Free A Girl Named Faithful Plum by Richard Bernstein

expecting to meet them, Li Zhongshan and Huping’s mother.
    After a few minutes, Huping’s mother arrived. She tookone look at her son, whom she hadn’t seen in years, and burst into tears of joy. Naturally, she wanted to take Huping home right away. His father was waiting for them there, she said. But first they had to be sure that somebody came for Zhongmei, and so far nobody had. The three of them waited amid the commotion of the station. The time passed. Thousands of people continued to push by. There were announcements over the loudspeaker, but the words were so lost in the vastness of the great hall that they could scarcely be understood. Anyway, Zhongmei was so eager to find her father’s friend, or to be found by him, that she didn’t really listen to them. Of course, she didn’t know what Li Zhongshan looked like, only that he was a policeman, so every time a policeman came near, Zhongmei would stand up straight and make herself as visible as she could. But no policeman or anybody else took any notice of her at all.

7
An Amazing Coincidence
    T he windows of the station waiting room darkened as the light in Beijing began to fade. What could have happened to Policeman Li? Before Zhongmei left home, her father had sent his friend an old picture of Zhongmei. In China in those days, few people from the countryside could afford cameras or film, and having their picture taken was a rare and special event that took place in a photo studio, which meant that the picture Zhongmei’s father sent to Li Zhongshan was taken when Zhongmei was about seven years old. It showed Zhongmei as a very little girl, her bangs down to her eyes, and a gauzy scarf around her neck, and while she was now a good deal bigger, the eleven-year-old Zhongmei could still be discerned in the picture of the seven-year-old Zhongmei. Unbeknownst to Zhongmei, Policeman Li did come to the station, but he didn’t find Zhongmei. Maybe he looked for a girl exactly like the one in the photograph, and Zhongmei wasn’t that girl anymore.
    “What can we do?” Huping’s mother asked.
    “You go ahead home,” Zhongmei said bravely, even though she wasn’t feeling very brave. “I’ll wait here. I’m sure he’ll come. You don’t have to worry about me.” But she wanted very much for them to worry about her.
    “If he was going to come, he’d have been here long ago,” Huping’s mother said. “It’s pointless to wait any longer. You better come home with us.”
    Zhongmei looked around the station, which reverberated with noises and echoes, with a thousand shouts and murmurs, with the scraping of luggage being dragged across the floor, with the wailing of babies, with public announcements that seemed to be swallowed up by the very vastness of the place. The station was less crowded than before, less filled with rushing people, and Zhongmei stayed anchored to her spot, thinking that she’d now be easier to see. But nobody came, and, as the hall continued to empty, Zhongmei had the feeling that nobody would. But for Huping’s family, she was alone in China’s immense capital, and the person who had vowed to take care of her had vanished.
    She went home with Huping’s family. Huping’s mother’s surname was Chen. Zhongmei called her Chen Aiyi, Auntie Chen, and his father Shu-shu, Uncle. She gratefully accepted their hospitality, knowing that if it wasn’t for them, she would have been out on the streets like a beggar. She had food to eat and a roof over her head, and the family was nice. Nonetheless, she wondered what to do. It wasn’t going to be a simple thing to find Policeman Li. Unlike today in China, she couldn’t just flick on her cell phone and give her parents a call to find out Li Zhongshan’s address. Almost nobody in Chinahad a home telephone in those days, much less a cell phone. On the rare occasion when they did make private calls, they used telephones tended by shopkeepers on the streets, paying a few fen per call. And in the