Stowaway

Barbara, an American orphan raised by missionaries in inland China and called Ching-Ching by everyone, is sent to Shanghai when the village is no longer safe. She gets separated from her escort on the way and ends up alone in the city. Sheltering from the rain in a parked car, she falls asleep, and the car is loaded onto a ship bound for America. Two adults on board take charge of the child and decide to marry so she has a proper home, the arrangement understood from the start to be temporary. From there the film turns into a romantic comedy, and sorting it out falls to Ching-Ching. It comes from the peak of Shirley Temple's popularity. The way the film pictures China, and the child's routines with the language, sit very much in their own period, and it is worth watching with that in mind.