We have a Chinese friend who is very competent in English, is used to working as a go-between between foreigners and Chinese people, and has set up visits for foreign volunteers to the Jinan orphanage in the past. And, she is not at all beholden to the adoption "system," so I trust her to translate our questions and their answers accurately. So I asked her if she would be willing to serve as our guide on that day. She agreed. The guide we were using for our official adoption business offered to arrange a van for us. I didn't realize on the time that he was going to drive it himself. So it was a little bit weird having our usual guide with us but not officially acting as a guide.
Anyway, at the appointed time we all set off on the hour-long drive to the new orphanage. During the drive, I asked our friend to read a couple of letters to Huang-huang that we had sent to him, but he had not gotten before the day he met us. His reading level was not high enough to read them on his own, and I wanted him to know what they said. (One explained why we had picked the English name "Daniel," and the other described some of our family rules and habits.) He listened to the letters intently and indicated that he had understood them. The other thing I had been hoping our friend could explain was what we are doing when we pray. Huang-huang had been part of our family prayers at meals and before bedtime, and was completely and utterly confused as to why we were all closing our eyes and one of us was talking into the air. He asked me several times what we were doing and I was not able to explain (being as it would have required first explaining the existence of God). So I asked our friend if she could explain to him what we are doing when we pray, and while she was at it, could she explain the gospel? Since we had already finished all our adoption paperwork, it was perfectly legal for us to teach him our beliefs (it is generally illegal to share one's faith with children under 18, unless they are part of one's own family), and we knew it might be a while before we got another opportunity. So she gave him a run-down of what we believe as Christians. Apparently it was all very new to him, but he was very interested. When she had finished explaining, she asked him if this relationship with God was something that he wanted for himself, and he said yes! So after getting my permission, she prayed with him to accept Jesus. Now, I know that his understanding is still limited, but I had been praying for him to have an open heart, and that prayer was certainly answered! Since then he has made several comments along the lines of "I have a father in heaven, too," or "I thank God for X." He also really likes us to pray, and generally asks me to translate what we prayed about. I am trying to figure out how to teach him more. He can't read any of the Chinese Bibles that we have gotten for him; he just doesn't know enough characters. We do have a CD of Bible stories, though not the actual text. I will have to check with our Chinese fellowship in Maryland; I'm sure someone there can point me to resources. I just haven't had/made time to contact them since we've been back.
Anyway, back to the orphanage visit. Daniel and our friend had just finished their momentous conversation when we pulled up to the orphanage. (Actually, Daniel spotted it as we were about to drive right past it.) It is brand spanking new--they just moved in late May--and very impressive! I can't remember exactly what happened when we first entered the main building, but I think Daniel pulled us over to an elevator and took us to the floor where the various directors have their offices. We went into one office and the director exclaimed something about us not having called to say we were coming. (It had already been arranged that we would visit on Thursday, but apparently she had been expecting us to call and tell her what time.) So after a little waiting and flurrying, another director was gathered up and we went back down to the lobby, where a photographer with a VERY fancy camera appeared and started snapping pictures. There was some standing around, and some conversation in Chinese. I overheard one adult ask Daniel "Are you happy?" and he answered that he was. I read the English signs posted over the two hallways that led off of the lobby, and occupied a few seconds wondering what the "trembling babies room" was. Then another director-type person appeared, and our friend told me that Huang-huang had been saving his "Ya Sui Qian" (the money that children receive in red envelopes on Chinese New Year) and wanted to donate it back to the Social Welfare Institute. Apparently he had said that the orphanage had taken care of him for fourteen years, and now he wanted to give something back to help out the younger children. So he ceremonially handed his envelope (which I think one of the directors had held in safe-keeping against this event; I'm pretty sure he did not bring it with him when he met us) over to a director, and the photographer snapped pictures. The director asked him if it was okay to use the money to buy clothes for the "little brothers and sisters," and he agreed that that would be good. I almost got a really good picture of him and the director gazing fondly at each other, but I didn't get the camera out quite in time. (This was also about the time that I realized our camera card was out of memory, so I occupied part of the time in the lobby trying to find old pictures to delete so that we could get new ones.)
Eventually, our little group moved down the right-hand hallway. We passed between big, well-lit rooms. On one side I saw two sleeping rooms, one with lots of toddler beds and one with cribs. Some of the cribs had babies in them. On the other side was a room where the floor was covered in soft mats and there were toys. Many toddlers and some ayis were in this room. At this point Esther discovered that she needed to go to the bathroom, so we were ushered into the bathroom next to the playroom. It had several stalls with Chinese-style toilets, and the last stall had a toddler-sized Western-style toilet. Esther was very excited to find a toilet that was just her size. While we were in there, we talked a little bit about the babies she had seen and why they were living there. She understood that they had been born into families, now live with other children and ayis, and may be adopted into different families in the future. I was glad we got to go down this hallway, because one of the things Esther had particularly wanted to do in China was to meet babies. And while any babies would probably do (Esther loves babies!), I do think she was specifically thinking of the pictures we have of the babies in her own Social Welfare Institute. When we came out of the bathroom, Daniel was talking on the phone with one of his teachers. So we all stood around in the hall for a while waiting for him to have his conversation. I saw a toddler just outside the door of the playroom looking at us curiously. Then suddenly, four or five toddlers were erupting in all directions, quickly followed by a harried ayi. She grabbed one, scolded another, and dangled keys in front of a third as an incentive to return, but none of the little ones were having any of it. Now that they were out, they intended to go exploring! But with help from a couple of the adults in our party, and the little ones were rounded up and returned to their play. I think I understood one of the directors to tell our friend that the new playroom is much bigger than the old one, so sometimes while the ayis are busy at one end of the room, the children will escape from the other end (there are two doors). I had been asked by a waiting family if I could ask about their soon-to-be son while I was there, and I had a feeling this might be his hallway, so I figured it would be a good time to ask. I didn't know the tones of his name, so it took them a couple of minutes to be sure which child I was referring to, and then they said, "Sure, you can see him!" So they brought him out of the playroom, but he was not happy to be brought out and started crying. I did get a picture of him to send to his family, but not a very good one.
Pretty soon Daniel's phone call was finished, and we could move on. Daniel grabbed my hand and pretty well dragged me out the door, across an airy walkway, and down some steps to a door marked number 5. He knocked, the door opened, and we were surrounded by people exclaiming and excited to see him. It took me a few minutes to get my bearings, but eventually I learned that we were in an apartment-like setting where a group of seven boys lived with a foster mother and father. The foster parents were an older couple who I guessed had already raised their own children to adulthood. The boys were of varying ages, with the youngest being maybe seven and Daniel seeming to be oldest by several years. Somebody told me that the foster parents had cared for children in their own home previously, but when the orphanage had moved they had moved with it. I don't know yet how long Daniel had lived with them. The apartment itself was very nice. When you first walk in there is a sort of foyer area with the foster parents' bedroom opening off of that. Then you walk down a hallway between a kitchen and a bathroom, and find yourself in a living room. The living room had a wooden couch and chair and coffee table, and in one corner was a soft mat with some building toys on it. Three bedrooms opened off of the living room. We got to see the one Daniel had slept in. It had two beds and two desks with the owners' possessions neatly lined up on them. I don't know how many of these apartments there are, or which children get to live in them. I asked someone who decides which children will live together in a group and I was told that one of the directors decides.
After saying goodbye to Daniel's foster family group, we returned to the main building and went upstairs to the older toddler and preschool hallway. We saw a line of children walking from one room to another, each intently grasping the shirt of the one in front. Soooooo cute! Two of Daniel's friends, older children who had grown up in the SWI and gone on to become ayis, worked in this hallway, and in a few minutes they were able to join us in a sort of conference room. They chatted with Daniel for a bit while we were pointed to a picture of him that hung on the wall and to a craft that he had made (an enormous beaded apple). We were given the apple to take home with us. Then we took a picture of Daniel with his friends, they gave him their skype contact information, and he gave them a couple of little gifts that we had brought.
Then we were hurried into the hallway, past a fabulous soft play area (which Esther really, really wished she could play on!) and down the stairs to the lobby, where abruptly, we found ourselves saying good-bye. I assumed that it was the directors who had called an end to our visit, and I was surprised, since I had really thought they would want to give us a tour of their impressive new facility. (I found out later that our driver had an important meeting in Jinan that afternoon, so my working hypothesis now is that he was the one who said we had to go...which I'm quite unhappy about if that is the case, since he was the one who volunteered himself to go with us that day.) I had carefully put together a list of questions that I wanted to ask somebody and I hadn't asked any of them yet, so I asked the directors if they had a few minutes for questions. They agreed without hesitation, and didn't seem in any rush to get rid of us. I sent Daniel outside with Tim and Esther, and got to talk privately for a few minutes. (Esther really struggled on this visit; it was hard for her to have her wishes completely hijacked by everyone else's agenda, and to be mostly ignored while everyone fussed over her new brother, and after an hour of this she was neither a happy camper nor a pleasant one.) I picked out some of the most important of my questions to ask, and while I didn't learn anything really surprising, it was good to get to have the conversation. The directors told me that they had worked very hard to get Daniel adopted before the deadline of his fourteenth birthday, and that they were going to miss him. One said, "We have known him since he was little, and now after fourteen years it is going to seem so strange not having him around." I think this is the point at which I gave out gifts (but it may have been the first time we were in the lobby; things are getting blurry now!). I had prepared gifts for three directors, but there were actually four. The one that I hadn't prepared a gift for was obviously very attached to Daniel and was an important person in his life. So our friend asked me if I had a gift for her and when I looked through the small gifts that I had brought in case we had occasion to give gifts to ayis, I found a pack of postcards of our state. So I handed her the whole pack as her gift. (I hope she doesn't mind having repeats of a few of the pictures!) In this case, the fact of having a gift was more important than the actual contents of the gift, although I am glad that the postcards were particularly pretty and there were a lot of them.
When we all went out to get in the van, the directors all came out to wave goodbye. One of them (the one that I gave the postcards to) was actually in tears. We can tell that Daniel has been well-loved.
It was quite a morning. Our whole time at the Social Welfare Institute I felt off-balance, never knowing quite what was going to happen next, who we were going to meet, what we were going to do, whether we were going to hurry or wait. I didn't get a tour, didn't get some of the pictures I would have liked, and never took any video at all because I never got around to asking if it would be okay and I didn't want to get in trouble for taking video without permission. And poor Tim's visit was even less informative, given that he spent most of it keeping a grumpy Esther contained while I tried to keep up with Daniel. But, it was a visit that I am so glad that we made. I think it was important for Daniel to get to see all these people who have been so significant in his life, and to introduce us to each other. It was good for us to see how much some of the adults in his life care for him. And we learned a few more bits of information about Daniel's life prior to us.
On the way back in the van Esther perked up a little bit. And then she cracked us all up by telling our driver, with great authority, "Tim and Linette would like to stop at a restaurant." And that afternoon we were all very happy when naptime came.
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