windows onto a seat and then dove in behind her. Zhongqin stood on the platform outside their window and gave last-minute instructions. “Don’t forget to keep your address in your pocket,” she said. “Don’t lose your ticket. Make sure you get plenty of pictures in Beijing. I want a picture of you in Tiananmen Square. See everything you can because you may never get another chance to go to Beijing in your whole life. Don’t forget the name of Ba’s friend who’s going to meet you. I’ve written it down on this piece of paper. Put it in your pocket right away so you won’t lose it. Remember you have to change trains in Harbin. You’ll arrive there at six in the morning and you have to wait until six that night to get the train to Beijing, so you’ll have the whole day in Harbin, but don’t wander too far from the train station because you might get lost. Harbin is a big city and there are bad people there. Stay close to Huping and be careful.”
With that, Zhongqin thrust two ice sticks that she’d bought on the platform through the window frame, giving one to Zhongmei and the other to Huping. Zhongmei took hers and held it in her hand, hardly noticing it. She was so excited that she’d barely listened to Zhongqin’s final instructions. She was off to Beijing! She’d go first thing to Tiananmen, the giant square in Beijing where huge crowds gathered to watch colossal fireworks exhibitions on China’s national day. She’d sung a song about Tiananmen often enough on the Baoquanling loudspeakers. Now she’d actually see it! And the ForbiddenCity, the vast palace with great curved roofs and marble statues of lions and tall rust-red walls where China’s emperors once ruled the country. Beijing had huge theaters, stadiums, parks, and the Great Hall of the People, where the country’s leaders had their meetings. It had everything that Baoquanling didn’t have, including China’s greatest dance academy, to which the country’s future stars were summoned. She would see it all, and she would be the first in her family, maybe the only one in her family, to do so!
Suddenly the train shook. It rocked back and forth and then creaked into motion. There was a piercing scream of metal scraping on metal as it began ever so slowly to move forward, and as it did, all of Zhongmei’s excitement turned at once into a terrible fear, the inescapable dread of the unknown, which she would have to face without her family, without Zhongling and without Zhongqin, who had been at her side ever since she was born and who was now walking alongside the train trying to keep pace as it gathered speed, shouting good-bye and good luck and have a smooth journey and be sure to write every day!
It was only when the train began to move that Zhongmei fully realized what she had decided to do and what it meant. Instantly she began to miss Baoquanling and all the things she knew of it, their narrow brick house, the little schoolhouse that was so cold in winter that the children wore mittens and earflaps to class, the sound of her own reedy voice carried by loudspeakers at noon over the wheat fields, the
tick tick
of her mother’s sewing machine as she made clothes for the family, her friends from her fourth-grade class who teased herabout being so skinny, the smell of cabbage at the entrance to her house and the warm broth simmering in the kitchen, the clucking of the chickens and the quacking of the ducks in the front yard, the warmth of the
kang
at night, Lao Lao, the smell of incense burning in front of her statue of Buddha, her mother and father even if she did barely see them, the view of the Heilong River and the distant shore of Russian Siberia on the other side, even Teacher Wang, her fourth-grade teacher, who rapped her ruler on the desk and glared at her when she whispered to her neighbor in class.
Tears now streamed down Zhongmei’s cheeks as she thought about it all, blurring her vision so that she could barely see Zhongqin,
With that, Zhongqin thrust two ice sticks that she’d bought on the platform through the window frame, giving one to Zhongmei and the other to Huping. Zhongmei took hers and held it in her hand, hardly noticing it. She was so excited that she’d barely listened to Zhongqin’s final instructions. She was off to Beijing! She’d go first thing to Tiananmen, the giant square in Beijing where huge crowds gathered to watch colossal fireworks exhibitions on China’s national day. She’d sung a song about Tiananmen often enough on the Baoquanling loudspeakers. Now she’d actually see it! And the ForbiddenCity, the vast palace with great curved roofs and marble statues of lions and tall rust-red walls where China’s emperors once ruled the country. Beijing had huge theaters, stadiums, parks, and the Great Hall of the People, where the country’s leaders had their meetings. It had everything that Baoquanling didn’t have, including China’s greatest dance academy, to which the country’s future stars were summoned. She would see it all, and she would be the first in her family, maybe the only one in her family, to do so!
Suddenly the train shook. It rocked back and forth and then creaked into motion. There was a piercing scream of metal scraping on metal as it began ever so slowly to move forward, and as it did, all of Zhongmei’s excitement turned at once into a terrible fear, the inescapable dread of the unknown, which she would have to face without her family, without Zhongling and without Zhongqin, who had been at her side ever since she was born and who was now walking alongside the train trying to keep pace as it gathered speed, shouting good-bye and good luck and have a smooth journey and be sure to write every day!
It was only when the train began to move that Zhongmei fully realized what she had decided to do and what it meant. Instantly she began to miss Baoquanling and all the things she knew of it, their narrow brick house, the little schoolhouse that was so cold in winter that the children wore mittens and earflaps to class, the sound of her own reedy voice carried by loudspeakers at noon over the wheat fields, the
tick tick
of her mother’s sewing machine as she made clothes for the family, her friends from her fourth-grade class who teased herabout being so skinny, the smell of cabbage at the entrance to her house and the warm broth simmering in the kitchen, the clucking of the chickens and the quacking of the ducks in the front yard, the warmth of the
kang
at night, Lao Lao, the smell of incense burning in front of her statue of Buddha, her mother and father even if she did barely see them, the view of the Heilong River and the distant shore of Russian Siberia on the other side, even Teacher Wang, her fourth-grade teacher, who rapped her ruler on the desk and glared at her when she whispered to her neighbor in class.
Tears now streamed down Zhongmei’s cheeks as she thought about it all, blurring her vision so that she could barely see Zhongqin,
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