On the evening of April 30, my buddies and I hung out at a cinema in Liuyan. After the film, on the way home we hit upon a phone by the road. We picked it up and it was an iPhone 8 Plus. We counted ourselves lucky, because we could trade the Apple phone for cash.

It is well known that you can talk to a smartphone even when it is locked. We decided to try to find the owner this way. Facing the device, I said, “Please give a call to Mother.” Instantly the phone dialled a number tagged Mum, and the next moment it got through.

I started, “We picked up the phone on the street. Is that the owner’s mother?”

A female voice came over, “Yes, speaking.”

Then I asked, “How can we return the phone to your son? Could you come and take it back? We are in Liuyan.”

Hearing that, the female on the other end was obviously startled. “Oh, my son has been on a business trip to Shiyan these days,” she said. “We live in Xi’an. Let me try to contact him. But if I can’t, will you please be kind enough to note down my address and post the phone back?”

I agreed before I hung up. While waiting, we compared notes and thought that if no one came and claimed it, we would sell the gadget on the spot. We would not bother to send it back to the woman at our expense.

About ten minutes later, the phone rang. A man said that it was his phone and that he would come and collect it right away. To help him to locate us by GPS, I added the man to my contact list on WeChat on my phone.

Five minutes later, a yellow SUV pulled over and stopped next to us. A smartly-dressed man jumped out. After checking and double-checking his identity, we returned the phone to the anxious owner. Deeply touched, he thanked us profusely. He dug a wad of cash out of his wallet and tried to put it into my hand.

We refused it, saying that no one else in the same situation would have done otherwise. We asked if he could take us back home in his sexy car. Since there were the five of us and his vehicle could not seat us all, he hailed two taxis for us and paid the fare in advance.

Before we parted, the man promised to give us a treat should we go to his home city, Xi’an, someday.