One warm day this April, Kexin Cai GR and her partner Kristian Droste decided to drive up to Mont Tremblant in Canada to catch the last day of spring skiing on the mountain. They shed their coats on the chair lift and skied down in puddles, Droste said.
Cai had learned how to ski, hike and drive after moving to the Upper Valley to pursue her Ph.D at Dartmouth in 2022. Before long, she and Droste put 9,000 miles on her car together, driving up and down the East Coast. Cai was undaunted and had a unique wanderlust, according to close friends.
“I never met anyone who had been to so many places, read so many books, thought so much,” close friend Menghan Yang GR said. “I just think she’s so magical.”
The Lebanon Police Department and New Hampshire Fish and Game found Cai dead on May 20 after she was reported missing a few days earlier, according to past reporting by The Dartmouth. Cai was a Chinese native and a second-year doctoral student in the psychological and brain sciences department.
Cai had checked herself into Dick’s House on May 13 due to a “mental health crisis” and had been transferred to Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, according to Droste. She went missing after being discharged from the hospital, prompting an extensive search.
The Lebanon Police Department used drones and tracked Cai’s cell phone data and credit card transactions during the search, according to past reporting by The Dartmouth. Community members put up missing person posters and walked along hiking trails in search of her, Droste added.
Cai obtained a master’s degree in the Netherlands before coming to Dartmouth in 2022. While she lived in Europe, she traveled to many different countries, according to Yang, who knew Cai for seven years. While living in the Upper Valley, she was “always planning” her next trip and wanted to go to Alaska, Yang added.
“She was a world traveler,” Yang said. “I was quite envious of her life. I was always like, ‘Oh, you’re so cool. Tell me more about your stories.’”
Together, Cai and Yang loved the novel “My Brilliant Friend” by Elena Ferrante, a story of small town adolescence and “how two girls’ faiths and lives are intertwined from their childhood,” Yang said. They saw themselves in the struggles and triumphs of the protagonists.
“We both grew up in small cities in China and studied really hard, worked really hard to try to get ourselves better lives — but sometimes we feel frustrated,” she said. “The book gave us a lot of courage … to live our lives, make our own choices, choose the freedom, choose the lives we love.”
Cai loved taking photographs of the places she visited, Yang said. When the two started at Dartmouth together, they drove into the White Mountains and took pictures that are still hanging somewhere in their department at Dartmouth, she said.
“I’ve never seen her be nervous or scared of starting a new journey,” she said.
Cai’s love of “exploration” led to her breadth of hobbies and interests, according to Chong Wang GR. The two bonded over “finger-style” guitar playing — which Wang said is rare in the United States — obscure music and anime.
“She had a lot of spontaneity,” he said. “Sometimes, she would be interested in [something], and then she would just pursue it.”
Her creativity was also evident in the changing color of her hair, Yang said. When she came to Dartmouth, she had dyed pink hair, which she later changed to blue because of her love for an anime character.
One of the last times Cai communicated with Yang, she reminded Yang that she was “really [her] brilliant friend.”
“She always cared for me,” Yang said. “Even if she chose a different way to go, she still wished I could be happy, still giving me the power, the energy, the confidence — saying I’m her brilliant friend.”
In an email statement to The Dartmouth, Cai’s middle school classmate Harry Lee wrote that in a “truly remarkable” act of bravery, she once stood up to his bullies. She banged her fists on her desk and “demanded they stop.”
“During my time in middle school, struggling to fit in and facing bullying, Kexin’s kindness, focus and precious courage were a beacon of light for me,” he wrote. “I once believed she would be the one among us who, being the kindest, luckiest and most excellent, would rise above all adversities. Her untimely passing has left us all in profound grief and sorrow.”
After graduation, their middle school erected a large statue of a cabbage to commemorate her academic achievements and honor her as a “clean and honest person,” he wrote.
Cai’s friend and former roommate in the Upper Valley Jerry Jia said that Cai “treated everyone with kindness.”
“She was a really nice person,” Jia said. “She’s not the kind of person who will easily give up. I’ll miss her.”
Droste remembers Cai as an “inherently loving” person and partner.
“Everything does just feel like one big collage of good moments and constant growth for both of us — constant care,” he said. “Kexin will be with me for the rest of my life. In some way, everything I do will be to honor her.”
