Fish bone fossils, wads of money, wine, infants wrapped in blankets ... they have nothing in common, but they could all be on the list at the lost-and-found office in the Beijing Railway Station, one of the busiest transportation hubs in the Chinese capital.

Two pieces of fish bone fossils, mounted in picture frames, were sent into the office after being found on a train arriving from Harbin on Jan 22.

"Some people return for things that are, in our eyes, not too valuable, but that turned out to be of great value to the owner," said Zhang Fan, a clerk in the lost-and-found office at the station.

Once, a daughter came back for a crutch, simply because it was a gift she had given to her father. A man returned for a calligraphy piece with a Chinese character, "fo", or the Buddha, written by the abbot of a temple in North China's Shanxi province.

Months ago, a bag "that looked like nobody wanted it" was found in the square in front of the station. "It looked suspicious, so we put it through the security machine and then opened it," said Zhang Fan, a worker in the office. They found 80,000 yuan ($12,660) inside, wrapped up in raggedy clothes.

Zhang said they found the amount too big to handle and notified the police.

Li Chengsheng, who is in charge of the office, told China Daily recently that they have to handle eight to 10 cases of abandoned or lost children and infants, some as young as two days old, on trains or at stations every year.

The office has to send the infants to a welfare institute, if nobody comes to claim them.

The lost-and-found office said it takes pride in the happy moments when lost items are returned to their delighted owners.

"Our observation is that the owners are generally mightily relieved. That is understandable, since they've lost something and managed to find it again," Li said.

Cases involving large amounts of lost property are not unusual. A worker who just returned from Iraq left behind $2,300, bottles of imported wine and two Longines watches, stuffed into socks, in the waiting room.

Zhang also recalled an aged couple returning to the station office to hand in a handbag that they had picked up by mistake. It had more than 3,000 yuan inside. "They were anxious and took pains to explain that they were not thieves."

The office receives at least one item waiting to be retrieved every day, according to staff members. The amount increases to more than 10 items every day during the Spring Festival travel period every year.

Located at the bustling exit of the station, the lost-and-found office has been in service since the station was established in 1959. With tens of thousands of passengers arriving and departing from the station every day, the amount being stored in the lost-and-found office is also increasing daily.

Passengers lose luggage or other possessions most often on trains that have just arrived, on security-checking machines or under seats in waiting rooms.

Chai Yulan, who worked at the office decades ago, said that most of the items in the office in the 1990s were of little worth from today's perspective.

"Most were items in daily use, like umbrellas in summer and gloves in winter. The gloves are not made of fur, by the way. People simply could not afford it. Some people also came back for maize flour or bags of rice they left behind," Chai said.

The storage was smelly at that time because it was filled with dirty clothes and quilts, Chai said.

However, as the years went by, the value of items registered at the office increased. With prosperity, people began to lose digital products and credit cards, instead of cups and small change.

According to the office, the most common items on the lost-and-found list are suitcases containing clothes and local specialties, quilts, laptops and digital gadgets, such as cell phones, cameras and MP3 players.

Contact the writers at xuwei@chinadaily.com.cn and xindingding@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 03/28/2012 page7)