Part 1The Hub

The first thing that the shop caught my attention was not the milk tea but two coin-operated kiddie rides standing outside the shop. They played Chinese nursery rhymes on an endless loop. In central Tirana, the sound felt oddly misplaced. I found myself following it.

Inside, the shop was busy. Two Albanian girls worked behind the counter, one taking orders while the other cleaned in the back. The menu was written in both Chinese and English, and the drinks on offer reminded me of the milk tea shops that had filled Chinese shopping malls a decade ago.

Near the entrance stood a display cabinet crowded with inexpensive goods imported from Yiwu. Beside it was a stroller. I kept noticing the stroller.

After ordering a milk tea, I climbed onto one of the bar stools and observed the room. Customers drifted in and out. Some bought drinks. Others lingered to talk. A young Chinese couple stood chatting with a woman who seemed to run the place.

By the time I finished my drink, I had worked up the courage to introduce myself to the woman.

She was tall, direct, and, as I would later learn, impossible to ignore.

"Are you Chinese?" I finally asked. “Yes, you can call me Sun" she replied. "What do you want?"

I explained that I was a Chinese photographer visiting Tirana and hoped to learn more about the lives of Chinese migrants in Albania. I wasn't asking for an interview. Not yet. Instead, I asked whether there was a WeChat group for local Chinese residents.

Before I left, we exchanged WeChat contacts. Her profile picture was a gold ingot against a bright red background, accompanied by two emojis: 🤑💰.

That night halfway through the workshop session, my phone began to vibrate repeatedly.

Sun had sent a string of voice messages. Each one was several minutes long. I slipped my phone beneath the table and quietly converted the recordings into text while listening to the discussion around me.

In the meeting room, people were talking about migration, history, and identity. On the other end of the conversation was a woman who had recently become a mother, carefully sharing her thoughts on my family photography work.

She told me she liked the photographs. They felt intimate, she said. She had spent a long time looking through them. The previous afternoon, our conversation in the milk tea shop had lasted only a few minutes. Now she was asking about my schedule.

She said I was welcome to interview her. I could photograph her as well, if I wanted. Then she suggested a day trip to Durrës. Her husband could drive.

“The sea is beautiful,” she said. “You should really go and see it.”

Part 2Judy

The next day when I returned from the market, Sun was standing outside the milk tea shop with Eric, her 5-month-old son, in her arms, talking to another Chinese woman.

Before I reached them, Sun waved me over. “From Fujian,” she said, pointing at the woman. “Born in 1986. Three sons, all grown up already. but she seems rather young right? ”

The woman immediately took out her phone.

Three teenage boys appeared on the screen, dressed in matching suits and standing shoulder to shoulder in front of a studio backdrop. She swiped through a few images before returning to the group portrait. All three were her sons. Her name was Judy.

While we were talking, Sun handed Eric to her without hesitation. Judy adjusted the baby against her shoulder with the ease of someone who had done this many times before. One hand supported his back while the other gently patted him. The movement felt instinctive.

A little later, Judy invited us to her apartment for lunch.

She lived only a short walk from the shop. Before we reached the building, she stopped and told us to go ahead without her. Sun already had a key. Judy wanted to buy a few things for lunch. By the time we climbed the stairs, she had disappeared back toward the market.

“Judy originally planned to go to Canada,” Sun told me as we made our way upstairs with Eric. “Through the jungle route.” She was referring to the migration route that has become familiar in recent years among some Chinese migrants. People pay large sums of money to smugglers, travel through Central America, cross dangerous stretches of terrain, and eventually seek asylum at the U.S. or Canadian border.

“I talked her out of it,” Sun said proudly.

Judy had three sons in China. Leaving was one thing. Not knowing when she might see them again was another. Instead, she returned to Albania.

The first time she came, she had failed to find stable work and eventually went back to China. When an opportunity opened up at a Chinese-owned massage business in Tirana, she came again. Her work permit was still being processed. For now, she was staying.

The apartment was small. The living room opened directly into the kitchen, and sunlight entered through a balcony window at the far end of the room. Before long, Judy returned carrying bags of groceries and immediately began cooking.

She seemed unable to remain still.

Pork was sliced into thin strips. Green beans were cut on an angle. A crab was placed on the chopping board and quickly dismantled with practiced movements. While water boiled on the stove, she washed oranges, arranged them on a plate, and poured juice into glasses for everyone sitting in the living room.

“I'll make Fujian-style noodles,” she announced from the kitchen. The smell of food slowly filled the apartment. Crab, pork, steam, cooking oil.

Near the sofa sat a large bag of dried seaweed she had brought from home in Fujian.“We always eat this,” she explained. At some point the conversation shifted back to migration.

“I've ruined the business of several smugglers already,” Sun joked from the sofa, holding Eric in her arms. She laughed as she said it. Judy laughed too.

Lunch was finally served. A large bowl of noodles sat in the center of the table. Judy placed the biggest piece of crab into my bowl before she had even taken a seat herself.

That was when Eric began to cry. The conversation stopped.

Before anyone else could react, Judy had already put down her chopsticks and lifted him into her arms. She paced slowly around the apartment, patting his back while speaking to him softly. The crying continued for a while before gradually fading.

She carried him into the bedroom. The door remained half open. A few minutes later, singing drifted out into the living room. The melody was familiar. A Chinese lullaby.

Part 3Day trip

Judy was supposed to come with us, but by the time we finally left Tirana it was already past noon.

The delay did not seem unusual. Life around Sun’s milk tea shop rarely followed a schedule. Phones rang constantly. Messages arrived one after another. Customers stopped by for drinks and stayed to ask for advice. Some needed help finding an apartment. Others wanted information about visas, jobs, or shipping goods from China.

The shop sold milk tea, but it also functioned as something larger: a meeting point, an information hub, and, for many Chinese migrants in Albania, a place where everyday problems could be solved.

Meanwhile, Eric grew up among freezers, plastic cups, and stacks of delivery boxes. His stroller stood beside the counter. Bottles and diapers were stored behind the register. When he cried, someone picked him up. When he fell asleep, business continued around him.

“Every cup of milk tea I sell buys another bottle of formula for my son,” Sun once told me.

By the time we finally got on the road, Eric had already been fed, changed, entertained, and carried by half a dozen people.

The drive to Durrës revealed a different side of the family.

In the shop, Tony often remained in the background. He prepared ingredients, carried supplies, and quietly handled whatever needed to be done. In the car, however, he became the leading character.

The moment Eric began to fuss, Tony checked the rearview mirror “Is he hungry?” A few minutes later he checked again “Maybe he’s too hot.” Then again. “Do you think he’s tired?”

Sun seemed far less concerned. Months of caring for an infant while running a business had given her a calm efficiency. She lifted Eric from his car seat, patted his back, adjusted his blanket, and within minutes he had settled again.

Tony laughed at himself.

“When he cries, I can’t think about anything else.”

The road followed the coastline southward. As the sea appeared between the buildings, Tony began talking about his childhood.

During Albania’s socialist period, his father worked for the Ministry of Defence. Every summer, the family spent time on this coast.“When I was a child,” he told me, “I had never seen a banana.”

He laughed before continuing.“Not just bananas. Coca-Cola too. The first banana and the first Coca-Cola I ever tasted were when I was fifteen.”

The story sounded almost unbelievable to me. Yet Tony belonged to a generation that grew up during the final years of one of Europe’s most isolated political systems. When we reached the beach, the wind was strong. Waves rolled in from the Adriatic and crashed against the shore.

Eric disliked the weather immediately. Each time a gust swept across the beach, he buried his face deeper into Sun’s shoulder. She held him close and looked out toward the horizon.

Then she raised her hand.

“Italy is over there,” she said. Nothing was visible except sunlight scattered across the water. For a moment nobody spoke. Tony kept looking toward the sea.

For Albanians of his generation, Italy had never been just another country. It had long represented departure, possibility, and a different future. During the 1990s, thousands crossed the Adriatic in overcrowded boats. Others simply watched from the shore and imagined what lay beyond the horizon.

On the drive back to Tirana, Tony pointed toward a row of aging apartment blocks beside the road. “Chinese experts built those.”A few minutes later he pointed again. “My family’s apartment too.”

For Tony, history was not something found in books.It was the apartment where he grew up. Years later, he would spend five years living in China, marry a Chinese woman, and become the father of a child named Eric.

As we drove toward Tirana, the sea disappeared behind us.

Eric was asleep in the back seat. Sun looked out the window. Tony kept driving.

Part 4Somewhere

On the final day of my stay, Judy asked whether I could take some photographs of her as well. She had already seen the pictures I made of Sun by the seaside.

When we met, Eric was asleep in his stroller beside a café near the milk tea shop. Judy sat next to him, gently rocking the stroller with one hand while a lullaby played from her phone. Around us, lunchtime crowds filled the pavement. Waiters moved between tightly packed tables carrying trays of coffee and beer. Empty glasses sat in front of us, long since finished.

At first, Judy looked exactly as she always had.

Then I raised the camera.

She immediately became self-conscious. Her shoulders stiffened. Her hands seemed unsure of where to rest. Sun watched for a while before stepping in, rearranging her hair, suggesting different outfits, and eventually producing an old qipao from somewhere inside the shop.

The dress stayed on only briefly.

Soon Judy changed back into her own clothes: a sleeveless vest and a denim skirt.

“Make me look younger,” she laughed. “Customers will be more likely to choose me.”

As the afternoon went on, she gradually forgot about the camera. The nervousness faded. She stopped asking where to stand and no longer checked the back of the screen after every frame. Instead, she chatted, stared into the distance, or simply sat quietly beneath the trees.

The woman in the photographs looked different from the Judy I had first met outside the milk tea shop. The stories I knew about her—three sons in China, failed migration plans, uncertain futures—were nowhere visible.

Later, we walked into the city for lunch.

Passing through Skanderbeg Square, I noticed that Sun and Judy rarely spoke about Tirana in the way visitors usually do. They paid little attention to monuments, museums, or architecture. What interested them were businesses. Which shops were making money. Which owners were preparing to leave. Which restaurants had changed hands. Which opportunities might appear next.

I knew where people visited. They knew where people stayed.

The milk tea shop occupied only a small corner of Tirana, yet over the course of a week I had watched an extraordinary number of people pass through it. Customers came for drinks, but they also came for introductions, apartments, shipping contacts, business advice and conversation.

When someone needed help, they often called Sun first. She seemed to know everyone.Or at least someone who knew someone.

A day ago, Tony had told me that he would not be allowed to enter China again until 2028 because of a visa overstay during the pandemic. Judy was still waiting for her documents. Sun listened to both stories with the calm practicality she brought to almost everything.

Then someone would call.A customer would walk in. Eric would wake up. Or another problem would need solving. Life kept moving.

When lunch ended, we parted ways at a street corner. Judy returned to work. Sun pushed Eric's stroller back toward the milk tea shop. I headed toward the airport. There were no hugs and no formal goodbyes. We simply raised our hands and waved before disappearing into different directions of the city.