This qualitative study explored how overseas students experienced loss and resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic. It involved in-depth, semi-structured interviews with six university students from China Mainland who returned home for winter vacation and were unable to travel back to Taiwan to attend classes physically in the first half of 2020 because of COVID-19 entry restrictions. Their accounts were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Two major themes were identified from the analysis: (1) deconstructing the familiar, which included three sub-themes: loss of autonomy and freedom of movement, loss of in-person class, and loss of psychological well-being; and (2) moving forward, which comprised two sub-themes: learning to live with inconvenience and reaching beyond. These findings implied an understanding of loss as deconstructing the familiar and resilience as bouncing forward and reaching beyond. These findings inform future research and help counsellors, mental health professionals, and academics better understand college students' experiences of loss and resilience during the pandemic.