Daughter of China by Hope C. Flinchbaugh

Author:Hope C. Flinchbaugh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2002-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

Fifteen

When I was certain I wasn’t being followed, I left the park and entered the crowded, noisy streets of Shanghai. Mother Su’s directions took me down Nanjingxi Lu. It was the street I’d told Liko about, the one that was one long shopping mall!

I was so hungry it was difficult to take in everything around me. Music, unfamiliar to me, practically screamed from loudspeakers, mingling with the rumble of big city buses and the buzzing sound of people talking all around me. The sidewalks seemed wider than the street, and there were so many people I couldn’t tell where the sidewalk and street met. It amazed me to see no cars or taxis, only buses. Pedestrians jammed the rest of the street, leaving little room for the few bicycles trying to plow through the crowds.

Men and women in business suits hurried along, carrying briefcases and folders. Most people carried shopping bags. Flashing neon lights and ‘‘on sale’’ posters hung in beautifully decorated store windows stocked with cosmetics, fine jewelry, and Western clothing and shoes. I saw television screens with writing and games on them. Immediately I remembered the computers I had heard about in school. Teenagers were gathered around these computer and video-game shops, pushing and crowding their way to the front. I felt as though I had been dropped on another planet.

I wanted to linger outside the restaurants teeming with the delicious smells of different Chinese cuisine. Vendors and peddlers could be seen everywhere, scurrying to cover their goods before the rain started.

I read the street signs, looking for Second Street. Some cyclists shouted back and forth to each other, and the pedestrians seemed to be going in all directions. I had no path to walk in and found myself pushing my way through the congestion like everyone else.

Then I saw Second Street. I turned the corner to find myself part of a large crowd of people gathered on the sidewalk. They were all staring at a disturbance in the back of the department store. I tried to pick my way through to go around them.

‘‘Where did you find the baby?’’ asked a man from the center of the crowd.

‘‘In that box,’’ answered the man up front, pointing to a cardboard box inside the glass doors that led into the rear of the department store.

‘‘Is it a boy?’’ asked another.

‘‘A girl,’’ came the answer.

‘‘Oh, what a pity, poor thing. Left alone in a doorway of a department store.’’

I couldn’t believe my ears! I quietly slid along the wall toward the front to get a look at the foundling. The baby had fallen asleep in the man’s arms.

‘‘She doesn’t look to be a week old yet,’’ said a woman in the front. ‘‘What are you going to do with her?’’

‘‘She’s supposed to go to the police.’’

‘‘Yes, and they’ll take her to Shanghai Orphanage. You know how it is there.’’

‘‘The newspapers said they’ve changed the orphanage into a better facility now,’’ said the woman in the front.

‘‘A better sightseeing facility,’’ answered the man holding the baby.

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