Beating the Odds
By Gregory J. Rummo (04/19/05)
Somewhere in the city of Zhanjiang, a port city located on the South China Sea in China’s Guangdong Province, a young woman learned she was pregnant in early 2003. It’s not clear whether she was hoping for a boy and the birth of a little girl nine months later was a disappointment or if her husband or her family forced her to give up the baby for other reasons. Maybe she didn’t even have a husband. Left to fend for herself, she realized she could not care for both herself and her little daughter.
Two weeks after the baby’s birth, it was found, abandoned in a cardboard box, dressed in a cotton baby suit and wrapped in a blue blanket. Perhaps the color of the blanket indicated the parents had hoped for a boy after all. A feeding bottle had been placed next to her. There was no identification; only a red ribbon tied around her leg with her date of birth: November 16, 2003.
Her chest, legs and stomach we scarred as though she had been scalded. She was crying when the officials from the Zhanjiang Social Welfare Institute found her. They named her Zhan Ai Ping…
It was a little over two years ago when I traveled with my family to China’s Guangxi Province to adopt one of the many Chinese orphan girls that are abandoned each year. We spent a week in the city of Nanning with the newest addition to our family, Wu Min Jian whose American name is now Rebecca Lee.
One day, our guide, Lin Don Quing, brought us to a farm on the outskirts of Nanning. As we picked our way along the hay-strewn paths crisscrossing the fields of onions and lettuce, he spoke of the plight of Chinese orphan girls.
“I have taken you to a farm in rural Nanning so you can see for yourselves a place very similar to the one where your daughter was most likely born. A woman will have her baby on a farm like this one, and then abandon it in a big city, hoping it will be found and taken care of,” he said softly.
Lin had explained the sad story of abandonment in China to us during the bumpy bus ride out to the countryside. Raised by nannies, orphans attend school only until the eighth grade and then find some menial labor. They carry a stigma, which some overcome by moving to another province.
Every year, millions of babies are abandoned in China. Official estimates are up to 2 million, but unofficial estimates put the number higher. The healthy ones are almost all girls. Healthy boys are rarely abandoned because they carry the family name to the next generation. That is deemed important in a society where almost all families are limited to one child.
Sadly, most orphans are never adopted. According to U.S. government statistics, the total number of immigrant visas issued to orphans from 21 different countries during 2004 was 21,900. China was at the top of this list with 7,044.
The ratio of Chinese orphans adopted every year to the number of babies that are abandoned is miniscule. Yet, for those who are adopted into loving homes, there is hope…
Zhan Ai Ping is doing much better now. She has spent the last 16 months at the orphanage in Zhanjiang. The nannies report she is healthy, eats well and is a playful little toddler. One wrote, “She likes talking to herself and playing with her toys joyfully. If you trick her by giving her an unfriendly look she will cry at once until you hold her in your arms, then she will be happy again.”
This story has a happy ending. Ai Ping is one of the fortunate ones. She has beaten the odds. She will become our second adopted daughter, Rachel Marie, next month.
First published in the Herald News and the New Jersey Herald on Sunday, April 17, 2005.
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