Introduction

Hope, love, and help are chiefly among other things verbs.  To understand needs some effort too and in the end that is what the following story is about.

But to begin, this is a record of my journey to Hengdong, Hunan Province, China, and there I visited the Hengdong Social Welfare Institute (SWI).  My youngest daughter Clara-Li spent her first 17 months in this orphanage before we adopted her in Hunan's provincial capital, Changsha, on August 10, 2004.

We were unable to travel to Hengdong during her adoption trip, despite our lobbying at the time.  No other adoptive parents have been able to visit the Hengdong SWI although families from western countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Denmark, and the Netherlands have been traveling to Changsha to adopt children from this orphanage since at least 2002. 

The information placed here is primarily for these families and others like them since in late 2005 and 2006 this orphanage, along with at least five others in southeastern Hunan, became linked to baby traffickers in an alleged bid to profit from adoption fees, a case in which the director of the Hengdong SWI eventually went to prison.  The case would become widely reported by Chinese and international media and led to a temporary shut down of foreign adoptions in Hunan Province.  It has many layers and orphanage officials involved have argued that in buying abandoned children from traffickers they were acting in the children's best interests.  For only a small portion of rural China’s abandoned children are taken in by its state controlled orphanages.  The rest are absorbed into families informally or otherwise left to find homes through a growing unregulated domestic black market, the murky realm of shadowy intermediaries and questionable safety.   Still, the case can be described but probably can't be rationalized in full.   There is a sort of untidiness throughout. 

These are our children.  Each has a deeper, more personal story and is no less deserving of answers about her past.

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In early 2005, before "the scandal" broke and five months after we returned home with Clara-Li, the group Our Chinese Daughters Foundation (OCDF) told us in response to a chance email inquiry that it might be able to arrange a private visit to the Hengdong SWI.  OCDF had experience arranging "culture-focused travel programs" for adoptive families wishing to return to China with their children.  Although this trip would be outside of the norm, an OCDF representative in Beijing obligingly made some local contacts, set up an itinerary in Hunan, and recommended a visa service and travel agent for the long series of flights there and back.  This was promised to suffice.

We quickly decided to go for it.  We also decided this would be a journey best made by me alone, for obvious financial reasons so soon after our last one but also because this project seemed to have a high probability for disappointment, given the non-history of previous visits. 

Why, we wondered, had Chinese officials suddenly changed their minds?  In response to our nagging pleas to be allowed to visit Hengdong during Clara-Li's adoption trip we'd been supplied with all manner of official discouragement: the area was off limits to foreign travelers, some Chinese travelers had been robbed there, another intrepid foreigner had been detained in an area nearby and his camera confiscated, the area couldn't be traveled to in one day, etc.. 

But something told me to ignore similar warnings two years before in Jiangxi Province, where I had summoned the optimism to jump in a taxi for a long but important trip to the town where my first daughter is from.  The road then, it became clear, wasn't really washed out. 

At the end of a nicely paved highway in Gao'an, Jiangxi, in 2002, I had eventually stood in front of a busy downtown market on the same spot where my first daughter as a newborn was left and found in a small cardboard box and in the flood of triggered images, smells, sounds, and understanding I made a very important connection, then wiped my tears and left.  When we returned to China for our second daughter, I knew I owed it to her to try to make the same connection, before too much had changed. 

I wanted to be able to honestly tell her something about where she was from.

This time, it would just require a special trip.

Comments

[Nancy Dawes]

Dear Andy,
Thank you so much for sharing the Hengdong trip with all of us. There were 5 families in our travel group and each were eager to learn more about Hengdong County and the SWI. Thanks to you and your generous time and energy we can all learn and experience with you. I am passing on your web site to all the families.

Nancy and Jeff
DD Sarah LiYan
adopted 5/03 Hengdong SWI

[Jennifer]

Your journal is beautiful. My husband and I live in rural Russia where we run programs for older orphans who are learning andemotionally disabled. You might like reading about these children as well.
www.housemagic.blogs.com

[Lisette]

Hello,

my daughter of 2 years old is from the orphanage of Hengshan. I saw a lot of photo's of the Hengshan area. Is it possible that you send me some photo's of Hengshan, so that I can show them to my daugther when she is older?

[chinamah]

Thank you for your eloquent story. And your decision to use your experience to help the orphanage is very impressive. My daughter is from Guangdong and I hope to be able to something the same. Janice

[panasianbiz]

I stumbled across your blog while I was doing some online research. I was really quite touched by your story. I lived in China, and, therefore, could relate to much of what you wrote.