: the visa, relocation, flights, hotel accommodation, and even the McDonald’s and Domino’s.