It was an overcast day when Meilin Zhang decided to make her journey to America. To say she was nervous was quite the understatement -- here she was, only sixteen years of age, making a continental journey from her homeland to a foreign land, a land she had only heard about from books and television. Being from rural China, all she knew was farm work, and she was tired of it.
So one night, in early May, Meilin snuck out of her family’s old home and to a nearby city to get a bus to Beijing. It had been her first time ever being in a big city, and she wanted to take all of it in at once. Despite it being almost four in the morning, so many things were still open. Hotels, bookstores, restaurants. She had never seen so many lights before, ever, and she found herself impressed by the sheer amount of them.
But she had to keep her head, and in this case she needed to keep her mind on the fact she needed a place to stay for the night. As much as she wanted to drop in on the agency in the middle of the night and get her life started, it just wasn't viable.
She found a ratty looking motel on the outskirts of the city, in a dimly lit area where it seemed she was the only girl not wearing tall heels and soliciting "services," and slipped inside; asking for a room with one bed and the location of the ice machine. Once she received the card to unlock the door, she made her way to her room, laid down on the bed, and promptly passed out for the next few hours.
