{"id":421176,"date":"2026-04-28T05:55:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T05:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/421176\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T05:55:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T05:55:09","slug":"ireland-was-not-the-continental-europe-that-i-was-fantasising-about-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/421176\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Ireland was not the continental Europe that I was fantasising about\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Xinlan Li, who moved from China<\/a> to Ireland in 2022, feels lucky to have been afforded the choices and education that she has.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a bit of a mental story looking back because both my grandmothers were illiterate and here I am moving to a big city and then eventually moving abroad,\u201d the 30-year-old says. <\/p>\n

Both of Li\u2019s grandparents lived in the Chinese countryside, and both her grandfathers were teachers. Her parents followed in their footsteps and also became teachers. During her childhood the family moved around a lot for her parents\u2019 jobs. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think China around the 1990s and early 2000s was progressing a lot and my parents were kind of riding that wave of progression.\u201d<\/p>\n

This left Li without a sense of belonging. On top of this sense of rootlessness, she always felt like the odd one out in China.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like my culture and upbringing was very conservative in a way. Where you can\u2019t express yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

She described feeling like she couldn\u2019t wear the clothes she wanted to for fear of being judged: \u201cIf you wear tight clothes, like tight trousers, people would judge you for it and they would look at you for an uncomfortably long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

At 16, Li went to university in Chengdu, a city of 20 million people in southwestern China. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s where I kind of settled in my adult life, where I found my first job and started my career. My parents bought me a small apartment there, so I feel a kind of belonging there.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0From China to Dublin: \u2018My first year in Ireland, I was usually eating biscuits or bread, because it\u2019s cheaper\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

At university she studied English and Chinese translation. She then worked in marketing and advertising but felt called to move abroad. Her view of Europe was very romanticised from the films she had watched growing up.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel that Europe is full of romance, of romantic encounters. It\u2019s going to the bookshop or a vinyl shop and then meeting random people on the bus. Maybe you have this \u2018meet cute\u2019. I was watching too many romcoms back then, probably.\u201d<\/p>\n

Li knew very little about Ireland before she arrived, however.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did not research about Ireland before moving. I just knew that it is in Europe. But coming over here …it\u2019s not the continental Europe that I was fantasising about at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Li initially moved to Dublin to undertake a master\u2019s at UCD\u2019s Business School. She enjoyed her time there but notes most of her friends from her master\u2019s programme were also international students: \u201cIt was a bit difficult to make a genuine connection with Irish students when I was doing my master\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

During her master\u2019s, Li met her future husband on Bumble. \u201cHe has his own take on specific topics and I think that\u2019s very important to me because in China I didn\u2019t meet people like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"XinlanXinlan Li. Photograph: Dara Mac D\u00f3naill <\/p>\n

Li struggled to get a job in Ireland after finishing her master\u2019s in 2023. During this period, she considered moving back to China as life in Dublin was incredibly expensive and she was living off her savings. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018Working in Ireland is less stressful than in China and you can make friends with colleagues\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Eventually she was offered a job in an advertising agency. It was quite a junior job, considering the experience she had from her years of working in China. <\/p>\n

She did not enjoy the job and quit to work part-time at her husband\u2019s start-up. <\/p>\n

Despite the distance, Li has always remained very close to her family. She was feeling a bit adrift and turned to her mother for advice.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was 2024 and my mum kept telling me \u2013 try and get pregnant then you will have things to do in your life. I took that a little bit literally, and then my son happened. It was a big shock in the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"XinlanXinlan Li and her son. Photograph: Dara Mac D\u00f3naill <\/p>\n

Li was 28, her husband did not have a permanent job, and the couple were unsure of where they would live. Her pregnancy was quite a stressful time but after the baby was born everything seemed to fall into place. They recently bought a house in Malahide, and Li\u2019s husband works from home so they can split childcare responsibilities.<\/p>\n

Raising a child without her family and friends around brings its own unique set of challenges. While Li believes that it has made the three of them incredibly close, it is also very demanding.<\/p>\n

\u201cSleep deprivation is no joke. I compare myself to my husband\u2019s cousin as he recently had a baby as well. We were invited to the baby\u2019s birthday last week and I saw how much love the mother had from her friends and family. I felt a bit envious that she has that and I don\u2019t really have it. I crave that connection too.\u201d<\/p>\n

She has recently started a YouTube channel as a way to process her thoughts and experiences and maybe even connect with others who feel the same way. <\/p>\n

The couple are considering moving to China for a year or two so their child can experience life there and hopefully learn some Chinese.<\/p>\n

We would like to hear from people who have moved to Ireland. To get involved, email newtotheparish@irishtimes.com<\/a> or send us two lines about yourself using the form below. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Xinlan Li, who moved from China to Ireland in 2022, feels lucky to have been afforded the choices…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":421177,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[114,615,61,60,37614,43,5762],"class_list":["post-421176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-china","tag-dublin","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-new-to-the-parish","tag-news","tag-ucd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=421176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/421177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}