It’s 68 degrees and cloudy in Changsha, China this morning. I know this, not because I am there, but rather because we have our web browser set to Changsha weather. Our computer faces the window, so I can watch the early December fog roll in thick and heavy this morning. Actually, December fog in Minnesota isn’t at all usual. Fog in China is typical. However, the fog in China is more smog than anything. The pollution levels there are so high, that the air is thick and heavy. Of all my memories of China, the smell and feel of the air there is the most vividly ingrained in me. I will never forget looking out the 28th floor of the Dolton Hotel and barely seeing across the street. I will forever remember the day on the streets of downtown Guangzhou when I had to sit on some steps, overcome with the smell of cigarette smoke and car exhaust. I could taste the impure air as it condensed in my mouth and settled in my raw throat. After my first week in China, my nose became sore. It shouldn’t surprise me, as my nose was my only filtration defense against one of China’s most serious environmental issues. To watch all the Chinese people go about their daily business, you’d never imagine they even notice the air. They’re probably used to it. I figure Chinese people probably treat their air pollution like Minnesotan’s treat their frigid weather. You just put up with it.
“This hotel is beautiful, but the town we don’t go out in like Beijing. It is so full of smog you can’t see. The traffic is HEAVY and hard to explain.” Email home on Wednesday, November 10, 2004
It’s been three weeks since we returned from China, but it seems like yesterday. I can still feel the warm, humid air that sweeps through the Hunan Province this time of year. Of course the locals think it’s cold, and they wear tightly zipped coats. Living in Minnesota my whole life, I appreciated the t-shirt and sandals weather. My choice of attire and quest to perpetually be “cooler” drew lots of quizzical looks from people around the hotel and on the streets. The mere glances I got were nothing compared to the intense scrutiny my daughter received while nestled in her mommy’s arms. While everyone was kind to us, they were interested in our Chinese baby and our motives for wanting to meld ourselves into a cross-cultural family.
The two weeks we spent touring China has left us processing all that happened in such a short amount of time, and triggered a yearning to go back to the country of our second daughter’s birth. The connection I feel to China is as strong as the red thread in the ancient Chinese saying that currently graces the footer of my husband’s email:
”An invisible red thread connects those destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but never break”
While our trip to China ended within two short weeks, our journey to find our daughter took much longer. In August of 2003, my husband and I met with some friends who adopted from China. I don’t remember how or why we ended up at their house, but we left determined to follow our hearts. In the weeks following our visit, we tried to rush the process as if we were the first to ever attempt to do so. We attended the informational meeting annoyed that we had to waste time listening to our options. The pre-application paperwork seemed like an obstacle in the way of the formal application paperwork. The formal application took longer than we could have imagined, as it included reading two books and doing book reports to prove we read them. Normally we love to read. However, when faced with our own self-imposed timeline to complete the assigned books, we felt our energy waning. The application process was grueling, and only later after completing the entire process did I come to realize that the initial paperwork was in fact the worst of it.
In September of 2003 we shared our news with our families, who were excited to hear we were adopting. I was determined to capture their excitement as well as my own, so that one day I could share the memories with my daughter. I started a journal September 29, 2003, with the understanding that we probably wouldn’t get our referral for over a year. That meant that our daughter wouldn’t even be born yet. However, God has a way of surprising us, even in the most regimented and governed processes like adoption. We would later find out that our daughter was already born on September 22, 2003, in the city of Changde.
“To my little child I have yet to meet: I know that someday you will have questions you will want answers to. Some things I won’t know. Some things I’ll be able to guess. Other things I will have written down, so that you will have everything I have to offer. As I write this journal and begin telling you of our journey to find you, I know that you are not even born yet…I find myself getting excited because I know your life has probably just begun…I don’t know how much we’ll be able to find out about your birth mother, but please know that far away in a place called Minnesota your other mommy will be so happy that she’ll cry the day you are born.” Journal to Adria, September 29, 2003
After being cleared of any heinous crimes and coming up clean in the FBI fingerprint banks, our paperwork (called a dossier) was finally completed and sent to the CCAA (China Center of Adoption Affairs) in China February 27, 2004. Dates become the building block of sanity for waiting adoptive parents. Ask anyone waiting for their international referral, and they’ll be able to rattle off all the cornerstone dates. There’s even special abbreviations created by those waiting for a referral from China. “DTC” stands for Dossier to China. “LID” stands for Log In Date, for which we anxiously waited. Our paperwork was logged in on March 3, 2004. That date was so critical, as it signified the “official start” to our waiting period.
Somewhere along the way, we learned that the waiting time was reduced from a year to about 8-9 months, and then reduced further to about only 6 months! You would have thought we won the lottery. We grabbed for and held onto every piece of information we could get our hands on. Sometimes it meant scoping out messages posted on Spain websites. Never mind the fact that neither of us spoke Spanish. It added to the excitement, as we could translate the posted messages into whatever we wanted to hear. It still amazes me that our sanity stayed in tact through all of this. Or did it?
”Ok, now you know I’m really losing it. A friend on our adoption forum alerted me to this post on a Spain site. You know it’s bad when I take to searching other languages for info: Estimada Marta: Gracias por su correo. CCAA han enviado una parte del marzo. Si Vd todavia no recibe la asignacion,puede ser enviado en fines de agosto. Si se necesita, podremos traducirla. Translation? March referrals have been sent by the CCAA and are in the mail.” Personal website posting, August 19, 2004
While sitting at my computer at work on September 8, 2004, our social worker called to give me the good news. We have a daughter! She’s almost a year old and is living in the Changde Social Welfare Institute in the Hunan Province of China. We learned her name was Chang Shuang Yi. The rest of the day was spent calling family and friends, filling them in on limited information we were given. Our daughter’s pictures and medical information was being overnighted from Grand Rapids, Michigan to Minnesota. We would see our precious baby’s pictures the following day.
The next day is best described by my exact words taken from my journal, immediately following our visit to the adoption agency: “You are absolutely beautiful. Daddy and I are just in awe of your pictures, eating up every detail and expression. We are so lucky to have five pictures of you, three at five months of age and two at eleven months of age. We know so much about you now, yet not enough…What a glorious day…(Referral) Less than one year since starting this journal!” Journal to Adria September 9, 2004
Unfortunately, as soon as we received and accepted our referral, we began another long wait. We needed to be invited to travel to China by the CCAA, China’s welfare department. We completed our China Visas and other paperwork that we needed to take with us. We packed and repacked. We bided our time in ways that I don’t even remember now. It helped that we had our five year old daughter to keep us busy. We made plans for her to stay home with grandparents while we were gone.
“So sorry to share that there is still no news on travel invitations – and no explanation for that either. I definitely will get in touch with you as soon as I get news. As soon as the travel invitations come Bethany staff will move on getting a Visa appointment date in Guangzhou, which will of course determine your travel dates. I imagine you all have visas and are working on completing the paperwork before you go.
Let me know if there is anything I can do at this point. ” Email from our Social Worker, October 11, 2004
“Holy Crap” were the words I uttered aloud when our social worker called to say that we wouldn’t have our Guangzhou appointment until November 15th. She didn’t seem to mind my slightly off-beat choice of words, given we were using a Christian agency. We were disappointed that we would have to wait a few more weeks to see our daughter, but elated that we finally had our travel date of November 4th.
Fast forward to the plane ride, which was uneventful and long. Given my distaste for crashing, I was pleased we made it safely. I still find it funny that our pilot insisted on specifying our flight from Minneapolis to Tokyo, Japan would be twelve hours and three minutes long. By the time we were landing, we were too tired to hold him accountable to the three minutes. Our decent into Japan coincided with the sunset. From the plane, we could see the bright orange colors reflecting on the ocean, and they were nothing short of spectacular. I took it as a good omen. It was also the most I got to see of Japan. Within a half hour we boarded a second plane to Beijing, China.
The flight to Beijing was remarkable in a few ways. The most obvious was the upgrade in airplanes. We enjoyed awesome seats and personal televisions, with our choice of movies not yet available for rent back in the United States. Not only are we avid movie lovers, but we were also fighting sleep deprivation by that point. I tried to watch “Super Sized” multiple times, but kept getting interrupted by spontaneous sleep, food service, and the Chinese woman sitting next to me. Actually she was half Chinese- half Japanese, and she was the other remarkable memory from this flight. She spoke no English, and I spoke no Chinese. Our conversation transcended the preverbal language barrier, as we decided to communicate anyway. I was able to learn that her mother was Chinese and her father was Japanese. She had two children, and one was in college. She was on her way to visit family. She approved of my trip to Beijing, but had distaste for the Changsha area that I would be traveling to. She said it was very hot there.
I was excited to pull out my pictures of our baby and show them to her. I truthfully wanted to see what kind of reaction I would get from her, having heard that some Chinese people disapprove of Americans adopting from China. What I got was sentimental looks, smiles, and a nod of approval. She asked if I would educate her in America, which I said we would do. She was able to read my feeble attempt at righting “thank you” in Chinese mandarin characters on the gift cards I had with me. I was beaming to know that I had mastered the language well enough to say, “Thank you”. The face of this woman will fade over time, but I’ll never forget the long conversation that never really happened verbally.
Another remarkable piece attached to our flight was only memorable once we were deprived of it in the hot Chinese weather; ice. Only after I was spending my time pining for some ice cubes, did I truly appreciate the wistful hand of the flight attendant dropping cube after cube in my dainty plastic cup every two hours on the flight to China. As every tourist is warned, we avoided ice at all cost. Our brush with diarrhea suspense happened several days into our trip when we forgot to order “Pepsi, no ice” at the Pizza Hut in Beijing. When my beverage arrived, I tried unsuccessfully to ask our waitress if the ice was safe to drink. I should have known not to deviate from words associated with ordering pepperoni or sausage pizza. I resigned to remove the ice cubes from my glass and peered into the pop as if I was going to “see” bacteria swimming around with satanic glee. I drank every drop, as did my husband. He didn’t remove his ice. We experienced no ill effects, and Steve was the first in our group to wear the “badge of ice courage”.
People’s first impression of a new country always seems to start at the airport. Fortunately for China, it was a clean and pretty first sight. After rounding up our luggage and locating our tour guide, which was unbelievably easy, I needed to find a restroom. I took off on my mission with the intent to finally witness a squat toilet first hand. My mission was accomplished, but only partially. I couldn’t bring myself to use it, so I left the bathroom with tears welling up in my eyes. Luckily a short time later, someone in our group informed me of a “western” toilet in the last stall. All the women in our group had a new appreciation for “western” toilets, and affectionately paid them a new respect never before bestowed on a toilet. While my preference for a familiar toilet was strong, I couldn’t help give the squat toilets a whirl. There really should be a new Olympic event added to the Beijing Olympics in 2008 for those who can successfully master the squat toilet, with tourist items in tow. It is not easy to hold onto a camera, fanny pack, and wad of toilet paper while trying to balance, aim, and avoid wetting your jeans. Needless-to-say, most women’s restrooms smelled bad. Let’s just say that the majority of the population (tourists included) would not meet the Olympic qualifying heat, due to poor aim.
Some of my first observations of China were the seepage of American culture into Chinese daily life. From the sponsorship of American Express at the Forbidden City to the acceptance of American money in most places, America has clearly made its mark on one of the world’s oldest civilizations. Billboards more commonly featured Caucasian models, even if the products were Chinese. No matter which direction we drove, we only needed to be on a bus a short time before spotting McDonald’s signs. The Hutong Historical District featured Donald Trump’s picture on the front of a magazine, proudly displayed in the window. I stood in Tienanmen Square and squinted to see the KFC restaurant entrance a short distance away. Even Mao’s Little Red Book was written in Chinese and translated into English on the adjoining page. I couldn’t help wonder what the French or Swedish people thought when the vendors approached them in broken English. What a society we are that others automatically assume Caucasians know English.
From the Starbucks coffee next to our hotel to the Hershey’s kisses available at the market down the street, American icons are everywhere. That’s not to say we didn’t appreciate some of the comforts of home, and it certainly helped ease the culture shock that lurked around the corner.
While China was incredibly different than America, there were enough similarities and modern day conveniences, that we truly avoided feeling culture shock. It’s difficult to put my finger on why I didn’t feel overwhelmed in a place where I was a minority and didn’t speak the language. The sights and sounds were a vast disparity from those found in rural Minnesota. We couldn’t have been more involved with the Chinese politics and government constraints, than we were with adopting one of their children. Yet, the process was easy, the trip was fantastic, the people were friendly, and the country was welcoming. We made plans to return before we even left China, which is clearly not a telltale sign of culture shock or expectations gone awry.
We expected to observe everyday life in China, which couldn’t be done from our hotel room. There was plenty of time spent on buses looking out the windows, wondering about the lives of the people and children we saw. What a sight we must of have been, a whole bus full of white people with cameras aimed at their next victim. The most interaction we had with the Chinese public was with merchants on the streets.
Merchants were careful to learn limited English and have ample calculators on hand to aid in their bargaining process. We visited Silk Alley while in Beijing, a famous alley filled with vendors selling everything from authentic Chinese silk to knock-off Rolex watches. Merchants are skillful and bold, with a semi-frantic need to sell their quota for the day. One only needs to do the math conversions to understand that these people must sell enough replica terra-cotta warriors in nine hours to make a mere existence.
“Mommy and Daddy got separated in Silk Alley in all the chaos. I decided to walk back to the hotel by myself, which was quite interesting. I did find daddy eventually on a walk back, and we had coffee with some people from Seattle at the Starbucks. We feel VERY safe here, and like it very much. People are very nice, but life is SO different here.” Message home to our daughter on November 6, 2004
The bargaining process typically started with being approached, blocked from leaving, and often grabbed. The merchants quickly let me know that for me, they had “a very special price”. I didn’t need to tell them what I was considering as a purchase. They were skilled at following my eye contact, as if a laser beam pointed directly at the item I was contemplating. There were seldom price tags on the items, because for each visitor the price would be different. I quickly learned not to hold on to the calculator that was immediately thrust into my hands. Once you are holding on to it, the merchant is unwilling to accept possession again until after the sale. This lesson taught me that there was no way to get away from a purchase, because I couldn’t walk away with something that didn’t belong to me. When I was interested in making a purchase, it required very fast thinking. I needed to arbitrarily assign a value in my head that I thought was fair. Then I needed to divide that number by eight (to calculate Chinese currency cost), and type it into the calculator. Once I showed the person my offer, I was forced to endure while she feigned being insulted. She quickly recuperated and counter-offered a price. This exercise continued until a purchase was made, and I parted with a couple dollars.
The famous places we visited deserve a quick mention. While my fascination primarily focused on daily life in China, standing on the Great Wall was nothing short of spectacular. Visiting Tienanmen Square helped ease my painful teenage memories of the carnage and political scandal plastered on CNN. The Forbidden City was larger than I could possibly fathom (447 square miles to be exact). Simply put, China is old. It’s home to an ancient civilization that is commemorated at every turn. From cultural traditions and political constraints to ancient architecture blended with modern technology, the Chinese people incorporate their country’s history into their daily lives. Foreigners partaking in these famous attractions will experience the wonder along side droves of Chinese people who find it necessary to visit and pay their respects to their own history.
The story of our daughter joining our family is her story and hers alone. I will respect her and leave the details of her story for her to tell one day if she chooses. International adoption is a miraculous and extraordinary experience, exasperated by an unfamiliar country, language, customs, ceremonies, expectations and bureaucracy. Therefore, each family and adoptee invariably experience the joy of adoption and Gotcha Day differently. How wonderful that no two stories are the same.
I am happy to share my observations and the interactions we had with the Chinese people, after our daughter joined us. No amount of preparation from the self-help section of Barnes and Noble or our Chinese tour guides readied us for sharing our baby with the Chinese people. We quickly learned that to adopt a Chinese baby is to allow every Chinese man and woman to intervene with our parental decisions. She was our daughter, and we could have easily resisted the advise from strangers. However, to repute a Chinese person would have been insulting to them, as well as a missed opportunity for us to learn how much the Chinese love and cherish their children. In America, it is rare to witness the affection and public support for children and their parents by pure strangers with good intensions. Whether sweet, rude, endearing, condescending, or helpful, walk out of the privacy of your hotel room in China with a Chinese baby, and prepare to embark on a childrearing journey like no other.
The Chinese show the love for children by bundling them in layers of clothing. We were told by our translators that a good rule of thumb was to dress our daughter with one more layer than we ourselves were comfortable wearing. I really wanted to read into this advise by dressing our daughter in the clothing that I thought she would be comfortable, and then compensating by taking a layer of my clothes off. However, in the extreme heat of Changsha and Guangzhou this would have meant parading in the buff, so I opted to follow the advise that left our daughter sweating. To deviate from dressing your child culturally appropriate, at best, would draw disapproving looks, comments, and face-to-face confrontations. More often than not, a Chinese lady would pull a baby’s pant legs down or pull socks up so that skin was not showing. To fear the worst was to get hit on the shoulder or back of the head for atrocious choice in attire, and I certainly didn’t want to be the mother in our group to experience this outpouring of “love”.
On day, my husband decided to take our daughter for a walk on the streets of Guangzhou. Deciding to forgo the stroller, he hoisted our baby onto his shoulders and headed for the exit. He was stopped by the doorman of all people and told this was not acceptable. Whether considered dangerous or taboo, we’re not certain. The stroller was retrieved and the walk was accomplished.
The room service in the hotel was more than a job to the ladies attending to our needs. Living in a small room with an infant was certainly a challenge, and provided ample messes. Since we brought limited clothes, bibs, and supplies along, I was forced to hand-wash items. Once washed, I used every surface in the room to lay the items out to dry. Imagine my surprise when we were gone for one afternoon, and returned to find the our cleaning lady had watched me from afar, approved of what I was doing, and took it upon herself to wash my daughter’s dirty clothes and food smeared bibs. She had laid them out to dry exactly how I did in previous days. It is hard to explain the appreciation and compassion I have for the person who did much more than wash some baby clothes. She forever touched my heart.
One sunny day right before we left China, I was standing on the streets of Guangzhou with my husband and daughter. I was desperately trying to take in every detail so I wouldn’t forget a thing, when I was struck by the feeling I would be back. I smiled, relaxed, and shared my thoughts with my husband. I remember saying, “I could do this all again.” I know he knew what I meant. We were totally absorbed in the moment. It was then I knew I would one day have three daughters, two of them Chinese.
We returned to the United States on November 17, 2004 to begin life as a family of four. A year later (December 2005), we completed our paperwork for our third daughter. We waited until September 9, 2008 (over three years) to recieve the referral of our third daughter. We spent the next two months excited about our impending trip. We were anxious to meet our new daughter and a totally new adoption experience. It’s hard to believe that our second adoption trip was almost exactly four years later to the day! Our girls’ Gotcha Day celebration (also called adoption day or family day) will be celebrated on the same day. Mei Mei’s (little sister) story is indeed unique.
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