My phone buzzed at an ungodly hour last night. Bleary-eyed, I swiped it open, expecting another spam email. Instead, I was staring at a screenshot a friend had sent from Weibo—a post from badminton star Jia Yifan, timestamped 3:17 AM.
It was a message to her partner, Chen Qingchen. Not a formal press release. Not a polished statement. Just raw, unfiltered words thrown into the digital night, the kind you write when sleep won’t come and the quiet is too loud.
She wrote about their first match as teenagers at the World Junior Championships, two girls "clueless" about what was ahead. She wrote about standing on the highest podium, their hearts pounding so hard against each other’s during the hug that it felt like one frantic, shared rhythm. Eleven years of that.
You know what got me? A tiny detail she mentioned. She called Chen Qingchen the most loyal "mirror" of her youth. Think about that. For over a decade, every high, every low, every moment of doubt or triumph, there was someone right there reflecting it back at you, proving you were real, you were there, you were doing this.
And then, one person decides to turn away from that mirror. Jia’s words to her were, "Please take the courage and resilience we’ve tempered over these eleven years, and walk forward boldly." The grace in that sentence almost hurts. It’s not "we"; it’s "you" now. She’s handing her the very armor they forged together and telling her to go use it somewhere else.
But here’s the part that really stuck in my throat: "As for me, I choose to stay. To stay on this court we both love so deeply."
I keep imagining that moment. The decision. One leaves to start a new chapter. The other stays, surrounded by the echoes of every cheer, every squeak of their shoes on the court, every inside joke whispered between points. Staying might be the lonelier choice. The court doesn’t feel the same when your shadow is gone.
This isn’t just sports news. It’s a masterclass in a specific, adult kind of love. It’s the love that knows when to hold on and when to let go, not with a scream, but with a blessing whispered at 3 AM. It’s realizing that some partnerships aren’t meant to last a lifetime, but they are meant to change a lifetime.
They’ve written their names into the history books, sure. But more importantly, as Jia said, they’ve written themselves into each other’s life stories. You don’t just erase a chapter like that. You carry it. Whether you’re the one walking away or the one staying behind, you carry the weight and the light of it forever.
I showed the post to my roommate this morning. She’s never watched a badminton match in her life. She read it, was quiet for a minute, and then said, "Damn. That’s about all of us, isn’t it?" Maybe it is. Maybe we’ve all had, or will have, a partnership that defines an era of our lives, and a goodbye that redefines what comes next.
So here’s to Jia Yifan, staying. And here’s to Chen Qingchen, walking. And here’s to the rest of us, somewhere in between, reading a 3 AM post and remembering our own mirrors, our own courts, our own quiet, world-shifting goodbyes.
What about you? Has there been a partnership—in work, friendship, life—that shaped you, even if it didn’t last forever? Share your story below.
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