✍️ From Suzhou, With Love

Laura Zhang finds a writing breakthrough after visiting her grandmother's grave in Suzhou, China.

✍️ From the Editor: Welcome to the First GuestStack

For the inaugural piece for this new GuestStack column, I was on the hunt for a story on the theme of “writing breakthroughs.”

To me, a meaningful writing breakthrough is one that rearranges your DNA. It shatters the glass ceiling keeping you trapped. It forces you to pick up the pen and make sense of it all.

When Laura Zhang’s pitch for her piece From Suzhou, With Love landed on my desk, I knew *this* was the kind of writing breakthrough I wanted to share with you.

I’m also a reader of her recently launched Substack Golden Hour, which holds the coveted spot of being one of my new favorite travel blogs.

I think you’ll fall in love with Laura Zhang’s writing and her stories just as much as I did.

Enjoy,

-Amy Suto

Editor & Curator of GuestStack

✨ From Suzhou, With Love

written by Laura Zhang

Two years ago, my writing breakthrough struck me like a gut punch on the drive home from my grandmother’s grave, my face slathered in snot.

A little context on why the snot situation was so intense: Fifteen minutes ago, I had been slumped over an offering of mandarins, longan, and joss paper, nearly scorching my scalp on burning incense as I poured my heart out to her headstone. My grandmother had been my fiercest supporter. In high school, she would gently squeeze my hand and stroke my hair whenever she sensed I was being too hard on myself. "You’re doing so well already," she’d say in Chinese, "and I believe you’re not done blooming yet."

After she passed away in 2015, my family laid her to rest in Suzhou, a stone’s throw away from her own mother. Suzhou is a postcard-perfect, more quaint version of its glitzy neighbor, Shanghai, where I grew up. On this particular day, not a single cloud stained the sky, and sunlight bathed everything in sight. The silence was palpable, broken only by the soft crunch of gravel beneath our shoes as my mom, husband (then fiancé), and I weaved through the rows of headstones.

I had just touched down from San Francisco, where I was living and working at the time. With the Pacific Ocean between us, I visited Shanghai and Suzhou as much as I could. Yet when COVID-19 stunned us all in 2020 and China sealed itself shut overnight, any chance of a visit was out the window. So, for the next few years, I let the thought and hope of going home fall to the back of my mind. Instead, I devoted myself to doing everything “right”––that “blooming” I assumed my grandmother had meant (cue Mulan’s “Honor to Us All”). I got engaged to an incredible guy, clawed my way up the corporate ladder to a title that hollered “Yes, I now have decision-making rights,” and even managed to sell a condo in a housing market that felt like a dumpster fire.

On paper, I appeared to be thriving, but inside, I felt untethered from my Chinese heritage and culturally invisible in predominantly white spaces, politely nodding and smiling while stifling core parts of myself. Although COVID-19’s tempestuous peak period may have only lasted a few years in the grand scheme of things, being unable to return to my childhood home or to visit the people who raised me engulfed me in grief. When quarantine rules were finally lifted in 2023, I didn’t hesitate. My husband and I hopped on a 12-hour flight to Shanghai for a long-overdue homecoming.

At my grandmother’s graveside, years of bottled-up emotions flowed out of me. I had a whole new human being to introduce to her, an engagement story to reenact, trips to take her on, trivial things to whine about. I ugly-bawled, looking unhinged, but with my mom and husband silently steadying my back with their gentle palms, I remembered the quiet comfort of being seen. Something fundamental must’ve shifted inside of me then—my grandmother’s encouraging words were ringing in my mind, impossible to ignore, urging me towards a new and different bloom.

I started to drift off on the drive home next to my mom. But as I did, my anxiety crept back—the inevitable awareness that I’d return to San Francisco and that disconnect would swallow me whole again. It sounds a little woo-woo, but right there dripping snot in the back of a beige Toyota Sienna speeding down the G2 highway, I realized I needed to write about this. About the overwhelming guilt of detaching from your roots, and the sheer panic when the elements and people that anchor you start slipping away. Maybe somewhere in Paris, Lagos, or Bogotá, another Chinese woman was wrestling with the same things—these universal, all-consuming feelings of grief, heartache, and longing to reconnect with what made you in the first place.

I spent most of the flight back to San Francisco journaling, still buzzing from the cathartic trip, with my previously empty cup now filled back to the brim. I’ve always loved traveling and the ritual of capturing freshly-made memories and post-trip reflections on a page, collecting words like souvenirs. But the writing breakthrough in Suzhou sparked a no-reservations, full-throttle type of year––building new confidence to put my words that were buried deep within abandoned Google Docs and notebooks—out into the world to be read, critiqued, sharpened, and felt. First quietly, then a little louder.

Fast forward to 2025, I’m now embracing the twists and turns of life as a freelance travel writer. To my fellow writers, keep writing! And to all the new writers out there, take the plunge! I know you’ll find your own, unique way to bloom.

👋 Meet Laura Zhang, This Week’s GuestStack Writer

Laura Zhang is a freelance travel writer and marketing strategist who recently relocated to Berlin from the San Francisco Bay Area. She highlights hidden gems and unique destinations, with a particular emphasis on celebrating communities of color. Before starting her writing career, Laura spent over 10 years in marketing and communications, working with Fortune 500 companies and nonprofit organizations across tech, education, and e-commerce.

Laura recently launched Golden Hour on Substack––a newsletter about finding home and belonging in unexpected places. Every month, she features brilliant, but often underrepresented Asian-owned travel and hospitality businesses uncovered from her travels. If you’re curious about what the global Asian diaspora’s up to (or simply want to know where to enjoy the most authentic Asian food around the world), go check it out!

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