Profile Chinese teacher who trades chalk for wanderlust, then comes back

Beijing: Ten years ago, 35 year old Gu Shaoqiang wrote a sentence that would come to define her and echo a quiet yearning shared by many. It was a res...

Beijing: Ten years ago, 35-year-old Gu Shaoqiang wrote a sentence that would come to define her and echo a quiet yearning shared by many. It was a resignation letter, but it read more like a line of poetry "The world is so big, I want to go see it."

At the time, Gu was a psychology teacher at a public high school in Henan Province. She lived the kind of life that rarely makes headlines, predictable, steady and intentionally unremarkable. However, her note, shared online, resonated deeply with many, striking a raw nerve. It was shared and re-shared, and quoted by strangers who didn't even know her name.

To many, Gu wasn't just quitting her job. She was stepping out of the script. That one sentence, earnest and fearless, awakened something delicate yet familiar in countless readers: the dormant wish to pause, to wander, to live on one's own terms.

Now, Gu is back, but not in the classroom. She works as an online counselor, offering psychological and family education advice on short video platforms. Viewers still ask her the same question: Do you regret your choice?

"There were a few things, perhaps, that didn't unfold as I'd hoped," she said, her voice steady. "But not the choice to leave. That's something I'll never regret."