China Dreaming

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June 14, 2005

Day Five - The adoption interview, the notary, and Wal-Mart

We wake, as usual, somewhere between five and six. I roll over and pull Lara close, listening to both her and Emma breathe in the darkness. Outside, I can hear the beginnings of morning traffic and the horns of boat traffic as the great, dark scows ply the river. More sleep, though, is not on the cards, so I rise and begin my morning ablutions.

Lara gets up not long after, and we move quiety in the semi-dark, trying not to rouse Emma before her usual waking time. This turns out to be unnecessary -- whatever issues she may have getting to sleep, once she's there, the kid is down for the count. We dress and shave and brush our teeth and open the curtains. By 7:30 or so, the little one blinks and yawns, stretching arms and legs that are no longer covered after a restless night.

The, she opens her mouth as wide as she can -- and goes right back to sleep. She is most definitely our child.

We get her up, endure another screaming diaper change, dress her in the one outfit we have that seems to fit, strap on the Hip Hammock, and take off for breakfast. Downstairs in the Sampan Restaurant, we alternate feeding ourselves with feeding her. She eats congee and mandarin oranges with glee and we relax, glad that one thing is going right so far, at least.

Breakfast done, we board the bus for the adoption affairs office, which turns out to be on the second floor of something called "River View Garden." Looks like a high-rise apartment complex. We troop up the stairs, passports, cash and Emma in tow.

The hall is full of people and babies, some getting pictures taken, some being interviewed, some on the way back out. Rose leads us through the chaos to an air-conditioned room in the back, where we sit and relax in the cool air. Emma, quiet through all of this, now sits on our laps (alternating occasionally) and plays with her keys quietly. Two of the little girls chase each other 'round the coffee table.

Rose looks in the door and calls for families to send one person to pay the fees. Lara spends on a moment trying to explain the division of the cash, and I eventually give up, frustrated by my inability to keep straight what's what. So she goes to pay, and I play with Emma for a bit.

Fifteen minutes later, Lara returns, our load now lightened by a fair amount of money. We get up, take the baby, and march down the hall to be interviewed by an adoption official. He greets us pleasantly, and proceeds in a businesslike fashion through a variety of questions that sound suspiciously like they were written by the same person who wrote the "Big Three" questions they used to ask about your baggage at the airport. "Can you care for the baby?" "Do you promise never to abandon the baby?" And so on.

Five minutes later, we sign, and he presents us with a small painted vase as a gift from Jiangxi province. We take a moment to be embarrassed that we brought no gift for this official, despite Rose's assurances that it is neither required nor expected. Next, it's on to the photo room. They take our family picture and Emma's photo. I actually manage to get her to smile a little, but the camera is too slow and misses it by half a second. Then back to the waiting room.

A few more minutes pass, then Rose enters the room with a round-faced, smiling and slightly disheveled-looking man. She announces him as the orphanage director, and we line up to offer our gifts. For him, we give a bottle red wine from the Yadkin Valley, a carved wooden spoon from the NC Folk Art Museum, some US stamps, a US Mint proof set of coins, a deck of cards with pictures of the Blue Ridge Parkway, and a few other odds and ends that escape my memory. For Emma's foster mother, we provide stamps, a bottle of white wine, a spoon, more cards, a Kennedy half dollar, and a few other items.

Rose tells the director that we managed to get the wine all the way from America, and he responds appreciatively. Through Rose, we thank him for taking such good care of Emma and putting her in a good foster home. He smiles and bows slightly, and then it's over. We return to our seats and start repacking our stuff. A few minutes later and we're back on the bus. Through all of this, Emma has remained uniformly calm, amusing herself with her toys, babbling a little, and just generally acting like a good baby ought to.

From here, it's on to the notary. On the way, Rose passes out the single most important document we will receive during this entire trip -- the adoption certificate that shows for sure that she's ours. Like so many other things this week, it seems a little surreal.

The notary's office is above a local police station. We pull up and unload the bus, trooping in and up the elevator to the fifth floor of a building that, despite certain Asian touches in decor, looks pretty much like every other institutional facility you've ever seen. One thing we notice is that the Chinese keep the lights off when there's no one around.

On the fifth floor, we're ushered into a waiting room, where our particular "wait" is about 30 seconds before Rose asks for two families to be the first. We jump at the chance to be first, rather than last as before. The notary speaks no English, so Rose translates. The questions turn out to be much the same as the ones we just answered for the adoption official, and we finish in short order.

Rather than pack back into the small elevator, we opt for the stairs. Reaching the bottom, we find that our bus hasn't yet returned, so we retreat to the cool lobby to wait. A few passers by give us second looks through the glass walls of the building, and at least one police officer behind the glass-windowed desk looks out and smiles. Other families gradually begin to filter down, having finished their own questions. Then the bus returns, and we board and ship out once again. Through all of this, Emma rides in the hip hammock, alert and watchful, but quiet.

The next stop is the Nanchang Wal-Mart. The two-story supercenter occupies one end of a large high-rise complex in what is obviously a shopping district. Intrigued and slightly bemused, we enter. The first oddity is that the Wal-Mart is not, as you might expect, on the ground floor. It's floors two and three, so we trudge up the stairs, grab a small cart with oddly-grooved wheels, and start shopping.

The cart turns out to be the first challenge. Unlike American carts, where the front wheels rotate and the rear wheels are unidirectional, all four wheels rotate on this bad boy. This makes it both more maneuverable and more difficult for the novice to control, and we nearly take out a couple of floor displays before getting the hang of it. Rose suggests that everyone proceed to the third floor for baby clothes, diapers and such, so we locate the escalator.

Escalator? With a shopping cart?

Then we realized that the "escalator" is more like a moving ramp. We push the cart on, and find the reason for the grooved wheels. They lock into the similarly-grooved surface of the ramp, stopping the cart dead. We ride up. I pluck a bottle of some type of tablets from a display next to the handrail, turning it into an impromptu rattle for Emma. She plays with interest, growling the little feral growl that we've come to recognize as a trademark "I'm enjoying myself" noise.

We emerge onto the floor, and both of us laugh a little. It looks just like an American Wal-Mart, only the signs are in Chinese. I pull Emma out of the hip sling, and tentatively put her in the cart seat. To our mild surprise, she sits up fine and seems to enjoy the ride. By this time we've already received a few surprised looks, and one broad smile from a clerk, but thankfully there has been none of the outright disapproval that we've been warned to expect.

We shop for diapers. Measured in metric, and labeled in Chinese. Riiight. This is like trying to understand the instructions for building a nuclear reactor, only without any knowledge of physics, and with the instructions written in Sanskrit. We guess at the conversion to pounds, guess Emma's weight (no scales) and guess which diapers to buy.

I'll spare you the suspense and tell you that we guessed wrong. We got them back to the hotel and put one on her, only to discover that they're identical to the American size 3's we brought. With one important difference. While the American Pampers use a velcro-type closure that has to be fastened in a limited area, these diapers use old-fashioned tapes, which, to our delight, allow us to pull the diaper closed more tightly and conform it to our daughter's tiny little butt.

We then play dress-up, looking at the baby clothes and trying to guess what might fit the child. She bears up with good grace as we hold one outfit after another up to her, marveling at the limited selection and odd sizing. In the end, we find five tops and combinations that seem like good bets, and move on. We return to the second floor and go in search of groceries.

Here, things get a little weird. For instance, did you know you can buy Wal-Mart "Great Value" house brand products? Of course you did. Did you know that in China, that includes beer? Bet you didn't.

Fortunately, they also sell house-brand bottled water, which is dirt cheap. We get two six-packs, adding a few sodas, passing on the vastly-overpriced fruit-flavored Cheerios and the dried jujubes. We pick up some cookies and other treats, then head to the pharmacy seeking a sore-throat remedy.

In the meantime, Emma has started nodding off. We return her to the hip sling, an engineering job that involves two people and a lot of clothes- and diaper straightening. No sooner do we have her strapped in than she conks out.

The pharmacy is a little world unto itself, replete with the usual shelves of boxed and bottled medicines, but also featuring a row of glass cases containing tray upon tray of dried herbs and other "traditional" medicines. The only one I recognize for sure is whole ginger root.

After a bit of looking, I determine that nothing here is labeled in English. Damn. I turn to a clerk. "Do you speak English?" draws nothing but a blank stare and a polite smile. I cough slightly and rub my throat, and the smile broadens. She says something in Mandarin which I, of course, can't understand, and motions me to the aisle where she's standing. She points to a box, on which the only thing I can understand is the 11.1 yuan price.

I make a show of scanning the racks, looking for any familiar name -- Vicks, Robitussin, anything. No dice. I pick up the box, thank her, and pay. Downstairs, we catch up with the rest of the group at the checkouts. Pam warns us that they don't take dollars (unsurprising), nor do they accept credit cards. What? At Wal-Mart they don't take credit cards?

Hurriedly, we start counting yuan. Pam hands us 250 to cover any gap. The checker rings us up and, lo...we make it in under our budget. We got a fair cart full of stuff, and made it out for about US$35. Wal-Mart, always the lowest prices. Even in China, I guess.

Once we arrive back at the hotel, we head directly for the room, where all three of us take a nap. We're all beat. After that, it's time for a little play. I bag up the laundry and drop it off with Betty, our local guide, who promises its return tomorrow afternoon.

Back in the room, Emma has suddenly turned cranky. Not just "I need a nap" cranky, but full on screaming, pitching a fit cranky. After a few minutes of this, one of us gets the bright idea to check her diaper. Yep, needs changing.

We head to the bathroom. More screaming. We lay her down and quickly pop off the dirty diaper. Inside we find a small, hard object the size of a golf ball. Both of us look at each other momentarily, then swivel our heads down to the baby. Can that possibly have come out of our child? It must have felt like she was passing a Volkswagen! We clean her up and re-diaper her, applying more Butt Paste to the rapidly healing rash, and taking the opportunity to hit her arm rashes with some more hydrocortisone cream.

Then it's down to dinner in the Sampan.

Today's dinner is Chinese food, served in the same lazy-susan style that has become familiar. We try the beef and chicken and bean curd. Surprisingly, the meal also includes French fries. We're joined at the table by the O'Rourkes and the Reedy family, children in tow.

Emma chows down on prunes, steamed eggs and a little water from a sippy cup. Too much egg, perhaps, as we would later figure out. Dinner is a quiet affair, on the whole. Everyone is pretty worn out, kids and parents alike. We return to the room around 7pm for a visit from Dr. Sheila Carroll.

At 7pm, Dr. Sheila Carroll arrives to have a look. After a few minutes of poking, prodding and generally medical proceedings, she pronounces Emma healthy. With a very minor heart murmur, which she says isn't unusual in a kid this age. We spend a few minutes quizzing her about sleeping habits, and an odd head-shaking behavior we've noticed, but she assures us that everything's fine, and moves on to her next charge.

We play a little more, and then around 8:30, we change the little one into her PJs and put in a couple of calls and chats to various folks. While Lara talks to her Mom, I try and rock Emma to sleep...no small challenge with a bad back and no rocking chair. After half an our, she conks out, and I try to put her in the crib. No dice.

I hold her in the crib, bending over the folded-down side to rock her, repeatedly whispering the little Mandarin I know in her ear. "You're safe," I tell her. "Don't cry." She whimpers a little, and drops back off. Then Lara's voice re-awakens her, and its back out of the crib she comes.

Nine thirty comes and goes, and she seems no closer to calming down or going to sleep. She's rejected every attempt we've made, and now comes the kicker -- she spits up a pretty fair quantity of clear liquid. A few minutes later, she follows that up with another go.

We realize that she didn't get the evening bottle she's used to, and now we're disinclined to give it to her, worried that it'll make her even sicker. She throws up a third time. We alternate holding and rocking her until 11:30, when she finally drops off. In retrospect, we think this may have been "hump" night. I'd be lying if I said both of us weren't lying there in bed wondering if we'd made the right decision -- if we could actually do this.

It is, of course, the wrong time to be thinking about things like that. I'm sick, both of us are tired, and the baby is angry, sick and disoriented. When she finally goes to sleep, the two of us collapse into bed and sleep like logs. I do my now-standard wake-at-6am routine, work a little on the computer, then go back to sleep until 9am.

Posted by brlittle at June 14, 2005 05:19 PM

Comments

Posted by: jamie at June 14, 2005 07:54 PM