February 23: The Orphanage
I have a confession that some of you may find odd and some of you I'm sure will understand. It's that I didn't come here to visit the orphanage and there is a part of me that didn't really want to see it, that would've preferred to just leave it be. The main reason I am here is to see where my daughter was from and to try to reach some understanding of it, for when she asks. You see, the orphanage is where Clara-Li just happened to wind up in a twist of circumstance but she is by birth more generally from Hengdong County, Hunan Province, People's Republic of China.
That said, my daughter spent her first year and a half at the Hengdong SWI, which for her was probably pushing the envelope in such a setting. I now know more about what that setting was like for her and for so many other children. It's good that I was somehow propelled to go there and henceforth I will always look at Clara-Li with a certain unique sense of astonishment.
The day began with a light drizzle of rain and a return to more seasonable weather. It was cold again. In my room I'd spent much of the night packing the small red bags of gifts that my wife and I had planned that I would try to give to the nurses who had looked after Clara-Li. Into them I carefully doled out chocolates and pictures of Clara-Li and of our family and of our home. In doing so, I thought about the things that had led me to this point, mostly about fate and responsibility. A lot of hours passed by rather quickly.
As we prepared to leave the Telecom, Chen and I stood watching our breath under the entrance awning out front next to the van, while Leon paced off to the side and fielded a series of calls on his cell phone, periodically glancing over at us with a look of desperation that said he didn't need the distraction. Chen too seemed nervous, standing nearby and occasionally patting me on the shoulder but mostly staring ahead absently. When we were ready, we huddled for a moment before piling into the van, eyes on me to say something.
"Thanks," I managed. "Really. Thanks."
Then with a grip on the shoulder of his big blue winter coat, "Chenge, xiexie. Hao pengyou."
When we arrived at the Hengdong SWI, we were greeted by Director Chen Ming, Assistant Director Ding Qi Hui, Secretary Xiang Zhen Xin, and several dignitaries from the Hengdong County Bureau of Civil Affairs. The building is a three-story square structure of about 12,000 sq. ft.. The three of us were quickly waved inside, where it was very cold. Heat was provided within only by some small portable heaters.
We gathered inside the entrance way and cement stairwell on the ground floor for a moment, and then were directed upstairs to a 2nd floor meeting room not far from the stairwell. On the stairs we passed a nurse holding a bundled infant, which I instinctively stopped to peek at. I looked into that little sleeping face then glanced at the nurse. We both smiled and nodded knowingly.
The meeting room was small and filled at the center with a huge black-finished wooden table surrounded by benches with the same finish that were placed against each wall. Leon and I were seated at the far end of the table near a window that had one panel open, since the air was warmer outside. Chen found a seat on the other side of the table with Xiang Zhen Xin and the county officials. Chen Ming, the orphanage director, was seated next to me and he would be the spokesman.
As the talk began around the table, with Leon acting as my interpreter, it became apparent that this visit was far more than a granted request. Among this group it had been planned and anticipated for some time with a mixture of hope and no small amount of apprehension. The room crackled with tension that the frigid temperature didn't help and that our Chen, thankfully, attempted to ease by periodically inserting humorous asides into the conversation and laughing mostly on his own.
But having our words interpreted provided opportunity on both sides for careful scrutiny of speaker's intent and the listener's reaction. I found that I was being presented not with a tour description, but a very serious explanation of a number of difficult problems that daily engulfed each of these people in a very personal way. This was a meeting that was very important to them.
Chen Ming began by explaining that the building was first constructed in 1986 as the Glory Social Welfare Institute for war veterans but quickly began to take on abandoned children as the demand grew, especially in the early 1990s when population rules became more strictly enforced outside the major cities.
Although several adoption groups had adopted Hengdong children in just the past few months including 10 children earlier this same week, the Hengdong SWI was still taking care of about 70 children between the ages of one and two, two older children who are "disabled," and two 12-year-old girls who were living with the families of two orphanage staff. Seven to eight babies between one and three were living outside the orphanage with families in a situation sounding like a temporary arrangement rather than formal foster care.
In addition, the Hengdong SWI on its ground floor still cared for about a dozen seniors, several of who were veterans. It had 18 full time staff including its administrators and about 30 part-time employees to function as nurses or nannies.
There were so few older children at the facility because Chen Ming and his staff, very likely with assistance at the provincial level, had been so successful in arranging domestic and foreign adoptions for the children in their care. Most were now being placed in families within a year. Families from the United States alone had adopted more than 100 Hengdong SWI children.
[This is remarkable, given the more lottery-like nature of foreign adoptions in China generally and that many children living in SWIs are often said to be ineligible for adoption either because of communicable diseases, especially Hepatitus B, or other medical conditions.]
However, a half dozen or so newly abandoned babies arrive at the Hengdong SWI each month, making the work of the orphanage extremely difficult. This appeared to show on Chen Ming's face. Neither the SWI nor county officials said they saw an end to this on the horizon, given a continuing preference among families of little means for sons. Instead, they said it is very important that a new orphanage be built. The sooner the better.
The reason was obvious. The building was in very bad shape, although the staff were doing the best they could in it. Several adoption groups had made donations of equipment to the orphanage; ours last August bought a few air conditioner units and washing machines. But too much was wrong with the basic structure of the building.
Even its interior looked battered by the elements. Many windows and some of their frames were not weathertight. There were cracks in the walls and ceilings and the interior paint looked original. Electrical wiring was very scarce and old and I found myself wondering where the gift of an air conditioner or washing machine could be safely plugged in. Cribs and other furniture pieces also were old. Even the walkers that looked okay in so many photos taken a year or so ago with disposable cameras now looked worn.
In contrast, the bedding was fairly clean and the staff I met seemed solidly competent, admirably so. I met each of the nurses who had looked after my daughter. They remembered her well and it was obvious they had cared for her with a great depth of feeling.
The children I saw in the same room Clara-Li had lived in were being given the same compassionate treatment and most of the children I saw during my visit looked okay, in relative terms. There were children who looked very thin or not well, but it has to be remembered that these children were physically abandoned as infants generally not much older than a few days or a few weeks, which is a significant trauma. Most very likely had poor prenatal care. One tiny child with beautiful eyes and skin nearly translucent, who could not grip in her hand the finger I offered through the opening in her blankets, stays in my memory.
Each day following that first trauma of being abandoned involves a certain degree of catching up, which I sensed that some infants handle well and others do not for many reasons. The stress of an institutional setting is a large added hurdle for them. Subtract any number of basic resources from the institution and the result is a pretty steep uphill climb.
I did not get information on mortality among these children. But, again, the staff seemed to be doing the best they possibly could with the few resources they had at hand.
In the small room adjacent to the one that had been my daughter's there were eight small metal cribs with eight small bundles of blankets holding babies. This room seemed typical, with its grimy bare walls and somberly functional appearance. At the center of the room a small portable heater was glowing. It threw some warmth if you stood in front of it but didn't really warm the air very much.
While the immediate challenge was the cold, I couldn't help wondering what conditions in this building might be like during Hengdong's much longer season of intense heat and humidity.
Ding Qi Hui, the SWI's assistant director, is the middle-aged woman who generally accompanies Chen Ming when he brings babies to Changsha for foreign adoptions and we remembered our meeting there. At the orphanage a head nurse was actually in general charge of the nursing staff, but Ding has the air of a fine nurse, along with a beautiful smile, and both she and Chen Ming were obviously familiar with the children. They explained that the administrative staff have distributed their offices throughout the building and everyone expects that when a baby needs attention nearby the nearest person will respond.
It was Ding who guided us to the room that had been my daughter's and who proudly introduced the staff there, not especially worried what I might think of its battered walls or the old Chinese army coat that rested for good measure over the top of one bundled sleeping baby. She guessed correctly that I'd see past this, at least for the moment, and understand how dedicated these nurses were. As Leon translated, she helped them to answer my questions and held my arm all the while. More than anyone there she seemed to understand why I'd made such a long and complicated trip to Hengdong.
While the children I saw were cared for, most if not all will have problems that could have been avoided in a better facility. In the winter the children are bundled in many layers of clothes for warmth and spend most of the time in their cribs under warm blankets. This keeps them snug but hinders their physical movement and will encourage developmental delays. Chen Ming and Ding Qi Hui told me they know and are concerned that Hengdong SWI children have sometimes had trouble crawling and learning to walk after they are adopted and know that this is because the children spend so much time in walkers when not in their cribs.
The floors in the orphanage were made of hard concrete and were either very cold or damp, depending on the season. They were not good for putting babies down upon. Chen Ming said they very much wanted to renovate a large empty room at one end of the second floor to a suitable baby room, with a soft floor and toys. I made a monetary contribution toward this effort.
In the meantime the babies in their walkers at least looked happy in them.
Many adoptive parents of Hengdong SWI children have reported that it seemed like their children came to them familiar with being loved. Indeed I saw nurses on duty routinely pick up children to hold and soothe with loving attention, but there seemed to be a fair number of children in relation to the number of staff on duty and this was during the day. In the absence of bright colors and the scarcity of all but the barest of furnishings, I realized that a periodic allotment of nurse interaction was probably the only satisfying cognitive stimulation my child received in her first year and a half of development and that she almost always had to wait her turn.
This helped to explain a lot, about the lack of a sense of safety that I've seen in the eyes of orphanage children and about Clara-Li and what in her terrible nights she will slowly overcome. There really is great strength in adversity; she has this built in. Each month gets a little better.
Someone once wisely told us to look for those inner things in our children that enabled each of them to get by on their own during a difficult infancy. Clara-Li has so many of these fine inner traits, not the least of which is a full-body smile that seems to begin in her feet and causes her little shoulders to hunch in delight as each grin blossoms. She seems to have a natural tendency to look for happiness and find it in the simplest things.
It's quite remarkable.
Chen Ming and the other officials asked that I not take pictures inside the Hengdong SWI because they freely admit that its conditions are poor. They worried that any photos I might take would be viewed out of context. I agreed and didn't take any inside.
Mostly, the building inside was dark. It was laid out like a dormitory with small rooms of equal size accessible from central hallways that ran the length of the building on each floor. The hallways were not lit and light filtered in only through the windows in each small room or from the wide main stairwell at the center of the building, which can be seen from the entrance. The ceilings were very high and sounds, like the occasional baby crying, echoed down these long, dim and empty caverns.
Looking into the sparsely furnished rooms as we toured the halls, more of the rickety wooden window panels were open in the hope that the daytime air outside might warm the cold interior. The windows to the outside were in fact the life that fed the place and seemed to offer the only real break from its dreariness. In this dull light interior colors were reduced to monochrome shades of gray. Darker colored doors and door frames were weathered and chipped.
Except for the cribs and babies in its rooms, the building looked much like an aging version of its original intention, a simple roof and walls built by grateful citizens for former soldiers of the Chinese army.
A few years ago a Wisconsin couple came to Changsha with one of the earliest foreign groups to adopt children from the Hengdong SWI, and went home deeply committed to a new 9-month-old baby daughter. Just after her first birthday at home she became very ill and at the hospital was eventually diagnosed with tubercular meningitis. She died not quite a month later in February 2003.
A few other Hengdong SWI children later tested positive for tuberculosis after they were adopted and brought home, enough to serve as a notice for new adoptive families with Hengdong SWI children to have them tested. Tubercular meningitis is rare and tuberculosis infection can easily be treated to greatly decrease the chance that an infected person will ever become sick with tuberculosis. But active tuberculosis in children can be very serious.
As we walked about the building, Chen Ming and at least one other official made a special point to tell me that the seniors who live on the first floor of the building are no longer allowed upstairs to play or help with the children, although many of the seniors are unhappy with this. This rule is strictly enforced because some of these older residents "have sickness and the situation was not good."
I passed an office bathed in soft yellow light from a desk lamp and where three typically white coated nurses on a break were huddled around a very small glowing heater. They looked up and laughed shyly, a little embarrassed. No problem and please carry on, I motioned.
From the doorway across, a tiny bundle in a walker came wheeling out into the hall. When the little vehicle came to a stop, a round-headed baby gazed up at me with a look of great surprise.
A nurse from inside the doorway quickly retrieved this escapee, to rejoin two other children in her room who were also in walkers. They each looked to be about a year and a half old. I knelt down among them for a while, as they bobbed about, looking like teddy bears in their many puffy layers. All the while they stared at me transfixed through the dim, hazy light. If you think I look interesting, I thought hopefully, just wait until you see the Grand Sun City Hotel.
To summarize, one county official told me he believed that Chen Ming and his staff are the best in the province in their care for and dedication to the children in the Hengdong SWI, but that the orphanage itself, in its physical condition and lack of resources, may be the worst. I saw nothing during my visit that would lead me to doubt this.
While conditions at Hengdong SWI were very difficult, there were fundamental differences between the situation I found there and, say, the popular reports about Chinese orphanages from the mid 1990s such as the widely circulated Human Rights Watch/Asia report Death by Default in 1996 and the BBC documentary The Dying Rooms in 1995 that are still way too often cited inaccurately as current indicators of orphanage conditions. Most researchers and private agencies working directly with orphanages in China would likely agree that conditions have vastly improved during the past decade and especially among orphanages that have been involved in China's foreign adoption program.
Throughout China, even today, there are many places where life can seem dreary or hopeless and an under funded, crowded, state-controlled orphanage in such a setting can be full of sights and sounds that are disturbing. But it helps to weigh a variety of factors when thinking about the orphanage. While the Hengdong SWI has no heating or cooling system, this is the standard nearby in homes, shops, restaurants, and other buildings. Common too is a very sparing use of electricity and especially during the day, which makes sense in a developing country with a billion and a half population.
So on one level conditions in the orphanage approximated ones that these children might have experienced living in a typical home in the area. On another level, an orphanage should be a health care facility, especially if it must largely focus on infant care.
Mostly, the Hengdong SWI seemed like rough temporary shelter.
The officials explained that they agreed to my visit after much discussion and the decision was eventually made by Director Zhou Liqun of the Hengdong County Civil Affairs Bureau. He is the head government official in the county. Hearing of my efforts to make the trip, they decided they would seek approval for the foreign parent of one of the adopted Hengdong children to come to see the orphanage and to carry back a message about what was happening there, to somehow encourage support. They hoped the situation would be accurately presented and figured this was worth a try as an experiment.
As we later stood outside I looked up and caught a haunting glimpse of a nurse holding tightly to a baby and standing at an open window above me. In the gray daylight they were half in shadow and the room behind them appeared much darker than it probably would have seemed inside. Our eyes met and the grief in hers really startled me. I do not know what this meant. This might also be said of much of what I had seen there.
As for my daughter's finding site, Chen Ming confirmed that she was found at the second market we had located. She was discovered there within its alleyways, generally in the area that I had sensed. The man who reported the incident to the local police had found her wrapped in an old black skirt and unwrapping the skirt discovered she had been dressed with a little pink hat and a tiny red vest. Pinned to her was a typical note, painted in black ink on a swatch of red cloth that indicated only her birth date on the lunar calendar.
Red for luck. There was nothing else on the note.
Beside her was half a packet of formula.
She was nine days old.
Xiang Zhen Xin had brought this information into the meeting room for me, later after we all had walked about the building. It was gathered in a folder full of documents, which Chen Ming and Leon patiently helped me to sift through.
Then I sat in the room holding and looking at the red cloth note for a long time, before it was returned to its folder.
After the tour of the Hengdong SWI we packed in several cars and drove to the site of what Chen Ming and the county officials hope will be a new orphanage. There they planned to build a large facility for children only. They hoped to complete this new building in three to five years. They had raised 1.5 million yuan toward this effort so far, needed 3.5 million yuan to start construction, and 10 million yuan to complete the project. Ten million yuan is about $1.2 million USD. They had commitments for some additional assistance from China's Ministry of Civil Affairs and the Hunan Department of Social Welfare, but said they also need support from foreign adoptive families.
The amount raised for the new orphanage appeared to roughly match the total revenue that the Hengdong SWI would have seen from foreign adoption fees over the past few years. It seemed legitimate to question why more of this money isn't being directed to more immediate improvements. The brief debate that followed on this point wasn't very conclusive or especially illuminating.
Local officials were clearly committed to the project and this could be seen in their faces as they looked out over the projected building site. It was obvious too, however, that no one was in any way satisfied with current conditions in the present building.
On the new building site was a series of large ponds bordered by some watery vegetable plots, and these were adjacent to and hemmed in by several rows of tall apartment-style residential buildings. The edges of the ponds were lined with piles of dirt and litter. On their far side was the edge of town. In the other direction, the alleys between the buildings had the same gray disheveled look as those that surrounded the marketplaces that I had searched the day before.
Next we all went to a restaurant where we were met in a special meeting room by Director Zhou Liqun, who apparently is much esteemed. There was more serious discussion of the orphanage.
I sensed that the county government did not have a lot of revenue of its own to work with, but that it had a large list of basic priorities largely focused on infrastructure and creating conditions for economic development: roads, dams, power, sewerage, and water. It was used to focusing its actions to benefit the broadest portion of well over a half million people.
The Hengdong SWI, with its comparatively tiny number of inhabitants and hidden at the edge of the county town, for many years had likely been a back burner issue easy to ignore as a possible agenda item, if it had been anywhere on the stove at all. Somehow, in just the past few years, county officials had obviously become very concerned about the SWI and personally involved in its future. Several seemed to have donated a great deal of time there. But inherent to the SWI is an array of dismaying issues and challenges and in its attempts to address them the county was clearly struggling.
The discussion finally drifted toward its inevitable conclusion that if nothing else this had been a remarkable day, an unlikely meeting in Hengdong between two vastly different cultures 10,000 miles apart, all sparked by love for a child. In the end we agreed that at home, nestled within our own families, maybe we're really not that different.
Eventually we were presented with a dinner around a large round table that seated more than a dozen of us. During the dinner there was much toasting and many humble expressions of thanks.
For my part, I especially thanked Leon and Chen. When we clinked our glasses and embraced in friendship, and in dawning recognition of an extraordinary mission accomplished, everyone including the restaurant staff stood and cheered.
Perhaps there is something that, collectively, Hengdong adoptive families or others reading this could do to help.
I was able to learn a very important lesson on this trip, probably the one I came here seeking. I was mistaken in the way I was attempting to explain why my daughters were abandoned. I know now that it is useless to try to understand what happened within the context of my own life, even if I have understood something about life's challenges from working for several years with schools in rural Appalachian West Virginia or if the city of New Orleans where I live offers many examples of bad urban American blight and poverty.
Poverty in China is actually a relative concept, one factor among many in a severely overcrowded country with 80 percent of its population living an ancient agrarian lifestyle out of balance with a growing modern urban population struggling to compete in a new market economy. This is the land of contradiction, a graceful chaos that one out of every five people on the planet calls home, yet a mystery for almost everyone else.
The lesson is that for those struggling to get along in Chinese society, simple poverty aside, life can sometimes be hard in ways that can't be understood from a distance, if at all, by us.
