A 4-year-old English schoolgirl who attached a letter to a balloon has received an answer from a man in southern China, nearly 6,000 miles away. Alice Maines of Manchester launched her balloon in July, during her school’s summer fair. The idea was to see whose balloon would travel the farthest. Last month, a letter and photograph arrived from Xie Yufei, 26, of Guangzhou, 75 miles north of Hong Kong. “I picked up this balloon when my friends and I were playing on August 25,” he reported. The kids were elated. “You could have heard a pin drop when I showed the children on a map how far the balloon had flown,” said teacher Jason Redmond.