In the Details of Passengers’ Lives, Signs of Hope and Prosperity 
 
 BEIJING — It was one of his first trips abroad, maybe even the first. Wang Moheng was just shy of his second birthday. His parents took him and two of his grandparents to the tropics of Malaysia, with its sunshine and moist air and blue skies. 
 
 “They said to other parents at our day care center, ‘We’re getting away from the bad air in Beijing for a while,’ ” said Xie Yongzhen, whose son has been a playmate of Moheng’s. 
 
 Other families from the center had joined them on vacation, she said, but returned on different flights. They bid farewell to Moheng’s family in Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, with the words, “See you in smoggy Beijing.” 
 
 The family of five was among 239 passengers and crew members to have vanished with Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which left Kuala Lumpur early Saturday for Beijing but never arrived. People from at least 13 countries were aboard the Boeing 777-200 jet, with the 153 Chinese passengers by far the most numerous. Of those from China, Moheng was the youngest. 
 
 The passengers bound for China represented a vivid cross-section of a nation in its fourth decade of a dizzying economic transformation: artists and corporate salespeople, foreign businesspeople and employees of technology firms. Many, like the Wang family, had been on holiday savoring the turquoise waters and white-sand beaches of Southeast Asia, a popular destination for Chinese. 
 
 There was a Canadian couple living in Beijing, the wife originally from China, returning from a vacation in Vietnam they had taken without their two young sons, who were being watched by a grandmother at home. The plane also carried a few large groups, including more than 20 painters and calligraphers who had been honored at an exhibition in Malaysia, and Chinese employees of an American semiconductor company traveling to China with Malaysian colleagues for a work meeting. 
 
 There were transients, people intending to just pass through Beijing. One was Paul Weeks, 39, a New Zealand engineer living in Perth, Australia, with his wife and two sons, one born just last year. He had been en route to Mongolia for an assignment with a mining and construction company. 
 
 “I’m taking it minute by minute,” his wife, Danica Weeks, told reporters in Perth. “I can’t think beyond the minute. I’ve got two young kids, and I have a 3-year-old asking, ‘When is Daddy going to Skype?’ ” 
 
 Relatives and friends of many of the Chinese passengers waited all of Sunday in a hotel ballroom in Beijing. Over and over, they asked Malaysia Airlines employees what had happened to their loved ones, only to get the same answer: No one knows. 
 
 A manager at Malaysia Airlines, Ignatius Ong, told reporters that 93 airline employees had arrived in Beijing to give assistance to the families. He said the airline would soon fly some of the family members to Malaysia. Many of the relatives had no passports, and by Sunday evening, they were filling out passport applications. 
 
 The frustration built. One man in the hotel showed a petition with more than 100 signatures to reporters, saying they were from relatives and friends who demanded more information. “We have been pushed to the point of helplessness by Malaysia Airlines,” he said. 
 
 People dealt with their anxiety in different ways. Ms. Xie, who knew young Moheng from the day care, said she was going to the Lama Temple in the city center to burn incense sticks and pray for him and his family. “Everyone is in deep shock and praying for a miracle,” she said. 
 
 Moheng’s family was among the growing number of Chinese who are cosmopolitan in experience and outlook, and who can indulge in the occasional exotic vacation. Wang Rui, the toddler’s father, worked in the Beijing office of Boston Consulting Group, an American company, and went by Rory. He was a graduate of the accounting program at Tsinghua University in Beijing and of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. The boy’s mother, Jiao Weiwei, worked at a Chinese software company. Her parents were also on the plane. 
 
 “I really can’t believe this,” one of the family’s neighbors, Hao Jingyu, wrote on her microblog. “As long as there is a silver lining of hope, we’ll keep praying.” 
 
 Among the many others in Beijing waiting for word were the wife and 10-year-old daughter of Maimaitijiang Abula, an ethnic Uighur painter and art teacher from the desert oasis town of Kashgar. The family had been living in Beijing for the past two years while Mr. Abula, 35, studied here at the Chinese Academy of Oil Painting. He was traveling in the group of more than 20 Chinese calligraphers and painters honored at an exhibition at the Malaysian Oriental Arts Center in Kuala Lumpur. 
 
 “She just can’t accept it,” a friend, Ku’erbanjiang Saimaiti, said on Sunday of Mr. Abula’s wife. “There’s no information at all at this moment.” 
 
 Mr. Abula was proud of his hometown, in the far west, and had done interpretation there for a state television film crew led by Mr. Saimaiti when they were shooting a documentary in 2010. Mr. Abula had joined the Chinese Communist Party and was often teased for it by friends. But he insisted he did not want to become an official, Mr. Saimaiti said, and he was “a responsible and kind artist.” 
 
 Mr. Abula had just won an award in Malaysia and posted a photograph of it online. 
 
 In an upscale apartment compound in Beijing called Central Park, neighbors of Muktesh Mukherjee and Xiaomo Bai, the Canadian couple, wondered what might have befallen them on the flight. Ms. Bai, 37, was originally from China and a graduate of Beijing Foreign Studies University. Mr. Mukherjee, 42, worked for Xcoal Energy & Resources, based in Pennsylvania. They took frequent beach vacations in Southeast Asia, often with their two sons. The younger one, Miles, turns 3 in May. 
 
 They also took romantic holidays without the children. In 2012, they flew to Rome and Greece to celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary. And this month, they had gone, just the two of them, to Vietnam on a beach getaway. That was how they ended up on Flight MH370. 
 
 “They were doting parents with two lovely boys,” said Paul Haenle, who lives in their building. 
 
 Ms. Bai’s Facebook page has photographs of the boys playing in the snow outside their apartment last month. She wrote, “The first snowfall of this winter!!!” The boys lie outside in the powder smiling. They are making snow angels. 
 
 Amy Qin and Andrew Jacobs contributed reporting from Beijing, and Michelle Innis from Sydney, Australia. Mia Li, Patrick Zuo and Kun Kun contributed research. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A 6 of the New York edition with the headline: In the Details of Passengers’ Lives, Signs of Hope and Prosperity 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Related Coverage Search for Jet Compounds the Mystery Image 
 
 Sign up for The Interpreter Subscribe for original insights, commentary and discussions on the major news stories of the week, from columnists Max Fisher and Amanda Taub. SEE SAMPLE Please verify you’re not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. * Required field You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times products and services. * Required field Thank you for subscribing. View all New York Times newsletters. An error has occurred. Please try again later. You are already subscribed to this email. View all New York Times newsletters. Sign Up ||||| This handout photo provided by the Wood family shows Philip Wood, an IBM executive who had been working in Beijing over the past two years at Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia during July 2013.... (Associated Press) 
 
 KELLER, Texas (AP) — The brothers of a North Texas man who was aboard the Malaysia Airlines flight that went missing over the South China Sea said Sunday their family is leaning on faith and holding out hope for good news about the man they last saw about a week ago. 
 
 Philip Wood, an IBM executive who had been working in Beijing over the past two years, had recently returned home from Asia before his next assignment in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. 
 
 Wood came back to Texas to visit his family before relocating to the Malaysian capital, his brother, James Wood said. 
 
 The Saturday flight was supposed to be his final one to China's capital. James Wood told the Associated Press during an interview at the family's home in the Dallas suburb of Keller, Texas, that Philip Wood was supposed to make the final arrangements there for his relocation to Malaysia. 
 
 "This was going to be his last trip to Beijing. It just happened to be this one," James Wood said. 
 
 "There is a shock, a very surreal moment in your life," Wood added. 
 
 "Last Sunday, we were all having breakfast together. And now, you can't," he said during a phone interview earlier in the day, as the family got ready to attend church. Their faith, he said, is what's helping the family through this trying time. 
 
 "My brother, our family, we are Christians. Christ above else is what's keeping us together," he said. 
 
 Philip Wood, 50, was one of three Americans who were aboard the Boeing 777 when it lost contact with air traffic control as it was cruising on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 227 passengers and 12 crew members. It isn't known with whom the other two Americans, Nicole Meng, 4, and Yan Zhang, 2, were traveling. 
 
 James Wood described his brother, a technical storage executive at IBM Malaysia, as an "outgoing, gregarious, friendly, loving man" who was excited about moving to Malaysia. 
 
 "He loved to travel while he was over there. His job gave him the opportunity to do that," James Wood said. 
 
 James Wood said that his brother is divorced and that one of his sons attends Texas A&M University and that another is an alumnus of that university. 
 
 He also pointed out that, along with his brother, members of hundreds of other families were aboard Flight MH370. 
 
 "I just wanted to say to all the other families that are around the world: We're hurting. We know you're hurting just as much, and we're praying for you," he said. 
 
 The family has been contacted by the U.S. Department of State and the embassy in Malaysia, Wood added. 
 
 A second brother, Tom Wood, said the events have left "a real hole in our family," but he said they aren't giving up hope. 
 
 "You never know," he said. "I'm not gonna close that door until we need to close it completely." 
 
 So far, no explanation as to what happened to the plane is available. There was no distress signal before the plane vanished from the radar. 
 
 The family is watching CNN, BBC and other news stations, waiting for small pieces of information as they trickle down, he said. 
 
 But, "with a situation like this, when a plane just disappears ... it leaves you with a lot of questions," he said. 
 
 ___ 
 
 AP writer Juan Carlos Llorca contributed from El Paso.
– As 40 ships and 34 planes from nine different countries continue the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a Texas family is praying for 50-year-old Philip Wood, one of three Americans among the 239 people on board. Wood, a technical storage exec with IBM, had been transferred from Beijing to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, reports WFAA, and had returned to Texas to visit family before relocating. The AP reports his Saturday flight was supposed to be his final one to China's capital, where he had planned to wrap up loose ends before moving. Wood is divorced with two sons, one a student at Texas A&M University and the other an alumnus of that school. "Do you want to know how it feels to lose a son at the age of 50?" his mother says. "It's devastating. But, I know in my heart that Philip's with God and I plan to be there with him because I have a deep faith in my God." The two other Americans listed on the flight manifest are Nicole Meng, 4, and Yan Zhang, 2, and it's not clear whether they may have been traveling with American parents with dual citizenship, the New York Times notes. The Times, meanwhile, looks at some of the other passengers aboard the flight: They hailed from at least 13 countries and included a Chinese family of five who took a vacation to get away from Beijing's bad air; a 20-member group of Chinese calligraphers and painters who had been recognized at a Kuala Lumpur arts center; and a Canadian couple on their way back to their home in Beijing—and two young sons—after a romantic holiday in Vietnam.