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Number 737:
Upon opening the door, I saw Ma Sunbo with a group of other students on the teaching platform. Chen Mengmeng quickly raced to the front of the classroom to join him and student monitors from other classes that had joined our class. Steinsman nodded at them, and he started the music that he had already been queued for this moment. I instantly recognized it as the beginning of the song "Could Be We’re in Love," by the Chicago group named the Cryan Shames. The colonel had been coaching Ma Sunbo and others during the weekends while I was gone. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. It was an incredibly beautiful version of the song and definitely one which I would have never believed the kids were capable of. Their love for me as well as their energy and enthusiasm was inspiring. I even wondered to myself whether there was something to the massive prayer effort that the colonel led on my behalf because I began to feel a sense of peace and contentment in the wake of my loss that was illogical. Moreover, it was gradually being supplanted by a sense that Li Mei still lived through my Qinglings, that through them she was pushing me away from despair and pulling me back into the arena of life. On Thursday afternoon, as classes were ending for the day and a spring shower gave way to sunshine and a beautiful rainbow gracing the sky of Qing Liang, Li Shing-Shing led me up to the fifth-floor music room. Again, I was entreated to the beautiful sounds of the Qinglings who had gathered to sing "The Rain, the Park and Other Things" by the Cowsills on queue as | entered the room. The colonel had recruited his students to join because a more mature-sounding voice was needed for the lead in addition to the youthful array of seventh and eighth grade backing vocals.
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