The place where the soul finds rest is home.

For me, Kunming is a very important city in my life. Because besides my hometown, it holds so many of my expectations and dreams. All the love, loss, and setbacks have played out there, and then gently faded away.

Over the years, I seem to always be traveling, returning to a certain place in a city from all corners of this country and this earth, and then setting off again. So I envy the native Kunming people. They leave in order to return, while I return in order to leave.

Looking back on my first trip to Kunming, it was when I was leaving my hometown to study there. With my college entrance examination notice in my arms, I embarked on the journey with a boy who, like me, had never traveled far from home.

As the train approached Kunming, the sun was already setting, a moment that felt like a test for someone leaving home for the first time. Watching the last rays of the sun gradually disappear behind the mountain peaks, a strong feeling of homesickness washed over me. The boy asked me, “Aren’t you a little homesick?” I looked out the window and saw the train tracks. Before I could answer my classmate’s question, I felt a mix of excitement and nervousness. I wondered what kind of city these dark tracks connected to.

It was dusk when our train pulled into Kunming, a city so vast and indistinguishable from one another. Everyone else disembarked and dispersed, leaving only the two of us standing at the station entrance, looking around blankly, somewhat lost and bewildered…

For the next four years, I spent my winter and summer vacations traveling between school and my hometown. Kunming was always like a stopover, and leaving became inevitable.

Later, I stayed in that city. At that time, all cities were the same to me—Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo, or New York—none of them could be called “home.” I stayed in Kunming because I had passed through more of the cities I had chosen there, and it was closer to home.

But I ended up living there for 15 years. At first, I thought Kunming was a really fun place, so for the first few years, I spent almost all my free time doing independent travel around Kunming. In the following years, because of family, work, and complicated matters, I didn’t have time to think about where I was. Just like that, I’ve reached middle age, and Kunming has become a witness and record of my life.

From the time I went there to study until I finally left, I lived in Kunming for a total of 15 years, and I have a special feeling for that city.

I’ve left that place now, but every few years, I still make time to visit it. My husband once asked me, quite puzzled, “Why does that city hold such a strong attraction for you? Are there so many beautiful sights there that you can’t get enough of?” I didn’t answer him. He’s not me, so he can’t understand the weight that city, which witnessed my youth, love, disappointment, and tears, holds in my heart.

It is said that every autumn, migratory birds like seagulls settle in Kunming. Perhaps they, like me, understand a principle: wherever the soul finds rest, that is home.