1February 2016, Harbin Railway Stationon the eve of the New Year, the train to Beijing pulled into Harbin Railway Station as a thousand people jostled at the gate, bound for a thousand homes. The babble grew fierce—it was time, the time had come. Song helped River into his backpack and handed him their bag of snacks for the journey. One at a time, she loaded up the rest of their things, small and large—several bags looped around each shoulder, the biggest one on her back, looming over her head.
As the gate opened, she picked up the rice sacks she’d stuffed with winter clothes and cooking supplies, two in each hand, and shouted, “Follow me, son.”
The mass of people surged—young people in their school tracksuits, rich people in shoes that had never touched the earth, retired people and other people who collected dust, working in the sun—and Song moved forward with the determination of a mule. The bags creaked around her, straining against their straps. Someone stepped on her heel and she felt the pile of bags sway and she leaned to the other side and willed them back into place. She made sure River was beside her and there he was, as she knew he would be, hugging her side, grasping at her sleeve.
“Stay with me,” Song said anyway, and they fought through the gate and squeezed onto the escalator and spilled out onto the platform where the train waited and the tracks stretched clear to the setting sun.
People dashed toward the open doors, shouting as they pushed their suitcases past Song, and she crouched and began to run, too. A bag slipped down her shoulder, forcing her to run like she had one leg, lopsided. The pots tied to the bag clanged in warning. Making her way down the platform, she peered through the windows of the cars. She had booked their tickets two months ago but with every migrant worker in China doing the same thing, the only tickets left had been for standing room on the slow train.
It happened every year, like birds flying south and salmon swimming upstream; the nation’s people heeded the call of the Spring Festival and flooded the railways and airways and highways by the millions to rejoin their families. Now, as Song searched for standing room, she saw only people—braced against armrests, sitting on suitcases, pressed back-to-back in the aisles.
The conductor swung out of a doorway as Song passed. “All aboard! Everybody squeeze in,” he bellowed in Song’s ear, and she stopped at the next car and shouted for River over the whistle of the train.
“Quickly! Get on,” she panted, looking up and down the platform. It was emptying, the last of the passengers pushing into the train.
“Squeeze in, squeeze in,” the conductor urged, pulling people into his car, herding them closer together.
The train hissed and spat and the conductor hollered, “If you want to make it home for the Spring Festival, for heaven’s sake, squeeze. Otherwise you’ll be left behind.”
Song lunged for the nearest doorway. Setting one foot inside the car, she forced herself into a wall of bodies. “Make room, la! Make room, o!”
The bodies were warm and moist from simmering inside the train. Song pushed at them until they yielded and she kept pushing until both of her feet and all of her bags were inside the train. She set down the rice sacks.
“Come on, River. Your turn,” she puffed, sticking her hand through the doorway.
River shook his head, staring at the people crammed in the train corridor, toeing the edge of the doorway, and they blinked back at him like goldfish.
The door sighed and began to slide shut. With a yelp, River sprang toward her and she caught him by the elbows and pedaled backward, ignoring the gasps of the people behind her.
“You’re squeezing me to death,” someone snapped, pushing back at her with a sweaty forearm.
Song whirled around, growling, “Then get out of my way.”
“Ma, there’s no room,” River said, and Song shuffled her feet and shrank back. River pushed forward but one foot remained stranded on the top step. The door bumped against his leg as it closed. It jerked open.
Song angled her shoulders and sucked in her stomach, fighting to make more space. As the door reversed, sliding shut once more, River pulled his foot onto the train. He wedged himself between Song and the wall just before the door clamped shut, catching the corner of his backpack.
“River!” Song pried at the door, trying to force it open. “Pull, son! Pull!”
River pulled at his backpack and Song seized it with both hands and yanked with all her might. The door hiccupped, stuttered open, and Song freed River before it slammed shut. The floor lurched and the wheels screeched as the train pulled out of the station.
River inched toward her, his snack bag rustling as he clutched it to his chest. She lowered the rest of her bags and placed her hand on the hump of his neck, which was shy and brown like a camel. Gazing at the pile at her feet, at everything in the world that belonged to them, she exhaled into his hair.
“We made it, son. We’re on our way.”
He rested his soft cheek against her rough coat as she ruffled his bangs. She had cut them while he was practicing the piano, taking the fastest route—a straight line, one snip—so that they sat like a curtain rod above his eyebrows. When he peeked up at her, his face was bright, eager to please—he was just a boy, after all, eleven years old—but it was a careful face, too, because of his weak lungs.
To keep him safe, Song had taught him to avoid elements and extremes. He had learned not to run too fast or jump too high and as time passed how he survived his condition became who he was. He moved through life without laughing too loudly or speaking too boldly or wishing too freely or fervently. When he did go outside, he stiffened his arms and balled his hands into fists, hunching his back like he knew what the world thought of him and he believed it.
If that was why River made himself smaller, then for the same reason Song made herself bigger. She was the mother. It was up to her to clear a way for River, and all he had to do was step back and let her.
But their lives were changing, Song knew. It was obvious at a glance that her son was meant for more—those ears, protruding from the sides of his head, perfectly formed to scoop the music right out of the air.
“That sink runs water in G,” he would mention as he dried his hands. That spoon clattered to the floor in A-flat and that lightbulb flicked on in D-sharp and that tinker hollered under their window in a hoarse C while the keys over his shoulder jangled in a brassy F. That sports car cruised to the stoplight in an easy B and that three-wheeled wagon—the third wheel was the bicycle, powered by a man whose eyes seemed two sizes too big for his face—creaked along in E, loaded with young coconuts.
Her son had dimples like her husband’s, and his amber eyes caught the light like hers did. Those eyes did the laughing for him. “Mama, look. Look at me,” he’d say before shooting a pea out of one nostril or playing the “Rondo alla Turca” a half step down.
“Well, Mozart didn’t have a bedtime,” he’d retort when she told him it was time to stop practicing.
When the walls of the train stopped juddering, people began venturing deeper into the cars, hoping for more space in the aisles, maybe even an abandoned seat. They camped outside the bathroom and dozed underneath the hot water dispenser and the corridor to Song’s left was just as clogged. Everywhere she looked, there was already someone there.
Sweat pricked Song’s eyes and her arms were numb, the tips of her fingers tingling. They would be here all night and her back would snap if she didn’t find somewhere to sit. She noticed that the metal door leading to the next car was propped open, leaving an empty space behind it, a small triangle formed by the door and the wall.
“Come,” she said, picking up a bag. It swung around her body, clipping the jowls of a fat man crouched against the wall, sweating over his phone.
“Are you people blind? Who needs so many things for a few days?”
“We’re moving house,” she retorted, holding the bag higher as she stepped over suitcases and squeezed past bodies. She reached for the metal door and the people around her shifted, shooting her the same look—you people. She wrestled the bag off her back and the sudden sensation of lightness made her dizzy.
“Sit on it, River,” she instructed, shoving the bag into the corner. She elbowed her way back to the doorway to fetch their remaining bags, and she piled them up beside River and sat atop them with her toes skimming the ground, her chin lifted like she was a queen on a throne. She leaned forward to pull the door open, creating a barrier between them and the world.
As people on the other side of the window yelled into their phones and played videos at maximum volume, Song calmly made a list of ingredients in her head—minced pork and green onion and ginger, black vinegar and garlic for dipping. Once they arrived in Beijing, there were things she had to cook to make the new place smell like home.
Copyright © 2026 by Sophie Chen Keller. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
