Angel An is a junior at Columbia College studying arts management, with a focus on visual arts. She started out at Beijing International Studies University, then transferred to Columbia her sophomore year. After graduation, she’s hoping to land a job at a museum or auction house — and down the road, she’d love to help build cultural and artistic connections between the East and the West.
I grew up on the edge of Beijing—right where the Fourth Ring meets the Fifth. Not quite city, not quite countryside.
Beijing is built in rings, and people from Beijing have this almost supernatural sense of direction. You could drop us anywhere and we’ll still point north. It’s just in the bones. I lived within a 20-kilometer radius for the first 18 years of my life. Same schools, same streets, same markets. And not just me—my parents, my great-grandparents, all in that same small loop. Four generations.
There’s a Chinese saying: Falling leaves return to the root. No matter how far you wander, you come back to where you started. I always understood it. Now I’m starting to feel it.
I watched that little place change. Fields became shopping centers. Dirt roads became highways. The city kept eating the countryside, and I kept watching from the edge.
Now I’m in Chicago—my second year. I’ve never lived anywhere outside Beijing this long. I’m starting to know this city’s smells. The lake. The trains. It’s not home yet, but it’s becoming familiar.
What I miss most is the food. Not fancy—just my mom’s cooking. Beijing food is solid, warm, made for cold winters. I hope someday I can cook for my kids the way she cooked for me. Not the recipes—the feeling. That someone took care.
Beijing isn’t just the Forbidden City. It’s also the edges. It’s four generations in one small loop. It’s people who can point north in the dark.
Leaving that loop is the hardest thing I’ve done. But maybe roots aren’t just where you’re from. They’re also what you carry.
I carry Beijing. And I’m learning to carry Chicago too.
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