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This story originally appeared in Families with Children From China--New York's October 1995 issue and may not be reprinted without permission from FCC-NY. For permission to reprint, please contact Susan Caughman (caugh@aol.com)In July of this year at the age of four and half months. My husband, Eric Balber, and I knew there would be limits to what we could learn about our daughter's early life, but we wanted to try to find out as much as we could. We viewed the requirement that we travel to Emily's birthplace as a wonderful opportunity to learn about the country where she was born. We were eager to speak with the orphanage director and acquire as much personal information about her as we could. We knew how much our older daughter, now eight, loves to hear stories about her own birth and early infancy and we wanted to be able to have stories to share with Emily about her life before we adopted her.
We adopted Emily from the Hangzhou Children's Welfare Institute in Hangzhou, China. We traveled with a group of five other families adopting children from this and other orphanages in the same province. At first, we were told that we would have an opportunity to visit the orphanages during our stay in Hangzhou, and be able to ask the orphanage staff questions about our child. However, as a result of an unflattering documentary on Chinese orphanages made secretly by BBC film makers pretending to be tourists, the government closed all orphanages to anyone traveling on a tourist visa. We were, of course, quite disappointed.
Since we could not go to the orphanages, one official from each of the three orphanages where our children had been came to our hotel to answer questions and receive our orphanage donations. We and two other families met with the deputy orphanage director, who brought with her any notes that were left with the children and the children's immunization records. Fortunately, my husband and I prepared for this visit by writing down a list of questions. The interview was an emotional experience, and we would not have been able to remember everything we wanted to ask without the list. (I have included below a list of the questions that we asked; if Emily had been older, we would have asked many more questions about her life in the orphanage.) My husband took extensive notes. This was very important.
Later we discovered we had to refer to his notes often as our memories of what was said were not always trustworthy!
The deputy director was unable to answer all of our questions, but she made a conscientious effort to respond, adding details of her own. We found it was very important to listen closely to the answers and follow-up with other questions. Sometimes we did not understand the answer; sometimes the answer suggested other questions.
We learned, among other things, that Emily was found in a park-like area along a river by a passerby at around noon on March 12th. She was in a ladies' handbag and was wearing cotton baby clothes. We asked the deputy director to mark the location on our map of Hangzhou and to describe a landmark near where she was found. She told us she was left by a statue with children holding hands. This piece of information proved critical in our subsequent efforts to find the location.
Emily was turned over to the police, and three days after she was found she came into the custody of the orphanage. The deputy director did not know the name of the individual who found Emily. Although it might very well not have been possible, one of my regrets is not trying more vigorously to find out who that person was. I have heard of a family who was able to identify and actually meet the people who found their child.
A note was left with Emily with her birth date in the Chinese lunar calendar written on a small piece of Buddhist prayer paper. Although we were not permitted to keep the original of the note, we were allowed to photograph and photocopy it. Seeing the note was overwhelmingly emotional. Emily was eight days old when she was found and was very tiny. Her small size lead them to conclude that she may have been an "eight month" baby. In response to our questions about what Emily was like and what made her happy, the deputy director told us that she loved to be held, that she enjoyed "talking" to her nurse in the morning when waking up, and that she especially enjoyed her bath. When asked who named her Sihui, her Chinese name, and why, she smiled and said that she had because she wanted her to be bright and intelligent. (Hui means "wisdom" and Si means something like "emerging" or "thinking"). She told us she was called "Wei-Wei",as a pet name. We knew there was an orphanage practice of having newborns share cribs and we asked who Emily's "crib-mate" had been. The deputy director laughed and pointed to one of the other babies in our group who had entered the orphanage at about the same time as Emily.
We also asked our translator to write down all Chinese names mentioned during our discussion. In addition, we got everyoneâs business cards. Although our experience was positive, the experience of other members of our group who had adopted from a different orphanage was disappointing. The representative sent by their orphanage was a business person who knew very little about their children, had not come prepared with any information, and seemed not to care.
That same day as our meeting, we set out to find the spot where Emily had been found. We had our guide write down the location on a piece of paper that we used to show to the taxi driver. Our guide used the location name that was on the certificate of abandonment, a document that is part of the Chinese adoption paperwork. A very puzzled taxi driver took us to that location, a small park and childrenâs playground across the street from a river. However, within minutes of our arrival, it began to rain very hard and we had to leave.
As it turned out, this was a stroke of good fortune. Whenwe returned the next day, we approached the spot from a different direction, and saw, along the river, a statue matching the description given to us by the deputy director. First, we searched the little playground where we had been the day before, and finding no statues at all, we crossed the street to the river bank. We then walked a short distance to the statues we had seen during our taxi ride. There were no other statues along the river and we were convinced that we had discovered the placewhere little eight day old Emily was found.
The statue was of a family÷two children, a mother and father÷all holding hands. Although, there was not heavy pedestrian traffic in the area, there were a number of people passing by, all of whom looked at the three of us curiously, no doubt wondering what on earth we were doing there. It was apparent to us that Emily was left in a location where she would have been discovered after a short while. I also strongly felt that placing her by this particular statue was a message of hope and love. We took photographs and some video footage. I picked a few flowers from a flowering bush next to the statue to press and save. Something about the location and the moment made me recall the story of another child abandoned out of necessity-Moses left in the bulrushes by his mother. I kept wondering if Emily's birth parents were somehow nearby, watching us.
We did not stay long. It was an incredibly hot day and we were happy to escape the heat. Returning to the shelter of our air conditioned hotel room, we felt triumphant and exhilarated, knowing that we would have a story to tell Emily.
Kathy Cobb and her family live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and returned from Hangzhou in July. Kathy wishes she had thought to visit the police station (recorded on the abandonment certificate) where her daughter's arrival was recorded to learn more about the three days between Emily's abandonment date and her arrival at the Hangzhou orphanage..