Mingmei Yip - The Nine Fold Heaven

Soon I had crossed the street and stood next to the entrance. Then I saw that the flyers pasted on the outside wall all had headlines like, MISSING SON; MISSING DAUGHTER; LOOKING FOR MY BABY SON; or HAVE YOU SEEN MY LITTLE DAUGHTER? It was these that the women had been reading!

My heart began to pound as I wondered why these flyers were here and who had posted them. One that was unusually long caught my attention. Attached was a picture of a girl of three or four, smiling sweetly into the camera. Her hair was fastened by a ribbon on the top of her head, then spilled in all directions like the branches of a coconut tree. Big Chinese characters were embroidered on her dress: Lucky child.

The flyer read:

Ho Meili, girl, our four-year-old little darling, has been missing since November 12 last year. We had taken her shopping for toys at the Sincere department store on Nanking Road

Meili picked out a doll she wanted. After we paid, we turned around to give Meili the doll, but she had disappeared. The manager and the police searched everywhere, but our darling girl could not be found. Now we both cry whenever we look at the doll.

Meili is a beautiful, bubbly, happy child dearly loved by us and doted on by her grandparents—many people envied us having this little girl with her angelic face. She loved to sing, dance, and draw.

Since her disappearance, Meili’s grandparents have become depressed, and we fear they may be suicidal. Now we have to hide all Meili’s things so as not to remind them.

Please, if anyone has seen Meili or heard about a lost little girl, please contact us immediately. We will offer a big sum of money, and heaven will bless you with good fortune and longevity for saving not only a little girl, but also her parents and grandparents. Thank you.

If you have seen her, please visit or write to the address below….

In the past, when I read or heard bad news like this, I’d have said nonchalantly, “So sad,” and left it at that. But now I was a mother, even though I’d never seen my son. However, both his presence—in my dreams—and absence—in my life—had unexpectedly awakened in me a love I could never have imagined I could feel.

Therefore, it was hard for me to believe that now I actually felt a great sympathy surging from my heart. But it was the second poster that was truly heartbreaking.

Our adorable son, Yang Ming, five years old, together with our precious daughter and Yang Ming’s twin sister, Yang Feng, both vanished like the morning dew. This happened July 10th when my wife and I took them to the Guohua Elementary School.

With our very eyes, my wife and I saw our precious dragon and phoenix twins walk hand in hand through the school’s entrance, smiling at us as they let the door close behind them. It was the last smile of theirs that we would ever see.

I remembered that as we were waiting with her in front of the school, our little girl’s butterfly hair pin fell to the ground and one of her classmates picked it up and handed it back to her.

But alas, when we went to pick them up after school in the afternoon, the teachers and staff said they never saw them at school that day. Not even Yang Feng’s classmate the little girl who picked up my daughter’s hair pin, who said she did not remember at all. They all acted like we were crazy.

But that was not the end of our tragedy. One day a man responded to our flyer and called to tell us he knew where our son and daughter are. Needless to say we were elated beyond words and would be more than happy to pay his exorbitant fee.

Alas, we were puzzled when he took us to a bridge. The man pointed to the distance. “See, your children are there, now pay me and you can reunite with them.”

We paid him, then dashed toward the two small, half-naked children. Then we saw that they were kneeling with a big bowl in front of them. They were not our children, but two pathetic little beggars asking for money and food! We were even more shocked to realize that the girl’s leg was bent and the boy was blind!

Later, we were told that children are kidnapped and sold to black societies that control Shanghai’s beggar ring. The gangsters would maim the children so they could beg better for them—and no one would want to adopt them.

After we learned about this racket, we looked at begging children all over Shanghai, in case our two little treasures were among them. But we never found them. When we asked again for the police to help, they warned us that we better not waste their time and effort by calling again.

We know we will probably not see our dragon and phoenix again in this life. So our only hope is to have a union with them in our next.

Please wish us good luck.

With a heavy heart, I kept looking over the posters until my attention was drawn to a tattered one stuck to the low corner of the wall. It looked as if it had been written some time ago. The calligraphy looked surprisingly refined—and familiar! I was astonished to read:

Dear Jinjin,

Where are you and your mother? Are you inside this institution or in the other world? I asked here several times, but nobody seems to care. Their answer is either there’s no one with this name, so look for your son elsewhere, or we are not the city’s information center, so stop bothering us.

So anyone please, if you know the whereabouts of Lung Jinjin, please write to me at this PO Box address. I’ll pay whatever you ask.

I felt my heart almost stop beating. Was this really Jinying looking for our love son, Jinjin? Or was it another child who shared the same name with my baby? But I was pretty sure that the “father” was Jinying because it was his handwriting. He must not have signed his name because he didn’t want others to know who he was—the Flying Dragons’ boss’s son—and that he secretly had a son.

If the “father” was Jinying, that meant he also suspected or even had news that our son was still alive, possibly living an anonymous and miserable life inside this horrible institution. What to do? Should I go in and ask? But had they given him a different name? Jinjin was the name Master Lung gave to his grandson; besides him, only Jinying and myself knew it. My singing teacher Madame Lewinsky, who’d helped me give birth to Jinjin but told me that he was stillborn, would have picked a name for him herself.

I had never even seen Jinjin, so even if he was inside this institution, I didn’t think I’d recognize him. And I couldn’t ask him into my dreams—for it was totally up to him when he would visit me. Even if he did, how could a baby describe his whereabouts?

I burst into tears. Maybe soon it would be my turn to post something desperate and tragic on this wall to vent my hopelessness. I took out a handkerchief and dabbed my eyes.

A woman’s voice rose in the air, giving me a jolt. “Miss, is your child one of these?”

Alarmed that anyone might know about my secret, I immediately stopped crying and conjured up a sweet, friendly smile. “Oh, no, just reading.”

The stranger was in her late twenties, with a plain, easily forgettable face and a skinny figure.

She cast me a curious once-over. “But then why are you crying?”

I chuckled a little. “Oh, because they are so heartbreaking. In fact, I’m looking for my best friend’s child.”

This time I gave her a once-over. She definitely didn’t have the distraught look of a mother searching for a lost child.

“Then is your child one of these, miss?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I’m a journalist, just come here to find something to write about.”