Has anyone seen our child?

In China, 190 children are snatched every day - more than twice the number taken in England and Wales in a year. The Chinese government does not acknowledge the extent of the problem, or the cause. The Single Child Policy has made it essential to have a son, leading to the abortion of more than 40 million girls and setting the price on a boy's head at more than six months' wages.

By Clare Dwyer Hogg
Sunday September 23, 2007
The Observer


The events of this summer mean that every one of us will have considered, for a moment at least, the horror of having a child snatched. The emotions parents must endure aren't hard to imagine: the creeping numbness of realisation; the shock turning to panic as the minutes tick by; the helpless reliance on the goodwill of others, particularly the police. In Europe, the cases of child kidnapping are sporadic. In China, however, they are increasingly common. Around 190 children are snatched every day - stolen from their beds and the streets. This is more than double the average number of abductions recorded in England and Wales over a whole year. If 190 people were dying every day from the same illness, you'd call it an epidemic. And that's exactly what it is, except nobody really wants to talk about it. Especially the Chinese government.

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The government doesn't want to talk about it because it's a short step from fully acknowledging the kidnappings to having to address why they're happening. Which means entering dangerous territory - a root cause of such large numbers of children being snatched is the fact that having a son in China is a necessity. He carries the family name, he is the child who will provide for his parents as they age. A daughter will leave the family to marry into another name, passively obliterating her own family line and leaving her relatives without the assurance of help in old age. The One Child Policy - which Save The Children calls a 'mass, live experiment in family life which is unique in the history of the world' - has resulted in prohibitive family-planning laws in China: prospective parents must have a birth permit before conceiving, and while rural families are allowed a second child if their first is a girl, urban families must pay a fine for flouting the one-child rule. And if you haven't had an abortion to get rid of your female child (although it is now illegal, around 40m girls have been selectively aborted since the One Child Policy was instituted in 1979), how can you be sure to get a son? Sometimes the only choice seems to be to buy a stolen child, gender already determined.
'I did think about suicide,' says Li, a woman in her early twenties. 'I missed my child so much.' It has been a year and a half since her little boy, Chen Jie, was taken. He was five years old, playing at his grandmother's vegetable stall in Sichuan, when Zhang, a trusted neighbour, passed by. Offering to bring Chen Jie back to his mother - and persuading the reluctant boy with the promise of sweets - Zhang left, taking the child with him. This was the last time Chen Jie was seen by his family. Later, when parents and grandmother realised that neither had the little boy, they ran to Zhang's door, desperately hoping he was there. Calmly, Zhang claimed that after giving him money for sweets, he'd left Chen Jie at the apartment block. Their suspicion of his involvement in their son's disappearance could not be translated into evidence - even though when the grandmother confronted him later, she said he yelled, 'I sold the kid, OK?' After police questioning, however, Zhang was free to go about his normal business, unlike the Chens.

'Sometimes I don't want to carry on my life,' Li continues. She has come close to killing herself many times, she says, but is always stopped by the thought of how disappointed her family would be. Culturally, the responsibility for the family weighs heavily: Li and her husband, Lung, already feel they have let their parents down by depriving them of the grandson who would carry on the family name. Once, Li admits, she was ready to jump from the top of a public washroom, but the owner of the building dragged her home. 'She tried to prevent me from thinking that way,' Li says. 'She knew a story in which a mother who lost her child killed herself by jumping off a building. After her death, the father sold the house and lost contact with everyone. Never came back. Later, their friend found the child and brought him home, but the whole family was gone.' Li has thought about this tragic twist many times. 'If you die, and your child comes back one day, he loses his mother forever.'

Li and Lung Chen are determined to do anything to get their son back, but their options are severely limited. The media is too close to the government to be used as a tool, and even joining a parents' support group must be done in secret. They saved up 600RMB - that's £40 - to put Chen Jie's picture on a poker set that features missing children on every card; in their desperation they're gambling on gamblers. Putting up 'missing' posters of Chen Jie, his eyes staring out brightly even from a photocopy, was risky because it's forbidden (the authorities aren't keen to have the reminder of missing children on show), but they did it. Hiring a private detective cost money, but they did that, because the detective has a reputation for successful rescue missions. Speaking to Westerners about their plight was downright dangerous, but they've done that, too.

The production team behind the Emmy Award-winning documentary The Dying Rooms, which in 1995 uncovered the neglect of abandoned children in Chinese state-run orphanages, went back to China this year. The idea behind the first documentary was that China's One Child Policy, the population stabiliser, had led to the abandonment of girls - this, and their subsequent abuse in some cases, was recorded as tragic confirmation. More than 10 years later, the team - this time headed by debut director Jezza Neumann - went back to investigate another consequence of the One Child Policy: the tens of thousands of Chinese children being trafficked every year.

Needless to say, if you're making a documentary about child abduction, looking for the abductors, the need for undercover filming is paramount. Sim cards were changed after every call; the production team met to discuss plans in locations that had plenty of exits; they all arrived and left from different directions. The Chinese word for Westerner is gwailo, a once derogatory term, which can be translated as 'ghost man': Neumann says his mission was to take this phrase literally. It's hard to render yourself unnoticeable as a Westerner with a camera in China, but he and his team tried to move through the country like ghosts, as unseen as the people they were searching for. The Chinese authorities, loath to let such stories out, are also extremely vigilant, and getting people to talk about their experiences of having a child stolen is virtually impossible. The air hangs thick with the threat of official reprisals and punishment. One potential interviewee whose son was stolen was visited by the secret police the day after a researcher had been to ask him questions. He backed out, too scared to commit to camera what he felt, too frightened to enlist the help of outsiders in such a close-knit community, where anything unusual gets back to officials - apart from, it would seem, the identity of child kidnappers.

The Chens knew the danger, too, but, thirsty for help, they agreed. It's not that the Chinese government doesn't report on child trafficking: there is coverage of rescue successes, or assurances that the government is doing all it can to combat the criminals. The stories are often, however, conspicuously free from statistics or analysis. Save the Children reports that last year Chinese officials from the Ministry of Public Security put overall trafficking figures (for women and children) at 2,500. This is much lower than NGOs estimate, but it's all about semantics, of course. International law - the UN's Palermo Protocol of 2000 - defines trafficking not only by the use of force or manipulation, but also as 'the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability'. A child is any person under the age of 18. The Chinese government is currently drafting a National Plan of Action against Trafficking but, as it stands, the Chinese definition is much narrower. Article 240 of the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China makes illegal the abduction of women and children (men are overlooked) for the purpose of selling. There is no clause for abduction without being sold - if you are taken away to be a slave or a sex worker, that doesn't count. And currently, if you are abducted at 14 in China, you are an adult, and not part of the statistics.

Chen Jie is very much part of the statistics - one stolen child in the mass of 70,000 snatched every year. His little life had already been fraught with difficulty. He was born a year after the Chens started seeing each other: the One Child Policy stipulates that children cannot be born without a birth permit, and you cannot have a birth permit if you don't have a marriage certificate. So Li had him in secret, giving birth in her mother's pigsty. Li and Lung hid their little boy for a year until they came to a decision that without a birth permit, without an official existence, Chen Jie's life would be nothing. They confessed to the authorities, and were ordered to pay a fine of 8,000 RMB (£520). They only finished paying that debt last year. Now, the strain of being left without the son for whom they struggled is palpable. 'It has been very difficult,' Li says, via a translator, speaking on a crackling line from their tiny apartment in the migrant workers' ghetto. 'We quarrel from time to time, but every time we think of our child, we remember we share the same goal. I already feel responsible and guilty. We don't want Chen Jie to come back to a broken family.'

The strength to stay together - like the rejection of suicide - is fuelled by the need to believe that they are maintaining a home for their missing boy, having in readiness a place for him to return to, and parents who are loving and at peace. This hope, no matter how tenuous, is some sort of light for the way ahead, even if at times it seems only to emphasise the darkening shadows all around. Depression floors them, guilt for letting their families down punctures their faith, and time has not been a healer. The detective, while active, is not getting any leads. They are - as the Chinese phrase goes - 'looking for a needle in an ocean'.

Part of the Chens' problem, and the problem for many parents like them, is that they are up against a highly organised criminal network which supplies a seemingly never-ending demand. Add to the mix that the moral code is skewed when it comes to 'adopting' (buying) children. If you were caught buying a child in the UK, you would be charged with child trafficking. Yet in China - as incongruous as it may seem - while it is illegal to abandon, steal or sell a child, it is not necessarily illegal to buy one. CCTV, a government-sponsored news outlet, recently reported that: 'Under the current law for families that adopt trafficked children, if they have not abused the children, and have not obstructed the rescue operations, the law enforcement can choose not to press charges, not to pursue further. Many parents of missing children find that unacceptable.' Parents of stolen children are immediately on the back foot; the law is essentially non-punitive, so child traffickers can justify their actions - they are simply supplying a demand that is not, in itself, a crime. Except, of course, it is. People buying a child have no guarantee that the child was willingly given up by his parents. And when the motivator for providing that child is money, reassurances mean nothing. A boy can fetch around 10,000 RMB (£650) which is a lot of money for one 'job', when you consider that a skilled production worker in China earns £1,200 a year.

One trafficker explains how he and his cohorts would identify the suitability of a child through the vulnerability of his mother. They would watch, wait, take a note of her routines, and bide their time for that moment when she would leave her son unattended. One such prize, he says, happened when the child was in bed, and the mother nipped out, unaware of watchful eyes. 'We shoved a hanky into the boy's mouth to shut him up,' the trafficker remembers, calmly plotting the strategy as if there was nothing abnormal in his actions, 'and we bundled him into a sack.' Another trafficker, who specialises in children, and is happy to appear on camera, says, 'I think there must be something wrong with treating children as goods, but I can't figure out what it is.' He likes to think of himself as an agent for parents who need to sell their children and a conduit for those who want to buy one. People do sell their children (if they don't have a birth permit, or are too poor to raise the child), but it is a murky world where a child becomes a missing piece in the commercial chain.

This particular trafficker admits that he used to sell women against their will, luring them first into a false sense of security by pretending to be a loving boyfriend. And although children are now much more lucrative, it is hard to understand why he wouldn't empathise with the families left behind: he has witnessed at first hand the devastation his older son feels since his younger brother went missing. The son, no more than 13, mourns the loss of a brother. 'I miss him,' he says. 'This year he would be nine...' The trafficker's son tries to articulate, pausing between thoughts and memories, shaking his head, and squeezing air out through tiny gaps in his mouth - small and potent sounds of regret that cannot be put into words. The twist, heartbreakingly, is that he later discovered that his own father was to blame for the disappearance. 'My grandmother told me my dad sold my brother,' he says. 'I thought my dad was very bad to do that. I felt very sad. At the time... at the time... I really hated him.'

As soon as the Chens discovered that Chen Jie was missing, they called 110, the emergency services. The police called back instantly for details and a description, but didn't come to their home. After a day of frantic searching, aided by neighbours with a car, the Chens went to the police station. A mix-up had occurred: because the emergency call happened late at night, the local police hadn't been passed the details. Looking around the train station and hotspots of trafficking didn't turn up any clues; they interviewed the neighbour, Zhang - nothing. By then, Chen Jie could have been halfway across China. Zhang has now moved to Mongolia, allowed to melt into another crowd in another country. Suspicion fell on another neighbour, Kong, for whom Lung used to be an apprentice. The Chens think he could have been in partnership with Zhang, picking Chen Jie as an easy target. The police questioned him for a whole day, but did not tell the Chens the result. Desperately, they have asked for Kong to be tested with a lie detector. There is a waiting list though - there are only a few in the whole country - and they don't know if they can afford it, or if it's even worth it.

They are encouraged, however, by a sliver of hope: Lung has heard breaking news that a ring of traffickers has been uncovered. The police have rescued around 40 babies, and families will be reunited with their kidnapped children - this is hope, in his eyes. 'We're both victims of the situation,' Lung says of himself and his wife, yet they are unwilling to criticise the government's policies: the police are working on their case, Lung says. Li comes on the line to explain that it's hard for the police, too: 'Police would go and try to investigate but even they get beaten up at remote townships...' Her equanimity crumbles later in the call, though, as she breaks down, admitting that she's not sure if she can keep living like this: the searching, the guilt, the dwindling figure of her husband, who has lost his appetite and is often unwell. Pregnant again, she worries that she won't know how to treat her new baby, that it will be unfair to Chen Jie to have another child. She doesn't sleep well, she says, dreaming every night of Chen Jie suffering in a poor village. And with a heart wrench Li realises that she has never dreamt he was bought by a rich family and living well, despite the plethora of news stories about children having a 'better life' with new parents. But she forces herself to keep going. 'I always remember what a father said who got his stolen boy back,' she says. 'He said as long as you keep your hope there is a chance; but if you give up hope and stop looking, the child is gone forever.'

Li's mother, the last to see Chen Jie, grief-stricken and carrying her own burden of guilt, often dreams of her missing grandson, too. The word in Chinese for dreaming and wishing is the same, and it is no surprise that her daytime longings spill into her night. 'I had a dream that my grandson came back,' she says. 'I held him in my arms and he asked me, "Grandma, are you tired?" I replied that I was not tired at all when holding my grandson. I was so happy that he finally came back.' And then, with sorrow, back to the terrible reality. 'Then,' she says, 'I woke up.'

Thoughts From an Adoptive Mom

Alex's Notes: Ran across this entry on CJ & Donna's Blog. Great couple, great family, great thoughts.

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Friday, September 21, 2007
Incredible Educational Evening
Just thought while the evening was fresh on my mind, I would just do a massive brain dump of things I have learned, realized, or thought about this evening at 3rd Friday:

-Frannie is too cute
-Ally has adjusted well and fits in perfectly with her family
-I am very thankful to have such a wonderful adoption resource...3rd Friday
-Being a mom is a hard job
-Being a mom to an adopted daughter is a TOUGH job
-Being an adoptive mother is not for the faint of heart
-Shelby will one day probably tell me that she wishes she was with her China Mommy
-The best thing I should do to help Shelby adjust in life is just to shower her with love
-Adoptees tend to be "people pleasers" and eager to just "fit in"
-Shelby will one day be a teenager with issues
-Most of her "issues" will not be adoption related, but just teenager related
-Expect the issues!
-I need to read more books on adoption issues for the future
-Shelby's birth mother will always be a special part of our lives
-I should never let Shelby feel like she needs to protect me from her feelings about her birth mom
-I am very grateful for Shelby's birth mom and the incredible decision that she had to make
-The adoptees that spoke tonight were very brave for sharing their stories
-Birthdays will probably be the one day that Shelby will think of her birth mother the most
-I will never know her birth mom, for that I am sad
-I will never be able to explain to Shelby the true reason why her birth mom decided to put her up for adoption
-There will be al ot of tough questions that she will one day want an answer for
-Kids can be mean, although not always intentionally
-Shelby will be teased at school
-People will ask nosy questions and not always with good intentions
-Shelby should be the one to decide how much stranger's are told about HER story
-I will need to explain to Shelby that it is OK to have "her story"
-I will not always be with Shelby to protect her from other people's comments
-Shelby will need to feel loved and accepted no matter how she behaves or what she says
-Not all adoptees want to be immersed in their culture and heritage activities
-I should listen to Shelby and let her lead the direction in which she wants to go regarding her being involved in Chinese activities
-I need to "baby" Shelby as long as I can or she will let me when she comes home
-Shelby's birth mom will always have a bond with her that I will never have
-Shelby is the only one who has been able to hear and feel her birth mom's heart from the inside
-Shelby was born to be my daughter, from the minute she was conceived
-She was not an accident, she is my chosen daughter
-I am very lucky to have been chosen by Him for this incredible journey!

CJ & Donna's Blog

Attachment Articles and Information

Just saw a list-serv post talking about an attachment website with lots of info.

Link is here: http://www.attach-china.org/

Which Adoption Is Right For You?

Free Video Hosting

New list of 20 special needs children

Posted by: "carolnelson21" cwa@cwa.org carolnelson21
Thu Sep 20, 2007 10:10 am (PST)

We will have our new list of 20 children available in a day or two, if
anyone is interested please email me and I will send you the info when
it is ready. They are too precious!

Blessings,
Carol Nelson
Director of Intake
Christian World Adoption
cwa@cwa.org

Digging for roots

By Ron Hollander
Updated: 2007-09-14 07:40



Children on the roots-seeking tour at the Children's Palace in Shanghai. Ron Hollander

The handmade signs in the shapes of apples and hearts bobbed above the heads of the beaming grade school children lining the driveway of Qi Yi primary school, in Beijing's Haidian District.

Clad in red scarves and blue and white uniforms, the Chinese children welcoming us strained to hold their signs high, so we could see them through the tinted windows of our air-conditioned bus.

They read like a who's-who of the American, Canadian and Australian children on our tour: Tara, Tayler, Kim Lisa, Sarah Lian Wenhui, and my own daughter, Mei Ming ("beautiful and bright").

It was the second day of the Families With Children Adopted From China Roots-Seeking Summer Camp trip, in which 44 children and as many parents were returning to the motherland for 12 days to immerse themselves in the country of their birth. The program, founded in 2005, is 55 percent subsidized by the Chinese government, so that the approximately 73,000 children - mostly girls - adopted from China can learn about their birth-culture.

"Wherever they go in the world, they will always remain our children, too," said Lei Zhengang, deputy director of the Culture and Education Department associated with the China Overseas Exchanges Association. "We have sympathetic feelings for our children abroad, and they will always be linked to our Chinese traditional culture."

At the school, the mostly American children piled off the bus, to search for their names and the children holding them. Mei Ming, adopted in Wuhan in 1995 when she was 5 months old, quickly found her Chinese counterpart. While the Qi Yi marching band played, they soon walked off hand-in-hand for a tour of the school.

One of the goals of the Heritage Tour is for the adopted children to learn about China. Mei Ming approached that through her own, suburban New Jersey lens, asking her new friend how she got to school.

"So, do you take the bus, or do your parents drive you?" she naively asked. The answer: She walked or rode her bike.

That was just one, tiny nugget of cultural lore that my daughter and the others learned about what life would have been like had they remained in China. Everything from food (no cheeseburgers) to the cost of MP4 players (cheap, but are they authentic?) went into the mix. That was exactly how the parents wanted it.

"People have to understand where their roots are, where they came from," said Phil Strauss, a lean, outdoorsman who owns a parking business in Boston, and who is the father of 9-year-old Betty Jane. "Otherwise, there's a tremendous void when they grow up. As you get older, you start to wonder. I don't want that for BE-BE (Betty Jane)."

Other parents were similarly motivated to take the $675 trip ($985 for parents), excluding airfare - very reasonable compared to other private, non-government-supported heritage tours.

"Six months ago, my daughter Emma said: 'You're lucky, you have grandma, you know where you came from'," said Joni Robinson, an instructional coach for teachers in New Haven, Connecticut. "So, I realized it was time to give her a background, and then we'd all kind of be Chinese-American together."

Donna Ellis, a lawyer in New York, agreed. "Since the day I got Shayna (now 11), I knew I would make the pilgrimage back," said Ellis, who enlivened the tour by enthusiastically buying and irrepressibly modeling ethnic head dresses in every city. "I wanted her to see her birth-country, to experience what it's really like to be Chinese. That's something I can't give her, no matter how hard I try."

Or, as Robinson understatedly put it, "Going to Chinatown is just not the same".

This was the first summer that Canadian and Australian families were included on the tour, and parental sentiments knew no national boundaries. "I want Lilli to have a better appreciation for both cultures," said Patti Carr, of Ontario, Canada, of her 9-year-old daughter from Guangdong Province. "She will always have a dual identity, so I want her to understand both those identities."

Because the tour has grown, it has been split into two itineraries. Coordinating manager Lisa Kifer, who volunteers her time from Columbus, Ohio, and who herself is the mother of two girls adopted from China, anticipated that a third itinerary may be added.



The author with his daughter Mei Ming at a panda facility in Chengdu. Ken Horii

The entire group spent four days in Beijing at the beginning of the tour, and two days in Shanghai at the end. But in between, half went to Xi'an, Hangzhou and Suzhou, while my group toured Chengdu and Guilin, moving from plane to bus to cable car to foot at a needlessly dizzying pace that left us exhausted, and speculating: "If it's Tuesday, it must be Guilin."

Kifer said that the tour was a natural outgrowth of a government program begun in 1984 to bring Chinese children born or living overseas back to China for two weeks. One week would be spent seeing tourist attractions, while the other would be spent visiting their family's home province. That program is still conducted in even-numbered years, and now has thousands of participants.

But the unique aspect of the Children Adopted From China trip is that children who may be isolated and sometimes even ridiculed back home for bearing what their unenlightened classmates could view as the double stigma of being adopted and of being from China, now find themselves traveling with children exactly like themselves.

"I'm sort of embarrassed back home when I'm the only kid adopted from a different country on the other side of the world," said Betty Jane Moore-Strauss, 9. "But this makes me feel great, because I'm not embarrassed anymore."

"I don't feel different," said 9-year-old Danielle Comer from upstate New York, "because there's a lot of Chinese people around me now."

The older children on the tour, which has now brought families from 18 American states, with children adopted from 12 provinces, agree.

"It's a big relief to know what it really looks like," said Kifer's 12-year-old daughter, Elizabeth. "You know where you lived, and you don't have to think where you lived. It fills in a blank in you."

"It makes me more proud to say I'm from China," said Olivia Paradis, 13. "It's kind of sad if you're born in China and (have) never been here."

"Yeah," chimed in Mei Ming. "It's really pathetic."

Another special feature of the tour is that many families chose on their own to visit the orphanages from which their children were adopted, either before or after the tour. While for the parents this can be a nostalgic trip back to a wonderful moment in their lives - the culmination of years of dreaming about creating a family - for the children, this can be a daunting experience, fraught with nervousness and stirring up feelings of having been abandoned at birth.

Several of the parents said that while they were planning to visit the orphanage, their children weren't sure they wanted to go in, were afraid of being the center of attention and feared that they would find it dirty and depressing.

Mei Ming, who visited her welcoming and modern orphanage in Wuhan last year when she went on the tour with her mother, nevertheless said that it was not a happy experience.

"It disappointed me to think I was one of those kids that no one really wanted," she said. "I sort of regret going there. I imagined it special, but it was not. I was one of those kids who were useless, unimportant to their birth parents, just dumped somewhere."

Mei Ming, in the seventh grade in Montclair, New Jersey, also has her own, unique view of being among so many people who looked like her. "In the United States, me and my adopted friends are special," she said. "Here, I just feel the same as everyone else. I lose that special something that makes me me. It makes me want to say to them: 'Never come to the USA. This is my turf, so don't come here'."

But there is no denying that the tour dispels negative stereotypes that otherwise haunt these children. "It's really cool how I can see where I'm from," said Avery Gray, 13, of New Jersey, whose mother, Doris Chew, was raised by Chinese parents in New York. "I thought I'd be in an old hotel, with no showers, starving, that my stomach would hurt, stuff would be stolen. Instead - wow - it's so much different than what I thought it would be."

On the last night of the tour, following individual home visits to Shanghai families, we gathered in the lobby of our hotel for sentimental goodbyes. There were some tears, but I think there was also a sense of gratefulness to China, of course, for "giving" us our children in the first place, but then for caring enough about them to sponsor such a bountiful tour.

Speaking of the children, Kifer said: "They know their family doesn't fit here, doesn't fit at home, and yet here, this country is treating them as honored guests."

Linking a reception held last year for the tour and the origins of her own daughter, Kifer said in a choked voice: "Who would think that a child abandoned in a shoe box would then be walking into the Great Hall of the People."

Ron Hollander was a Fulbright fellow in Beijing from 1994-1996 when he adopted his daughter. He teaches journalism at Montclair State University in New Jersey.

Ron's China Daily Article

Day 20 in Xi'an

Alex's Notes: Cool blog entry, lots of pictures at original entry, link is at the bottom.

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Day 20

I spent all day at Starfish today, the time just zooms by. I took care of Lily all day, and when I left tonight at 4:30 she cried. It’s so hard to leave her.

Christine and I took Lily, Callum and Michael (I had a double stroller) for a long walk to Starbucks this afternoon. It was very hot 30 minute walk there and longer coming back, as Lily was a little fussy and I had to carry her and push the stroller. The Chinese people REALLY stare when we are out with the kids. Of course there is the one child policy, and here I am with two. We are never sure if they stare because we are Caucasian and the children are Chinese, or that they are not wrapped up in heavy clothes that the Chinese seem to do. One man even stopped and started berating us in Chinese... we just continued on our way. Lily had her first taste of Starbucks Vanilla Crème. She votes yes for Starbucks! (See picture). I’m going to have trouble saying goodbye to her tomorrow. I think I’ll stay all day. I really only have a bit of packing to do and I don’t leave for the airport until 11:00 am on Saturday. Amanda has asked me to come back anytime and stay in her volunteer apartment. She showed (and emailed) me pictures of Lily when she first arrived at Starfish and before she had her surgery. She had a large sac on the bottom of her back. She still looked perfect to me.

The Chinese language is very difficult and I find at times when spoken it sounds so angry even when it isn’t. The kids are all great, but sometimes it’s bedlam there. I often wonder how it must be when there are no volunteers there. The conditions at Starfish are a whole lot better than other orphanages. Amanda is going to the main Xi’an Orphanage tomorrow, and she’s asked Christine to go with her. There are 600 children there and according to Amanda, 10% will die in the next month. They don’t have enough help and the weak ones just don’t make it.

Coming home from Starfish today was very emotional. I’m very attached to China now, and if not for my family, especially my daughter, (Alex, I want to bring you here!) and friends I could just stay here. It’s so far removed from my life at home and I find that I am at peace here. I definitely want to come back for a longer period of time. It’s like time has stopped for me and all the little sh*t doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve seen so much suffering and poverty as well as kindness, acceptance, happiness and appreciation. The people here are special, and they work hard, their work ethic is unbelievable. The nannies at Starfish work from 8 am to 8 pm and that is just the norm.

Another Chinese factoid.. They exercise on the street outside their place of work before their workday starts. We see them on our drive over to Starfish. No wonder there are no fat people here!

Donna's Space

A reasonable Question about Adopting Special Needs.

KAZ asks the obvious:


While it's very kind to accept special needs kids, why would one specifically seek them?

There are a fair number of reasons to adopt special needs - here are a few:

Much shorter waiting period.

More options for grant money (of course this is offset by potential medical costs, but still).

The chance to get a child under a year old (the ONLY chance now for Korea - they now have a mandatory waiting period for traditional adoption). This one is important to us specifically because bonding issues with the child are greatly reduced if you are able to start earlier.

That good feeling you get helping someone who really needs it.

Not necessarily in that order.

That 2-3 year waiting period for non special needs children is a guesstimate - it could be longer. Many countries - Korea included - recently decided that they were going to change all the rules regarding adoptions. The Hague convention, while not in effect in a lot of countries, has thrown Europe completely off kilter for international adoption and Asia has gotten on this kick about trying to keep their children local. Korea, for instance, has decided to limit the number of children that are adopted internationally by using the following measures:

Mandating that children be given at least a year where in-country adoption is the only option.

offering financial incentives to natives for adopting - I think it's both an initial cash payment and a monthly stipend.

launching an advertising campaign touting the benefits of adoption.

(They are fighting an uphill battle on this one because Koreans are STRONGLY patriarchal. Culturally, paternity is of HUGE importance there - and not just to the parents. In many areas an adopted child will be a social outcast simply because he's not really related. In fact, if a couple does decide to adopt in Korea, a common means of doing so is to go on an extended "trip" and come back saying "I was pregnant when I left - look at our new child" - in direct contrast to U.S. history, where girls were sent away so they could come back and say they were NOT pregnant. Of course, if the child has an American component to his parentage, this tendency is greatly magnified as well. But all of this is just an aside - the point is that they are attempting to restrict international adoption by roughly an order of magnitude, so if you attempt to adopt traditionally, you have slim pickings).

All of the above is irrelevant if you are willing to accept special needs, however. In addition to being strongly patriarchal, Koreans have a HUGE aversion to physical or mental abnormalities. Basically, even the Korean Government knows better than to try to get special needs children adopted locally - they are, for all intents and purposes, unadoptable by Korean standards. So, all those new restrictions and impediments to adoption don't apply to children with special needs.

Key-Words Blog

Expat Parents in China Keep Adopted Babies Close to Home

September 14, 2007

Virtually every flight I've ever been on from China to the U.S. has had at least two couples returning home with a newly adopted Chinese baby. I have been touched watching their interaction, which is often simultaneously tentative and loving. I have also seen large groups of Western couples with new babies touring around Beijing, during their imposed stays here before heading home. It can be a strange sight, one that has led me to wonder if there is any undercurrent of discomfort amongst Chinese about all these babies being taken out of the country. I have detected none.

New, more stringent adoption laws recently went into effect and the number of Chinese children adopted and brought to the U.S. fell by almost 1,500 last year, after two decades of steady growth. But there were still 6,494 adoptions, 95% of them girls, according to Adoptive Families magazine. The Chinese system is considered the model for international adoptions, with a high degree of transparency, clear standards and little or no corruption.

BRINGING UP BABY


How important is it for adopted children to spend time in their native land? Share your thoughts in an online forum.In the last 22 years, 62,389 Chinese children have been adopted by American families, according to the support group Families with Chinese Children. A small number of these children don't have to travel too far to their new homes; they are adopted by expats living here already. The U.S. is one of just six nations that allow its citizens to adopt a Chinese child while living in China. Other countries are concerned about the lack of control and oversight they have over their far-flung citizens, but American expats seeking to adopt follow the same well-defined adoption process that is required of families living in the U.S.

Statistics don't seem to be kept on expats adopting babies, but one close observer who works with adoptive families estimated the number between 200 and 300 a year. I personally know three families who have adopted here and two more whose applications are currently being processed.

Living here makes it easy for the new family member to simultaneously maintain a Chinese identity and develop an American one. It's an issue that American families who adopt Chinese children struggle with -- how much to educate their children about their homeland.

"I think that the majority of parents make an attempt to make sure their children feel positively about Chinese culture," says Susan Caughman, editor of Adoptive Families magazine and herself the mother of a Chinese daughter. "It's definitely understood in the Chinese adoption community that this is something good for your child's identity. A smaller percentage of parents make an effort to actually make sure their children learn to speak Chinese."

There is a group of expats, mostly women, who volunteer in orphanages around Beijing. Their level of involvement varies from occasional work days to near-constant fundraising and/or administration. Collectively they do a lot of vital work. Their efforts seem particularly needed by children with health or developmental problems, who are sometimes abandoned due to the lack of widely available free healthcare.


Alan Paul
Cheryl Latta and Tian Hui
My friend Cheryl Latta, an American mother of four, began volunteering at a nearby orphanage once a week shortly after arriving here two-plus years ago. She found the time fulfilling but frustrating.

"I enjoyed playing with the babies but wanted to do more," she recalls. "I kept thinking, 'If I could just take one of these kids home, I could give them so much more.'"

Cheryl was referred to Teresa Woo, an expat from Hong Kong who runs Beijing's Ping An Medical Foster Home. Ping An takes in orphans who are stricken with serious illnesses and disabilities, arranges and pays for their medical care and surgeries if necessary, and provides pre- and post-surgery rehab care until they are fit enough to return to their original orphanages. The more fortunate orphans might find themselves in foster families, many of which are Ms. Woo's friends and/or regular volunteers.

"Most of our kids are abandoned for medical reasons," says Ms. Woo, whose organization is funded by private donations. "At first, we helped them get the surgery but they were going back to places that couldn't necessarily care for them, so I decided to house them in a place where they could get the kind of care they needed to recuperate. I can only have eight kids at a time because it's a family environment. I didn't want to open another orphanage."

The Lattas were matched with Tian Hui, a smiley six-month-old girl who had had surgery on a cleft lip and needed a few months of recuperation before she could have a second operation, to repair a cleft palate. After about three months, they returned her to Ping An and picked up a different baby. When he had health problems necessitating hospitalization, Ms. Woo asked the Lattas if they could take Tian Hui again. She had been unable to have her second surgery due to health complications, leaving her classified as special needs and therefore eligible for fostering.

None of the Lattas had realized quite how attached they had grown to the little girl until she returned to spend Christmas with them. When family friends said they wanted to adopt Tian Hui, Cheryl felt alarmed rather than excited and realized that she wanted to adopt the baby herself. After everyone concurred in a family meeting, they began the adoption process.


Alan Paul
The Latta family
The Lattas lived around the corner from us and I got used to seeing Cheryl or one of her sons pushing Tian Hui around, first in a stroller, then in a small tricycle. The child always smiled and waved and I was won over by her sunny disposition. I asked often about their situation. Child-specific adoptions are discouraged, but if foster families meet the normal requirements they are sometimes allowed to adopt the child. In these cases it is considered in the child's best interest to stay with a family to whom they are attached. But there are no guarantees and the family was in a constant state of low anxiety waiting for a decision.

The papers came through on Sept. 4 making the adoption official and Tian Hui a member of the Latta family. It was a week short of one year from when they first brought her into their home. They will rename her Tia Grace.

The Lattas hope to stay here four more years, in part so that Tia is instilled with a strong sense of being Chinese and in part because such a long stint here will allow the whole family to better understand the roots of their youngest member.

The Lattas's four blond children already drew a lot of attention in China and they now receive even more scrutiny with a Chinese baby added to the mix.

"People always ask why we would want another child when we already have four," says Cheryl. "I used to say because we loved her so much and I got blank stares. Now, we say we wanted Emily (the lone girl before Tia's arrival) to have a sister and that seems to be much better accepted."

Similarly practical concerns troubled the younger Latta children. Seven-year-old Jason feared that when Tia grew up, she would only speak Chinese and have trouble communicating with the rest of the family. Instead, they are all learning Chinese even as Tia learns English. If all goes according to plan, they will all have a very solid understanding of where their newest family member comes from.

Wall Street Journal

China-Babies Newsletter - September 2007

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