For those who want the details, grab a box a tissues and read on:
Wake-up call was 5:30 a.m. today. Lily and the driver were picking us up at 7, so we figured that would give the three of us plenty of time to get showered and dressed and breakfasted.
Wrong.
Apparently Charlie likes his leisurely shower as much as Jen and I do. And I had meant to wrap and pack up all the presents for the orphanage staff and kids last night but instead went to bed with a headache. By the time I realized this, we only had 15 minutes before Lily was due to show up. Not enough time to wrap gifts and find breakfast, even at the hotel’s breakfast buffet.
Plan B: We threw all the presents into a bag along with wrapping paper, tape, ribbon, and scissors. Too late to call Lily and ask to meet later, so we’ll just invite her and the driver to breakfast. The hotel may have had weird body parts on the menu last night, but the breakfast buffet is meant to cater to westerners’ tastes in breakfast foods, with a few Chinese dishes thrown in.
Lily accepted breakfast, driver opted to stay with the van. We started the day off well-fed. We hit the road about 7:20. Once we were all settled into the van, I pulled out the wrapping paper and other stuff to wrap the gifts, and we spent the next hour individually wrapping 20 cans of Play-Doh (what was I thinking?), a big bag of Matchbox cars (no, NOT individually—just stuffed tissue paper in that bag!), some gifts for the orphanage directors, and deodorants (no, I’m not kidding) for the nannies. (They love American deodorants in pretty bottles.) I also had a number of other bags of toys and foodstuffs to put together and stuff with pretty tissue paper. These items were sent to me prior to my trip by people who had already adopted from this orphanage and who wanted to send gifts and messages about how well their children had settled into their new families. I would have considered myself as traveling light had it not been for all the orphanage gifts (mine and other people’s) that I brought here, so I was glad to be able to turn that all over to them on the first stop on our itinerary!
Once I started wrapping the Play-Doh, of course Charlie had to get in the act and show me that he had a better idea. Yesterday I found out my son was a mechanical genius and a card shark; today I found out he is an artist. I was wrapping them as cylinders and tying the ribbon after gathering the tissue paper at the top of each can. He decided that wasn’t artistic enough. He took the scissors and started cutting into the flowered-out paper above the ribbon so it looked like petals. Very pleased with himself. Fine, that’s your job now. I wrapped, he cut. Jen was in the back seat and was relegated to stacking them up once he finished. She did get a few pictures of him doing the artsy-craftsy thing.
We finally got to the orphanage around 12:30-ish. The countryside leading up to Xuzhou was very desolate, with tiny pockets of housing that looked like cement cubes stuck together every few miles, surrounded by rice paddies. I saw no power lines, and from the few homes close enough to the road to see details, it looked like they had no electricity or heat. Everybody was outside doing some sort of work. They probably had to just to stay warm. It was really freezing out there.
Don’t know what I was thinking, but I assumed the orphanage would be warmer. Wrong again. The main foyer we were ushered into was freezing cold, no heat whatsoever. They ushered us into a room that had been closed off and had a space heater running, so that one room was warm. Ms. Tang joined us there to accept the gifts on behalf of the nannies and the children (we were not allowed to take them around and give them out) and offered us a tour. We asked if we could take pictures, and were told we could photograph only the outside, not in the children’s centers. I was really disappointed because I was hoping to get pictures in particular of one little boy that was about to be adopted soon, because his mom wanted me to try to get a general idea of how tall he was so she could bring some clothing when she came over to get him. When Lily translated that to Ms. Tang, she asked for the name of the child, and once she realized who it was, she agreed that we could take pictures of just that one child. Other than that, no children, just the rooms that Xiao Tian had been in—his bedroom, his “classroom.” (He was not really schooled there, more on that later.)
We first went to the toddler’s room where this little boy was. Jen had a big bag of Dum-Dum lollipops, and she gave each of the children in the room a lolly. They brought to us the little boy who was about to be adopted, and we got some pictures and were able to measure him. I had packed a tape measure, just in case, and had actually remembered to stick it in my coat pocket—so proud of myself for remembering that! What I didn’t remember, however, was paper and pencil with which to record the measurements. Duh. Lily to the rescue. She is just the quintessential guide, prepared for anything. She whips out paper and pen and stands there writing down the measurements as I dictate. Aimee, I’ll get those measurements and pictures of your sweet little boy to you once I find them in my luggage again.
Another boy we saw there really tugged at my heart. He was a beautiful little boy of about 4 or 5 with albinism, the victim of a recent disrupted adoption. Apparently the couple that was going to adopt him got there and then decided that his special need was more than they could handle. He had an extreme grief reaction and screamed all night after they got him. That just tore at my heart, seeing him still there when he should have been home with his family by then, because disruptions pretty much end a child’s chance for being chosen again. China wants the child to be identified before being re-listed if there’s been a disruption because they don’t want to “waste” a registry slot on a child that seems to be unadoptable. But if the child isn’t listed, the child can’t be identified because no one gets to see him. It’s a huge Catch-22, so usually the child is doomed to stay in the system until aging out and having to leave the orphanage. It strikes terror in my heart to think how close my own sweet Charlie was to that point—they age out of the adoption registry at 14, so this coming July would have ended his chances of finding a family, and they age out of the orphanage at 16 and are out on their own at that point. To my knowledge, Charlie was receiving only general education, no skills training of any sort, so I have no clue how on earth he would have been expected to support himself once out of the orphanage, especially in a society where deafness is considered a mental disorder and many deaf are committed. Wonder what will happen to the little boy with albinism? He’s not deaf, but he is very, very different from what the average Chinese considers “normal” so he probably doesn’t stand a chance at domestic adoption, either.
The toddler room had a space heater, but it was still very, very cold in there, so all the children were bundled up in five layers of clothing.
The next room we saw (but couldn’t take pictures of) was the baby room. There were 18 cribs in quads of 4 with huge puffy rolls of blankets. It wasn’t until I stopped and looked closer that I realized these weren’t just beds made and ready, there were baby heads peeking out from under those huge rolls of blanket!
Next we entered the older kids’ special needs group room. This is the group Xiao Tian was in when he was at the orphanage. I should explain here that Xiao Tian didn’t spend most of his time at the orphanage. Because they somehow miraculously realized he was a really smart kid and was capable of learning, they sent him to a residential school for the deaf nearby. He only came “home” to the orphanage for long weekends, holidays, and summer break when school was closed. He has spent the last few months at the orphanage, since they found out in October that the adoption was imminent and pulled him out of school.
This room, like the others, had a space heater but was still very cold. The kids were all wearing coats. They were watching some television program when we entered the room, but we were immediately the center of attention, as they all clamored for Xiao Tian’s attention, asking if that was his mama. He was obviously the big brother figure to all these kids. He asked Jen if he could pass out the lollies in this room, so she handed over the bag. Was he content with giving each kid a lolly like Jen had in the toddler room? Heck no! He dumped a whole fistful on each child’s desk. A spat broke out at the front of the room when a little boy and a little girl got to arguing over their lollies. No teacher intervened; it was Xiao Tian who settled it. He rebuked them both sternly, and they obediently went back to getting along with each other. Jen started wandering around the room, looking at the individual children, and one of them made prolonged eye contact with her. That’s when Xiao Tian informed me that that particular child was deaf and 7 years old, and Ms. Tang confirmed it. Uh-oh. That’s the age range that Jen is interested in, and she’s been talking about maybe adopting a deaf child. And he made eye contact, and is obviously tugging at her heartstrings…..Coincidence? I think not. We had already talked about how cool it would be if she met her future child on this trip. Oh, Jen… You should have seen the look on her face when she broke eye contact with him and then heard he was deaf. Madonna and child, you just lost your place at the Louvre. She got a golden aura that looked positively halo-ish around her head and the most beatific look on her face.
Some teen-age girls started following us at about that time. I recognized one of them from some pictures I had of Xiao Tian—it was his good friend Zhang Di. Another girl, whose name I can’t even begin to spell, was with her, and she was introduced as his good friend, too. Gotta get him to write me out that name in pinyin. We got pictures of him with his friends.
I find it interesting that he is a big brother to all the boys in his class, but that his true friends are all girls.
The next room we went to was his bedroom. Again, 18 beds arranged in quads, just like the baby room had 18 cribs. He proudly showed me which bed was his, and we sat on it and posed for a picture. Funny, that bed was just as hard as the beds at our hotel. More colorful, though.
When we arrived back out in the lobby, I met one of the most special people in the world. I am still protecting this person’s identity, so I won’t name names, but it was the person who was my intermediary with Xiao Tian, passing e-mail between us these many long months. I had a very special gift waiting for this person, and we shared hugs and tears. It was obvious that there was a very special bond with Xiao Tian, too. Angels don’t always show their wings, but they can’t hide the halos. It was there, no doubt about it. I’ll be keeping in touch.
At that point, the orphanage directress informed us that we were to be their guests at lunch. We found out that her driver had a friend who was the owner of a hotel in Xuzhou and would like to show us his hospitality. We were quite honored. They intended to serve us some regional specialties.
We have since learned that regional specialties means dishes you won’t find anywhere else in the world, especially not where you are from. The food was beautifully prepared, served on a huge round glass lazy susan that took up most of the table with the plates placed around it. There were, fortunately, some dishes that agreed with the western palate more, and my sherpa stuck to those because she didn’t want any repeat episodes of the Satan’s Daggers of Pain incident. I was somewhat more adventurous and tried some of the local dishes as long as I knew what was in them. Some, however, I just couldn’t get my brain around. We were proudly offered pickled cow hooves, duck tongue, fish heads (where was the rest of the fish?) and fish balls (okay, don’t even go there…). We did enjoy the potato mud. That is smashed potatoes with sweet whipped cream. Noodles were good. There were other dishes that we were able to fill up on. And they poured wine for everyone, even Xiao Tian, although he didn’t want it.
One dish in particular they seemed very proud of, because there were two big, cleaned-off bones tied together with a big red ribbon as garnish for the plate. God bless Lily, she leaned over and surreptitiously muttered, “You might not want this one, it is the dog.”
Blech. If I didn’t know what it was, I might have managed if it were red meat like beef, but the meat was actually gray. That one definitely wasn’t going down.
Xiao Tian, however, was not as squeamish. He helped himself to a rather large portion. I asked him if he understood that was dog meat, and he looked at me like I was nuts. Of course he did. Down it went. I explained to him very carefully that my greyhounds at home were off-limits to him.
I glanced over at my sherpa, who had already finished her original glass of the wine and accepted a refill. Having heard Lily's warning, she was now busy bargaining with Xiao Tian in sign language for his glass of wine.
Jen later told me that it was at this point, when Xiao Tian and I were signing so much, that she noted something interesting. Prior to this, the hotelier, who was the friend of Ms. Tang’s driver, had come in and joined us all. We had a nice little crowd going around this table. But Jen had noted that the driver had earlier displayed an attitude about this crazy woman who is adopting this deaf kid. (Remember, this is a society where the deaf are viewed mostly as retarded.) At the point where our signing got animated about the dogs, and Xiao Tian started laughing at what I was saying, the driver realized that XT was actually understanding everything I said, and Jen noticed that there was a subtle shift in attitude. When the hotelier joined us, the driver started telling his friend (moving his hands around to illustrate) that I was actually communicating with the deaf kid and he was understanding me. She said at that point, they both got a rather respectful look on their faces when they looked at the two of us. I thought that was pretty cool, although I didn’t pick up on any of this at the time, since I was too busy making sure that Xiao Tian understood perfectly that I was never to see chopsticks in his hands if my greyhounds were in the same room.
After lunch, we piled back into the van, and Ms. Tang got in with us and told us, through Lily of course, that she would accompany us to Xiao Tian’s finding place.
I had no clue what that visit would do to me emotionally, or I would have brought a couple of boxes of Kleenex.
The van turned into the entrance to the park around Yunlong Lake. About a half mile in, it suddenly swerved to the side of the road, and we were told to get out, this is it. It was just a grassy spot beside the road at the bottom of a small hill, nothing visibly unusual about it. But it was painful to be there, walking around, knowing that 11 years ago, my then 2-year-old son was walking around that same spot alone, wondering where his mama was. It was almost like that place held the pain, waiting for me to come take it on and hold it for him.
Ms. Tang explained that many years ago, there was a police station, a small building, only 20 meters from where Xiao Tian was found. It was generally agreed that his parents picked that spot deliberately so that he would be found quickly.
I spoke with him about what that place was, and he understood the significance of it. He wandered around a while, thinking it over, and then came over to me to get a picture of us there together, I guess to show that he’d finally found his mama after all this time. I’m just so sorry it took us so very long to find each other.
He was very stoic about it all, but I was a mess. Funny how the one day I figured I’d be a blubbering mess of tears (gotcha day) was completely dry, but how this day that I expected to be somewhat like touring an historical site totally blindsided me with emotions that were wholly unexpected: imagining the fears and tension his 2-year-old self felt when he couldn’t find his family and when strangers came and picked him up, the tears he reportedly cried for 3 days, the despair I believe his parents must have felt at leaving him. I honestly believe, because he showed such good evidence of attachment, that he was the much-loved son, but perhaps of poor people, perhaps in one of those unheated, unelectrified homes in the rice paddies, and that once his parents discovered his deafness they must have realized what kind of life was in store for him if he stayed with them. In a society where deafness is regarded as a mental illness, poor people would not be able to provide any sort of education or life opportunities. That’s the only reason I can imagine that someone would abandon a perfectly healthy (otherwise) boy in this society, since healthy boys are treasured. If he were the second son and abandoned for that reason, they wouldn’t have waited until he were two years old. I wish there were a note so that someday he would have some degree of assurance about his circumstances, but that doesn’t exist, so the best I can do is tell him that what I believe is just a guess and my reasons for thinking what I do.
I think my little waterfall of tears affected the others, because the van took us back to the orphanage to drop off Ms. Tang, and when I promised that he would always be loved and would never know that kind of pain again and thanked her for loving him and giving him such wonderful character, she replied very humbly that she was just doing her job but I saw a sheen of held-back tears as she hugged me goodbye. Then she and Xiao Tian hugged fiercely, and he got into the van. As the driver prepared to head out, I looked back around at her, and she was standing there with the back of her hand pressed tightly to her face to try to hold back the tears. Small woman, big heart. Just doing her job, indeed…
The mood in the van was rather somber for quite a while on the way back. It had been a very emotionally challenging day, much moreso than I had expected.
Then Lily’s cell phone rang. It was Dragon Lady. And she had BIG news. She had Xiao Tian’s passport already, had dropped it at the hotel for me (what the hay? That’s supposed to be delivered into my hands!), and we had to change our plans and fly to Guanzhou one day early, because the American Consulate was going to close down for three days for the New Year's holiday and was requesting all the medical appointments to be done prior to the shutdown. Ours was scheduled for during the shutdown, so it had to be changed. This meant leaving Nanjing on the 31st instead of the 1st.
Lily got on the phone to the powers-that-be at OCDF, and most of the arrangements were set by the time we got back to the hotel. Lily is so wonderful. Nothing seems to faze her too much.
The passport was waiting for us in our room, which meant XT could freely move about within China. He is official now.
What we later found odd was that other people’s agencies knew about this shutdown ahead of time and had scheduled them appropriately. Our agency (the one handling the paperwork) was clueless. Hmmmm…I really am glad I switched to OCDF for the tours and transportation. Shame I couldn't have used them for the paperwork, too.
By the time we got back to the hotel in the unheated van, Jen could barely move to get out of the van. She said she had turned into a Sherp-sickle.
Tomorrow we’re going to do some touring in Nanjing, and now it looks like we’ll be leaving bright and early the next morning, since they say we must be in Guangzhou by mid-day in order to get the physical done by day’s end.
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