Xu Ping let go of the poor child. “Sorry, wrong person.”
The kid’s friends pushed him along their way while grumbling under their breaths.
The old man selling newspapers asked, “Looking for someone?”
“Yes,” Xu Ping replied, “I’m looking for my brother. He’s missing.” Meanwhile, he took out the newspaper he had just put away and pointed at Xu Zheng’s photo. “Have you seen him, sir?”
The man put on his glasses and squinted before shaking his head. “No, ‘fraid not.”
Xu Ping thought he would be disappointed, but perhaps the disappointment so far had been too much. He just nodded as though he had expected the answer. “Thank you.”
The old man pitied him. “Ya called the police yet? Times are a-changin’, I tell ya.
My boy was sixteen when he joined the Great Linkup and went all the way to Guangzhou, and he came back safe and sound.
A lotta traffickers nowadays, y’know, and when they see a nice lookin’ kid they grab ‘em and sell ‘em out in the boondocks. They don’t care if the family’s sad or not.”