August 7^th 2008 TRIP to Chenzhou SWI

 

 

Our trip to the orphanage was very good. We had a guide provided us by the Chinese Civil Affairs and he specialized in adoption tours for families adopting and about once a month for families returning to visit. The guide was Jacky Wang of Hunan Adoption Administration & Service Center. Jacky’s email address is: jacky5118@gmail.com and his cell phone is 137 8618 3335. We were also very fortunate to have YangLu travel with us. YangLu was a foreign exchange student that we hosted the 2002-2003 school year. She became part of our family then and it was very easy to pick right up where we had left off with our daughter/sister. She was very helpful with translations and explaining some of the reasoning that was difficult for us to understand. YangLu has agreed to help with some coming needs within the orphanage. 

 

The assistant Director was very appreciative that we brought Tenley back to visit them; not only so Tenley could see where she was from but also because they so often do not know how “their children” are doing and how they are raised. She said she remembered “RuiXue” and told us how she got her name. RuiXue means “lucky snow” and November 1996 (Tenley’s birth month) there was an early snow which means plenty of water for the farmers, hence “lucky snow”. They brought us out Tenley’s file and it contained the Chinese official documents which we received on adoption day. And all of the letters and pictures we had sent over the years. It was nice to see that they had saved those. We also told them about Tenley’s crib mates (Leanna now in Tennessee and Emily now in Illinois) they then brought out the entire roster of children that had been adopted from Chenzhou and by the “date of adoption” we were able to determine which ones Emily and Leanna were since the list had only their Chinese names. The staff then took notes so that they knew which children we were reporting on and it made me feel good that they cared to know how “their children” were doing.  

 

We toured the classrooms and administrative offices and took some pictures which I will post on Snapfish (if I can get to a computer where that is a permitted site). We then got to visit with the children living in the orphanage. As best as I could understand: there are at any time between 120-130 children in this orphanage and there are 52 nannies. It was not always this good a ratio but adoption fees and donations from families that have adopted have given this orphanage more resources to care for children and as a result they are responsible for children from a very large geographic area (the best I could decipher, the area they serve is about a 60 mile radius). Also the nannies receive training from an USA organization: “Half the Sky”.

 

We got to play with the children for what was supposed to be 30 minutes but turned into over 2 hours (until the kids had to go down for naps). We got to see them fed and changed and interact with the nannies and each other. I was very surprised at the amount of compassion the nannies showed toward the children. They played and laughed with them while they fed others and knew them well enough to tell us: “this one winks when you wink at her” (8 month old) this one can say “Baba” (same as Dada, 9 month old) “this one has walked since he was 8 months old” (now he runs). They kissed them and hugged them and tickled them and you could tell it was heartfelt. The kids warmed to all of us, which must have been a really unusual situation for them to get 8 visitors (including 6 westerners) to play with. It was good to see each of our children, from our 10 year old all the way up to our 18 yr old were interacting, playing and holding the children from Chenzhou. It was apparent that this was common practice amongst the children and the nannies. Stacie got pottied on twice (no diapers in China just split pants).  Tenley also played with all the kids but was visibly “taking it all in”. I am sure we will get to hear more from her as she processes seeing her hometown and the orphanage where she spent the first 11 months of her life. The children were all well cared for and most seemed on target developmentally. There was a little boy that had a cleft palette and had received the surgery but not yet adopted (usually the adoptive family incurs the cost of the surgery, so this was a good thing for this little boy). There was a 2 year old girl that had 6 fingers and 8 toes on each limb and she could not walk as a result of this. She will not receive surgery until she is adopted. I felt bad because she was a beautiful, shy little girl (OK, she was scared of only me). The bad news: international adoptions have slowed and take almost two years now; the good news: domestic adoptions within China have picked up dramatically (the government agreed to waive the one-child policy for families that adopt)   When we left the orphanage to go to eat with the Assistant Director, Stacie was over-whelmed and Thrasher, Callahan, Tenley and Granite all wanted to “adopt another kid or two”. I told them I was too old and Granite chimed in with “OK, then I am going to adopt some” which all of the kids thought was a good idea.

 

At lunch we were able to ask what we could do to help, the Assistant Director told us they were building a 9 story building for the children (we saw it under construction) and they wanted to install a “lift” (“elevator” in American English) as it would be a big help in caring with the kids. The building is designed with 2 elevator shafts but there is only enough funding to provide one elevator. The 2^nd elevator would be outfitted to help special needs children and would allow the workers to care for more children efficiently. The total cost would be about $50,000.00 -$60,000.00(US). I told them I would help them to raise the money from American families that had adopted from Chenzhou. (We have an email group of over 200 families that adopted from Chenzhou).

 

The town of Chenzhou was an eye-opener for the kids. People worked very hard just for sustenance. You grow your own rice to assure that your family can be fed even if you cannot find work. It was encouraging to see that people that had very little chance for improvement in their lot in life still kept working every day. There were no fancy cars, no fancy clothes and few schools and we were the only westerners I saw in the 2 days we were there. The primary industries were rice and coal and work in those areas. There was a Wal-Mart where we had anywhere from 10-12 people following us at various times. They were not used to seeing many westerners, especially African-American kids and Granite was the center of attention, with Chinese kids speaking to him and touching him. While he thought it was pretty cool at first it did get a little unnerving to him after too long.            

 

We drove back to Changsha (4 hours in a diesel bus on a bumpy road), which is the capital of the Hunan province and then stayed in a hotel overnight and in the morning got to visit the Hunan Welfare Agency. We got to visit the actual room where Tenley was first handed to me. It is not the reception area any longer but instead where the bus drivers smoke cigarettes and play mahjong.  It seemed almost surreal that here is where we met the little 11 month old stranger that would enrich our lives and become family.

 

Our adventure continued as we went back to Beijing to watch the Olympics and visit with YangLu but I know each of us left a piece of our heart in Chenzhou. It will forever be a part of our family.