Finding Your Way Home: Mastering the Phrase "你住在哪里？"

It was a Tuesday evening in October when Maya got completely, wonderfully lost. She had been in Shanghai for exactly six days — long enough to fall in love with the city, short enough to still panic every time the subway announced a station she didn't recognize. Armed with a hand-drawn map from her hostel, she had set off to find a famous dumpling shop her guidebook described as "tucked into a lane that smells like garlic and history."

She found the garlic smell. The history, too — old grey stone buildings with red lanterns hanging like sleepy fireflies, elderly men playing cards on upturned crates, a grandmother hanging laundry from a second-floor window while humming softly to herself. But no dumplings. And, she suddenly realized, no idea how to get back.

That's when she saw the boy. He was about ten years old, sitting on a doorstep, drawing something in a worn sketchbook. He wore oversized glasses and had ink on three of his fingers. He looked up at Maya with the calm, unshakeable curiosity that only children possess.

Maya blinked. She had heard those words before — she'd practiced them in her language app on the plane — but hearing them from a real person, in a real alley, made them feel entirely different. Like a key turning in a lock she hadn't known existed.