Veteran soldier's 60-year journey home(2)

　　HOPE

After months of work, the police of Lei Guodian's home county of Linying, working with volunteers and Longyue, nailed down Lei's permanent residency status, a nursing home to take him in, train tickets and arrangements for his journey home.

On Thursday afternoon, Lei begged near Beijing West Railway Station one last time. It was a windy day. Lei couldn't keep his eyes open for dust swirling in the air. A young man walked by, squatted down and put some money into the empty bowl.

"Good luck!" said the young man, putting a stone on the money for fear it would be blown away.

"There are always kind people," said Lei. It's his favorite line.

Lei bid goodbye to his "neighbors" -- mostly street peddlers and beggars like him -- on Friday, the day before leaving.

Zhou Dequan, a young man who volunteered to accompany Lei on his journey home, helped him pack up in the afternoon. Volunteers bought Lei a suitcase and two backpacks, but Zhou found the old man's belongings in the shack to be too few to fill them.

Dressed new clothes brought to him by volunteers, Lei walked into Beijing West Railway Station on his crutches on Saturday afternoon. After all these years wandering around the station, this time, rather than being a beggar, he was a real passenger, with a ticket home in his pocket.

As the high-speed train started at 3:37 p.m., Lei looked out of the window, waved farewell to the volunteers seeing him off on the platform, and bid adieu to the capital city he had dwelled in but never belonged to.

　　HOME-BOUND JOURNEY

During his home-bound journey, Lei kept looking around in curiosity, for it was the fist time he had traveled on a high-speed train.

"Nervous? No, I'm getting home. Why should I be nervous?" said the old man, who hadn't set foot in his hometown for over half a century.

"I don't quite remember what it was like," he added with a sigh.

But when the train arrived at its terminal station of Luohe four hours later, Lei, supported by Zhou, got off as fast as he could manage.

Holding a banner that read "Welcome Home," local volunteers had been waiting at the exit for a while. As Lei arrived, a little boy presented the celebrity-for-a-day with another banner that read "Salute to a veteran." Learning what the hubbub was about, other passengers stopped to applaud.

"Thank you! Thank you!" cried Lei, making a military salute, his eyes glistening with tears.

Volunteers then helped him move into a public nursing home in Taichen Town, about 10 km from the village where Lei was born. He was to share a double room of 20 square meters and a television with his roommate. In the room, he owns a cabinet, a chair and a bed with brand new sheets, pillows and a quilt.

"The bed is bigger than the shack I used to live in," said Lei.

Local police registered the nursing home as a permanent residence for the ID-less veteran, who hadn't been registered throughout his drifting decades, so that he could re-submit an ID card, and apply for the basic living allowance from the government.

"I haven't seen the booklet for so many years," said Lei, his hands trembling, upon being handed the new household register by a policeman.

Next, Lei went to a barbershop to have his beard of 10 cm shaven off. "I wore a beard because I wanted to look older and beg for more money. Now in the nursing home nobody wears one, and I want to be like them," he explained.

"I'm lucky enough to be able to get home," he said. "But what about the others like me?"

"There are also many other veterans like old Lei," confirmed Zhou Dequan, who was glad to see his volunteer task done but sad to find another 90-year-old impoverished veteran just after leaving him. (Liu Shilei, Ding Yun and Ma Yichong contributed to this story)