Shanghai and home

We spent our last two nights in Shanghai, where we'd never been before. Not enough time to see much, but we did visit the Jing An temple (beautiful), shopped on Nanjing Rd (intense) and took a cruise on the Huangpu River (cloudy, but watching the tops of the tall buildings appear and disappear in the clouds was worth the price). To me, Shanghai doesn't have as definite a sense of place as the other major cities we visited, but that may be only because we stayed such a short time.

The only disappointment was our hotel -- a very quaint, very centrally located small hotel called the Old House Inn. Upside: central (as I said), quiet, secure (everyone has to walk right past the desk, which is staffed 24 hours a day). Downside: dark rooms, no elevator, no Chinese breakfast. This is the only hotel that I would not stay in again.

Our trip home was a bit rough, as our flight was delayed about 10 hours. The plane was late in arriving from Newark, apparently due to equipment problems, so we were stuck in Pudong Airport and didn't take off until about 2 am. It wasn't horrible, since Pudong is new, not crowded and has plenty of shops where we used up our last yuan, but it meant we didn't get in to Newark until 4:30 this morning (the 12 hour time difference means flying time was about 14 1/2 hours.

I miss China, but it's nice to be home. It's especially nice not to live out of a suitcase.

Over the next few days, I'll be posting more thoughts about our trip, and more pictures.

Ma'anshan Social Welfare Institute

After breakfast, we took the van to the Ma'anshan Social Welfare Institute, where Sara lived her first year. The institute, at the edge of the city, is a compound of white brick buildings surrounded by grass and pomegranate trees. It is a very peaceful place.

We met the current director and the person responsible for international adoptions. We gave the director a contribution for the children still in the institute. We also gave them a photo album.

As we stood at the gate, Mrs Liu, the former director, ran up to Sara and gave her a hug. She told us she recognized her immediately and made a big fuss over her.

We asked her about Ma You Jing, Ma You Tao (English name Laurel) and Ma You Lan (Kathryn), all friends of Sara in New York who are from Ma'anshan. She told us that before being adopted they were all together in the same room. Now it is the room for toddlers.

Most of the children now in the institute have special needs -- other children are either in foster care, or live with families in institute-owned housing in the city where the children attend school. The policy now is to place all non-special needs children in foster care. This policy has been effect for only two years; before that, all children lived in the institute.

The director presented us with a certificate of appreciation and a receipt for our contribution. We gave Mrs Liu a small gift and talked. We saw Sara's file, which did not have much more information than we already had. We also asked a lot of questions. The most interesting was how the girls were selected for international adoption and matched with their families in 1994. As Susan had suspected, it was Xiong Yan, our 1984 facilitator/guide, who did it. She picked out pretty girls with big eyes and matched them to pictures of the parents. That is why Sara looks so much like me, something Mrs Liu remarked on several times.

We took pictures, and then got into vans to go to a restaurant for lunch. On the way, we stopped so that Mrs Liu could by Sara a gift. We ate in a private room on the second floor with Mrs Liu, the international adoptions person, Yang Qin (our guide) and the two drivers (ours and the institute's). The food was excellent (I told Mrs Liu that it was the best meal we had had on our trip, which was true). We had egg drop soup, shredded duck with eggplant, fried tofu, a vegetable dish with lotus root and snow peas, chicken in a spicy sauce, steamed buns, and fried dumplings in an egg pancake. Mrs Liu put food on Sara's and Lia's plates, which was very nice. There were two toasts, one by Mrs Liu and one by me. At the end of the meal, Mrs Liu presented Sara with a beautiful cotton picture of two pandas. This is a local handcraft.

After lunch, we followed the institute van to a local tea shop where we bought some local Yellow Mountain Green Tea recommended by Yang Qin. Then we said goodbye to the institute staff.

We drove about 50 minutes to the Nanjing railway station and waited in a crowded waiting room to board our train. Now we're on board the train (very comfortable and very fast), on our way to Shanghai.

It was a happy day and Sara was very moved by Mrs Liu's interest and hospitality.

Warmly Welcome International Families

I'm going to start posting some things that I didn't have time to during the "official" part of our tour.

Whenever we arrived in a new city, our group was welcomed with a banner like this one. I'm sure it's the only time in my life this will happen!

Saying Goodbye to Meng Haoran at Yellow Crane Tower

This is my favorite Li Bai poem.

At Yellow Crane Tower in the west
My old friend says farewell
In the mists and flowers of spring
He goes down to Yangzhou.

Lonely sail, distant shadow
Vanish in blue emptiness
All I see is the great river
Flowing into the far horizon.

Ma'anshan

Today we arrived in Ma'anshan, a city of over a million people that almost noone in the US has heard of. It is the place where our older daughter Sara was born and lived until we adopted her. This is a steel-producing city in Anhui province on the southern bank of the Yangtze River. It is also known as the home of the Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai, whose poetry (in translation) I love. We have an excellent local guide who met us at the airport in Nanjing (a 2 hour flight from Guangzhou) and drove with us 40 km to Ma'anshan.

We are staying in the Nanhu Hotel, a four star hotel that is perfectly comfortable and adequate for our needs. This afternoon we walked around South Lake, in a park right next to our hotel. Tomorrow we'll do some sightseeing, and also see the place where Sara was left by her birthparents. Monday we hope to visit the orphanage.

The White Swan

For the past day we've been in Guangzhou. I should say something about the hotel where we're staying, the White Swan.

Every child adopted internationally by an American family needs an immigrant visa. The only US consulate in China that issues them is in Guangzhou. The Guangzhou consulate used to be located on Shamian Island. Adjoining the consulate is a five star hotel, the White Swan. And so, from 1992 to the present, the White Swan is where the majority of adoptive families stayed while waiting for a visa. It has a special place in the memories of many families.

During the peak period of Chinese adoptions, the White Swan (sometimes called the "White Stork") was a veritable nursery. Travel groups lined up in front of the lobby waterfall for photos. Babies went for their first swim in the pool. Dozens of businesses catering to adoptive families crowded the area. "White Swan family" (as in "look, Dad, there's a White Swan family") crept into our family's lexicon.

Even though the consulate has moved, quite a few new adoptive families still stay in the hotel. However, the number of Chinese adoptions has gone down in recent years. The neighborhood now has several vacant storefronts, and the remaining businesses seem to be suffering. But if you walk around the hotel, you see quite a few Western parents with preteen or teen-aged Chinese girls, who have returned to China to visit the country of their birth -- either individually or in groups like ours. It is something we hoped for at the time we adopted, and now it is happening.

Lia's Home Town

Monday was the day we had looked forward to for over a year. We visited Lia's orphanage in Guilin, which is also where she was left and found almost 10 years ago, and met Lia's foster mom.

Our guide, who we arranged through the Our Chinese Daughters Foundation (OCDF), met us at the hotel at 2. We sat in the lobby and talked about what to expect and what was going to happen. Lia was very quiet, as she was all afternoon.

We rode in a van to the northern outskirts of Guilin, where the Guilin Social Welfare Institute is located. Our driver had to stop several times to ask for directions. When we arrived at the gate, we were met by the head of the children's section, Mr Li, and two of Lia's caregivers, Miss Liang and Miss He. Because of worries about swine flu, the provincial government would not allow us inside, but we did get a chance to see the outside of the building where Lia spent her first two months and take some pictures. Mr Li pointed out the new wing that had been built with contributions from overseas adoptive families. Miss Liang and Miss He both remembered here and were very happy to see her. We gave Mr Li a gift for the institute and a small personal gift (a Yankees t-shirt). Then Mr Li went back to his office to call Lia's foster mom, who was late.

A few moments later, I looked up and there she was, walking toward us from the gate -- the woman we had seen only in pictures. She smiled, ran up to Lia and gave her a big hug. It was a very emotional moment.

Since we were not allowed into the orphanage, we went back to the hotel where we talked (through our interpreter) for a couple of hours. We learned that Lia's foster mom's name is Wang Tai and that she has fostered several other internationally adopted children -- children who now live in England, the Netherlands and Spain. We gave her a photo album with pictures from before we met Lia (taken by Ms Wang) to the present. We told her about Lia's life, her hobbies and her schoolwork. We asked her questions about what Lia was like before we met her, and expressed our gratitude for the wonderful way she cared for Lia in the first months of her life.

We also had more time to talk to Mr Li, who told us something about how girls are named at the institute. At the beginning of each year, the director chooses a family name from the traditional list of 100 Chinese family names and that name is given to all children who arrive in the institute in that year. For 1999, that name is Chu (褚). Then the staff picks a name that seems appropriate for each child. For Lia, they picked the name Xiuzhi. Xiu (秀）means "beautiful." Zhi （芝）means "sesame." Together, they mean that Lia will be beautiful and will grow in leaps and bounds, like the sesame plant.

Also, we learned that most orphaned children in Guilin are placed with foster families. Only those with health problems or disabilities stay in the institute, and they stay only until they are health.

Finally, we found out how Lia came to be Ms Wang's foster child. Ms Wang had fostered several babies before, and none of them had any hair when they came to her. She had decided that she wanted her next child to have hair. When the institute officials led her into the nursery to pick out a baby to care for, she picked Lia because even at two months she had a nice head of hair.

When we and Ms Wang ran out of questions, we went to the garden and took several pictures. We also got the mailing and email addresses of the institute, so we can send Mr Li and Ms Wang pictures and letters. We shook hands and hugged goodbye. It was a very emotional and very rewarding day.