This girl’s name was Maoping Liu (刘茂萍), nine years old. She popped into the office at noon and played with me. I took some photos of Maoping. I got to know that she loved reading story books and her favourite story was “the fox and the wolf” during the interview. She is always A student as well. Her twin sister studies in Class 1, Grade 3. Maoping came across well. I asked whether she had books to read after class and she said yes.

Her parents were Three Gorges immigrants and ran into debt in the process of building their migrant houses. Luckily enough, their houses survived the earthquake. Her mum was a street sweeper and her dad was an employed laborer, who would come home once every few months.

Later on, from a teacher, I learned that the immigrant families were usually embarrassed at the state of their finances.