enlarge John Patriquin/Staff Photographer

Cai Xong Zhang sets a table at the Stir Crazy restaurant in Scarborough, where she puts in long days. “I want my son to have a great future,” Zhang said. “So we work very hard for the future.”

I BELIEVE EDITOR'S NOTE: For some people, passion and commitment to an ideal is more than something for the holiday season. For them, faith in that ideal is a touchstone for their lives. Fourth of five parts.

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He knows rhymes by heart, for one. He has an ear for music, too, and will solemnly sit in front of the stereo, listening for long stretches at a time.

There is that one thing he does, though, that makes her tear up each time.

"Hwei jya l ma?" he asks in Mandarin.

You coming home now?

Zhang has not seen James since he was about 3 months old. He is being raised by her sister-in-law in China, while she and her husband live in Maine, running the Stir Crazy restaurants in Portland and Scarborough.

James is smiling and pink-cheeked in photos, surrounded by relatives who give him the round-the-clock attention that Zhang would not be able to provide, working the long hours she does, seven days a week.

But, "when I think about it, it is very difficult," Zhang said forlornly on a recent afternoon, as the last of the lunch crowd paid their checks at the Scarborough restaurant.

People ask Zhang how she can bear living apart from her son when he is so young. Zhang -- who heard her son's first sentences over the phone and is watching him grow and walk through pictures -- frequently wonders that herself.

But when she tries to approach the situation logically, Zhang still thinks she made the best decision. For her, this is the sacrifice she must make to become a successful businessperson in her adopted country and build a better life for her family.

"I want my son to have a great future," Zhang said. "So we work very hard for the future."

Her hope is that this time next year, she will get the immigration papers straightened out for her parents so they can move to the United States, live with her and her husband at their home in Freeport and help raise James -- as is customary in many Chinese families.

Her friend John Wainer has been helping her with the application for her parents. Wainer, a literacy volunteer from North Yarmouth who has been tutoring Zhang and her husband, Song Qi Zhong, in English since they came to Maine in 2000, said he has watched the separation take its toll on the couple.

"Family is very important to them, and from what I can see, they both really, really love James," Wainer said. "Song is very proud of him."

Zhang, a petite woman of 34, counts down the days until the family is reunited, pulling out pictures of James during slow times at the restaurant.

But before she knows it, the restaurant is busy again and businesspeople in suits are sitting down at tables, and the telephone is ringing with orders for take-out dumplings and crab Rangoon.

In many ways, her 12-hour work schedule is a good thing, keeping her occupied during the day. She is in charge of the Scarborough restaurant, which she and her husband opened in November. Zhong, who is 37, works at their flagship restaurant on Congress Street in Portland, which they opened in 2004.

Zhang moves through the restaurant with the ease of someone who grew up in the business. Her parents ran their own restaurant for years in the city of Nanning, dishing up Hunan and Szechuan cuisine.

When she and her husband, who had apprenticed as a cook, got married, they knew they would start a restaurant together. For a while, they thought it would be in Nanning. Then came the opportunity to move to Freeport, where her husband's sister lived, and jobs at the China Rose restaurant waited.

Instantly, Zhang knew she would stay.

"U.S. is a pretty nice country," said Zhang, who became a citizen last year. "I feel there are a lot of good things, like the law. It is very different from China."

When Zhang became pregnant with James, she thought she could have the best of both worlds: a family life and a business.

Maybe she would find a good day care center to watch James while she worked, while bringing him to the restaurant with her on other days.

But after James was born in late October 2005, and she took time off...