What could I do? Where could I change money? Where could I make a call? Where could I go?
Overwhelmed by the torrent of questions rushing through my head and clouding my senses, I must have already seen her. But I hadn’t noticed her. By the time I was aware that she was staring at me, she was only a few steps in front of me: a young Chinese girl wearing a white shirt, cut-off jeans, and a small, sporty backpack.
She leaned forward to speak.
“I’m hun-ga-lee,” she said.
“What?” I asked, taken off guard by her sudden appearance directly in my path.
“I’m hun-ga-lee,” she repeated, leaning forward and speaking quietly, too quietly to hear. I was surprised and relieved to hear that she was speaking English, or at least something that faintly resembled English.
She had big, earnest eyes, which struck me immediately as very friendly and open. I was happy that she was talking to me, though I had no idea who she was or why she had approached me. Amid the flurry of thoughts competing for attention in my head, I decided for the briefest of moments that she must be someone from the school, come to pick me up and relieve my suffering. But I dismissed this idea immediately, as no one could possibly have known where I was. More likely she had simply noticed I was lost and was offering to help me.
“You’re who?” I asked in Chinese, smiling sheepishly at my inability to understand her and letting an awkward laugh escape my throat.
In the same hushed voice and locking my eyes with the same earnest gaze, she responded in Chinese, “I’m hungry…KFC!”
She was hungry. Now I got the message. I looked at my feet, supremely embarrassed that she had been forced to repeat her predicament three times while I had stared at her stupidly. As I focused on the ground between us and shifted my weight between my feet, she repeated herself a fourth time, now adding, “No mon-ay!”
I didn’t get it. She was well dressed, and we were standing inside a brand new, brightly-lit international airport in the middle of a thriving metropolis. This wasn’t a fitting setting for a beggar, and she didn’t look the part. I had already engaged her in a halting conversation of sorts and couldn’t just walk off at this point. Where would I go, anyway? I was still lost and had no idea where to begin looking for help. Maybe the young girl was trying to swindle some money out of me, but I couldn’t walk away.
The very first thing I had done upon arriving in
Undismayed, she tugged on my shirt sleeve and bade me to follow her toward a flight of stairs leading up to the next level of the airport. I meant both parts of what I had said to her. She seemed nice, with inescapable, friendly eyes, and I genuinely wanted to help her. She couldn’t be a career beggar. Surely she was just down on her luck and had run out of cash. It was obviously very embarrassing for her to tell me that she was hungry and needed money. “She’s too innocent,” I repeated to myself. “There’s no way she does this often.”
I also meant the second part of what I told her: I only had