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June 18, 2005
Heat -- Feverish and otherwise
Rough night. Emma woke up twice coughing. The doctor had her "do not disturb" set on the phone, which meant we couldn't talk to her until early this morning. It's probably just allergies and a little cold, but it was enough to spoil what had promised to be a good night's sleep.
We had a tough decision to make this morning. Emma is now a little puny, I'm flat sick (my cough has migrated down to my chest), and Lara's getting sinusy in a way that bodes ill for the future. So, do we go to Hengfeng, or not? Bear in mind that we're talking about a three hour ride out, a possibly stressful visit, and the long ride back.
We opted to go, mostly because it was the one chance we'd ever have.
The bus headed out shortly after breakfast (buffet, Sampan...that'll be a familiar refrain, I assure you, and if I never see Chinese bacon again it'll be too soon). On the way, we rolled through much of metro Nanchang. And there is a lot of it. I was wrong earlier when I called this a city of a million...it's actually more than 5 million, and closing on 6. Sprawl takes on an entirely new meaning here.
We saw modern skyscrapers of steel and glass side-by-side with one-story shops. Retail outlets of every description crowded the street level everywhere. And the traffic. Let's just say that at some point in the ride, Lara and I both simply stopped looking out the windshield of the bus, because we saw one too many near head-on collisions. And speaking of the bus...
Built.
For.
Midgets.
And I do not mean "built for Chinese people," I mean "built for midgets." Lara and I eventually gave up trying to sit side by side and opted for separate rows of seats. I don't know what crackhead engineer designed this vehicle or whom it was meant to carry, but its dimensions and style of seating suggest that the target audience may well have been other than human. I don't know. Suffice to says it's already looking like an uncomfortable three hours.
An hour later, we were still in the city, jouncing and bouncing over potholes, ruts and rough cuts. Out here, the architecture flattened out significantly, reduced mostly to residential and commercial stuff between one and four floors, with the occasional large, gated industrial installation with some nondescript name like "Jiangxi Cement Products Co." Through all of this, Emma was calm and collected, mostly watching out the windows at the people and scenery going by.
We crossed a large river, and suddenly began to see agricultural activity. Farmers plowed rice paddies with oxen, and carried their loads on shoulder yokes. Pretty much every artifact of Chinese agriculture could be seen, from the large, conical straw hats to deflect the blazing sun, to the oxen with their giant horns and infinite patience. Soon we pulled onto what, in America, would qualify as an interstate highway. From then on, farming was the order of the day outside.
Water sluiced from slow-moving creeks into newly-planted paddies. Workers carrying bundles of young rice plants dropped them one after another into the rich mud of the paddy bottoms. Along the creeks, streams and ponds, penned ducks circled in the water or waddled on the banks. Jiangxi province is one of China's agricultural powerhouses, and it was evident why during our ride. The earth here is dark and rich, a deep red color reminiscent of my own home soil in North Carolina. The only barren spots are either (a) man-made, or (b) where large outcrops of brown sandstone push through the soil. Even the stony spots have their purpose -- many have obviously been quarried for the blocks stacked haphazardly to create hovels in the fields.
Conical haystacks and similarly shaped above-ground graves dotted the landscape, wherever the ground was unsuitable for cultivation. About two hours into the ride, we passed a funeral procession on their way to a newly-constructed crypt. Apparently the ground here is like that of New Orleans -- near the water table and possibly prone to flooding. Not a suitable place to plant a former loved one, I should think.
Two and a half hours in, the ground started to rise, and mountains appeared in the distance. Three hours in, we were solidly in the foothills, and the Hengfeng exit appeared. We exited the highway onto a road that might have been better termed a wagon track. There were immediate signs of what we might expect to see. Ramshackle huts dotted the roadside, many with attendant trash dumps alongside. Men and women rode bicycles and pulled handwagons along the road. Cars, a symbol of relative wealth and success in China and very common in Beijing, were nearly nonexistent in Hengfeng.
As we entered the city proper, I began to try and think of the words that might best describe it. Hengfeng is not a tall town -- most structures are under five stories. Many are clad in uniform dingy white glazed tiling, stained by pollution and drainage from the omnipresent bolt-on air-conditioning units. The streets are mostly paved in the central area of town, but seem to turn to dirt in short order. They are universally dirty, not just from dust and the normal accretion of stuff that comes with a road, but the kind of dirty that comes from dumping litter and trash that never gets picked up.
We were already getting stares by this point, which wasn't surprising. A bus full of white people carrying Chinese kids was bound to draw attention in this place. Hengfeng might best be described as "provincial." That, though, is the comment of a passer-by, and someone not familiar in any depth with the town or its people. As we passed the city center, I got a good look at the commercial activity. Stall after stall lined the street, most with steel roll-up doors, merchandise spilling out of the tiny compartments and onto the sidewalks. Solar water heating units, galvanized buckets, bicycles and more. In the town center, spiffier clothing shops sat side-by-side with stores selling motorcycles that would about have to cost more than what most of these folks make in a year.
We rolled off the main road and down a rough dirt street, stopping at a dead-end between several buildings and the demolished foundation of another. Everyone got off the bus and began the trek toward the orphanage, a walk of about a quarter mile down a dirt track, past garden patches and small homes. The air was humid and hot, closing around us like a vaporous fist and threatening our ability to breathe. Two women rushed past us, calling the names of babies adopted by families in the group. A third woman practically sprinted down the track, stopping when she reached Jeff and Evie. She snatched up their child, wailing and hollering in Chinese, calling the baby's name over and over.
I snapped a picture, wondering at the same time how I'd feel if that was Emma she had grabbed. Wondering how I'd feel if that's what happened in a minute.
We walked on. A couple hundred feet later, we reached the orphanage gate and walked in. A crowd was there ahead of us, foster parents meeting with adoptive parents and holding babies, signing to each other as best they could. Rose darted here and there, translating as she could. From the senior citizens' housing block, a gaggle of older folks, mostly women with no sons, looked on. As we got close to the group, I heard someone calling "Wang Fulian! Wang Fulian!" Emma's foster mother's name.
I hung close to Lara. A moment later, we spotted Wang Fulian holding the Hague's little girl, Emma's foster sister. We stood by waiting until she turned around.
When she did, she spotted Emma immediately, snatched her from Lara and held the two babies together, patting their backs roughly and talking loudly to them. Neither showed any overt recognition, but neither exactly pulled away, either. We took a few pictures of the three of us together, then, when Emma reached out to us and began to cry, Wang Fulian told her that we were her new Mommy and Daddy, then returned her to us.
We went to the baby room. The place was barren, the whitewashed walls sparsely decorated with pictures sent back by previous adoptive parents. Everywhere, babies sat in walkers, or slept in them. There were no toys of any kind, nothing designed to stimulate little eyes or ears. The crib room was tiny, lined from one end to the other with steel cribs placed side-by-each, each with a straw mat and blanket. We're pretty sure Emma feared we meant to take her back there.
The women who worked there were a different story. Each carried at least one baby, cooing and talking and patting. These women obviously loved and cared for these kids in a powerful way. Even the other residents seemed to feel that way -- a man watching nearby asked to hold Emma, and she consented to be the object of his attentions for several minutes. Then, at the orders of a nanny, he handed her back, whereupon she continued to fidget and moan, so we walked some more.
A minute later, Wang Fulian returned and picked her back up. Unfortunately for us, Emma's recent cold had picked this time to take a turn for the worse. Her fever had spiked, and she was absolutely hot to the touch. Wang Fulian shot us a glare that needed no words. We called Rose over, and explained that yes, she had seen a doctor and was taking medicine. She handed the baby back, but never seemed fully convinced.
All in all, we couldn't have been happier when Rose sounded the retreat, and we beat feet back to the bus as quickly as we could move. On the way, a dark-skinned elderly woman with snow-white hair grinned, and gave us two thumbs up -- that universal signal means the same thing here as back home. Grateful for the support, I smiled back and jabbed my own thumb into the air, nodding. Back in town, we stopped at the Hengfeng Hotel for lunch with the orphanage director. Again I was impressed by what a nice man he was, and how sincerely he wanted these babies to have the best life possible. And that, perhaps, is a good way of explaining our mixed feelings about Hengfeng.
By Chinese standards, the place is probably pretty prosperous. It's the seat of a county rich in resources and important to China's economy. And that's fine. But by the standards we're accustomed to, the town and the orphanage both carry too many reminders of deep Appalachia. The place was hot, unpleasant, and dirty.
The people, on the other hand, were amazing. Judging by what little we know of Wang Fulian, we guess that she probably has very little, but she gave a year of her life to raising our daughter and her cribmate. The people running the orphanage plainly do a lot with what little they have. I've never seen such powerful love for kids in all my life...every resident in the place turned out when they heard the babies were back for a visit.
After lunch, we got back on the bus for a drive through town. We stopped at the Civil Affairs Bureau, a nondescript tile-fronted building stuck down a back alley off the main drag. Several of us exited and took pictures, more than a little pained at the thought of our tiny daughters dropped in front of this place.
The ride back was more of the same as the ride out, only with a lot of ruminating about whether the trip had been worth it. It was painful to see the poverty of the place, but in the end, most of us decided that it needed to be done. We needed to be able to give our daughters every scrap of information we can about where they came from. In the end, they will all have to write their own stories, filling in the holes as best they can. It's our job to give them the raw materials, no matter how difficult gathering them may be.
Posted by brlittle at June 18, 2005 07:21 PM