What Nobody Tells You About Expat Goodbyes in Shenzhen

One of my husband's oldest friends left Shenzhen recently. They go back years, long before Shenzhen, and watching my husband lose that proximity has been hard, partly because I already knew exactly what came next.

The city feels slightly smaller. The WeChat group from that chapter of your life goes quiet. The table at your regular spot has an empty chair that takes a few weeks to stop noticing. Then June keeps moving, and most of the expat community leaves for summer, and you realize most of the people who made this place feel like home aren't here right now.

I've had more of these goodbyes than I can count. I'm still not entirely used to them.

How Expat Friendships Form

The first group of friends I made in China were people I arrived with in 2017. We'd been placed by the same company, teaching in public schools across different parts of Shenzhen, which meant we weren't dropped into the ready-made expat world of Shekou or an international school. We had to figure things out more from scratch, and we did it together.

We took trips around China on weekends, tried local food, found spots that hadn't been written up anywhere yet. We also vented to each other about things we didn't want to say out loud anywhere else, like the loneliness you're not supposed to admit to when you chose this, the disorientation of having no idea how to do basic adult tasks in a new language, or the strange grief of being genuinely excited about where you were and still missing home. The culture shock that bonded us in those first months was the same thing that eventually sent a lot of them home after year one. The ones who stayed got even closer, introduced each other to new people, kept a few regular spots where you could show up on a weekend and find someone you knew.

I had done a version of this cycle in Spain already. I knew its shape. What I didn't expect was that the friendships in China would run deeper. The people who stay past year one have usually made an active choice to be there rather than just ended up there. There's a shorthand that develops between people who are all in on the same deliberate, slightly unconventional life.

Six months into living abroad, I had conversations with people that would've taken years back home. It wasn’t because anyone was trying to get deep. We were just all figuring things out at the same time.

The Particular Shape of This Loss

A few months after someone leaves, I still catch myself thinking I should text them about something that happened. Then I remember it's 3 a.m. where they are. Or I realize it's been months since we talked and I don't know how to restart the conversation.

When an expat friend leaves, it's a clean break. They don't drift. They go. The specific friendship you had, the one that existed inside the particular version of life you were both living here, that friendship ends. You stay in touch, in theory. In practice, coordinating across time zones takes effort that spontaneous friendship never required. What used to be a text saying "leaving in twenty minutes, meet you there" becomes finding a window that works across a twelve-hour gap, and the friendship slowly becomes a scheduled thing, then a less frequent thing, then a catch-up when someone passes through.

It always feels strange explaining it to people back home. Nobody died. Nobody's angry. But something important is gone anyway. You go to work the next day. You answer emails. Life keeps moving.

What Changes After Enough Cycles

I've noticed the goodbye process looks different on different people. I've had friends spend their last three months here complaining about everything, as if leaving required convincing themselves they were making the right choice. I've had others trying to squeeze in every restaurant, every hike, every dinner invitation because they couldn't bear the idea of being done. I understand both. I've probably been both.

COVID created its own divide. The friends who were here during that time share a specific reference point that people who arrived afterward don't fully have access to. When people from those years leave, they take a whole chapter of Shenzhen with them. Half the stories I still tell start with the words, "Remember during COVID when..."

For a while, the accumulation of goodbyes made me more careful about investing in new friendships. I found myself gravitating toward people who seemed more permanently rooted: the ones who'd married locals, built businesses, put down the kind of roots that make leaving complicated. And then even some of those people surprised me. They left anyway, for reasons I didn't see coming, and it was still hard.

What I Kept Underestimating is that Sometimes People Come Back.

A couple we were close with left in 2023, partly driven out by the COVID restrictions. Recently they returned to Shenzhen on business and we got together for the first time in years. We spent the day catching up on everything that had changed, in our lives and in the city they remembered. Watching them take in how Shenzhen had shifted in their absence, asking about people and places that no longer existed in quite the same form, was its own strange, warm thing. The friendship hadn't ended. It had just been somewhere else for a while.

What Comes After June

I'll be the one leaving eventually. I think about it more than I let on. Not just when, but what kind of person I'll be when it happens. Whether I'll be the kind who starts pulling back early, protecting myself from the ending I can see coming. Or the kind who stays all the way in until the airport.

What I've had to accept is that the loss comes regardless of how carefully you guard against it. Keeping someone at arm's length because you know they'll eventually leave doesn't change the ending, it just hollows out everything that came before it.

September comes after the summer is over. The city fills back in. New people show up in Shenzhen for the first time, still downloading all the apps and trying to figure out how to translate everything, still asking which metro line is which. Someone in that group will eventually pull up a chair at the same table where you've watched so many people come and go.

Most of them won't stay forever. Maybe you won’t either. But you’ll be glad you made room for them when they arrived.

About the Author

Courtney Gumson is a Licensed Master Social Worker and certified Executive Function coach in Shenzhen, expat since 2012. She runs EF TakeOff Coaching, working with expat adults, teens, and families navigating ADHD, executive function challenges, and life transitions. She offers free support sessions every other Tuesday at the Shekou MSCE. WeChat: CourtGum or email: eftakeoffcoachingcg.com

June 1, 2026