n a clear July morning in 2005, I set off with Sara, my nine-year-old daughter, from a 19th-century train station in the Adirondack Mountains on a two-day journey that would lead us to Shanghai, the place of her birth and the first thirteen months of her life.On the platform, waving good-bye to us, were Charlotte, six years old (Shanghai–Gladney) and Phoebe, three years old (Changsha–Gladney), with Evan, my husband, their father. Evan had gamely agreed to spend his vacation with our younger daughters so that Sara and I could take this trip together.
Sara had long been full of questions about her origins. From her earliest weeks with us, she would pore over the photo album she called her “Nina [China] Book,” and seem to tell us urgent stories about the people and places depicted there. As she grew older, and understood more of her own story, she shed innumerable tears over the loss of her birth mother, unable to absorb the reality that she would never be able to find her.
So at Sara’s insistence, and to take her as close to her beginnings as we could, I called Gongzhan Wu and told him we were planning to visit China. Could he help us with a visit to Shanghai Children’s Welfare Center, where Sara had spent those first months of her life?
In typical Gongzhan fashion, he responded with tremendous excitement. He immediately contacted the Children’s Welfare Center, and we began to plan a trip that might serve as a model for other “alumnae” who might want to return to China.
Arriving In Shanghai
The Welfare Center welcomed us enthusiastically, proposing a three-day itinerary that would give Sara a thorough introduction to the Center. Her main wish, she said repeatedly, was “to hold the babies.” The Center would provide us with many opportunities to do just that.
Our flight over was so different from the flight I had taken home with over eight years earlier, when she cried frantically unless I stood and rocked her. Now she settled in with her Beverly Cleary books and DVD player. She declared every airline food offering to be delicious, and slept soundly in the seat beside me.
We were met at the new (to us) Shanghai airport by Dawn, who had helped us when we adopted Charlotte in 1999, and Mr. Sun, the driver of our sleek, air-conditioned Buick mini-van. When last in Shanghai, the Pudong area was just emerging. Now a whole new suburb had sprung up, with miles of lovely plane trees lining the Boulevard, much like those I remembered from our earlier stays in the French Concession.
Still, Shanghai in late July, the whole city buzzing with cicadas, led us to a new level of insight into the meaning of “hot.” Certain that the sights and sounds of the city and orphanage would provide Sara with enough to absorb, I had sought out a very comfortable home for us to come back to at the end of the day.
Our hotel was a brand-new Westin, a few blocks from the Bund and mercifully air-conditioned, with a glistening swimming pool. The staff presented Sara with a giant stuffed bear sporting a Chinese silk jacket as a gift. When jet-lag struck us at 2 in the morning, we could watch “The Princess Diaries” on the room DVD player and summon room service. We felt much like newly-minted princesses ourselves.
Our first morning Sara piled her plate with what she considered to be the ideal breakfast: an endless buffet of dumplings, rice, sauteed bok choy, steamed fish, pots of tea, fresh fruit and juice. Eight years in the US had not diminished her disgust for sweet breakfasts. I, on the other hand, found the pastry bar to be quite appealing. A jazz trio serenaded us as we enjoyed our elegant meal. Mr. Sun met us at 8 a.m. for the drive to the orphanage.
A Newer Welfare Center
I was eager to see the new facility that had been constructed after our 1999 visit. In 1997, Sara had been housed in a nursery, up three flights of rickety wooden steps. Laundry fluttered along the outside rail of the covered walkway that ran the length of the dormitory. Her room had two cartoon-character decals on the wall, but was otherwise barren of the usual colorful clutter of childhood. Many children were propped up against bright blue bolsters in their cribs; a few had sat in roller carts. Still, when Sara had seen the bowls of noodle set out for lunch, she had leapt into the lap of an aiyi and gratefully gobbled up a huge sticky heap of steaming food. Even at age 8, when asked what her favorite food was, she would respond, “The noodles in the orphanage.”
Now the Children’s Welfare Center was housed on a specially constructed campus, located in the Hongqiao suburb. A uniformed guard looked us over at the gated entrance. Listening to Mr. Sun, the guard smiled, and waved us through.
The Center is considered a premier treatment center in China for children with disabilities. The architecture of the Center was vibrant and fun, with every detail clearly aimed at creating a pleasing atmosphere for children. There were lovely gardens, fountains, colorful statuary, and a clock tower covered with whimsical characters. Louise, our guide at the orphanage, was fluent in English and very welcoming, ushering us into a cool conference room.
We saw a film about the Center showing its extensive, state-of-the art therapy and rehabilitation rooms, including a swimming pool, a sensory integration room with up-to-date physical therapy equipment, classrooms furnished with computers and a beautiful, quiet library. The staff for children with hearing and speech deficits were especially skilled. Older children now attended the local schools with neighborhood children, returning at night to the neat dormitory rooms they shared in groups of three.
Louise then took us on a tour, as we searched in vain for a glimpse of the aiyi who had cared for both Sara and Charlotte. Increasingly we understood that we were visiting the orphanage of today, not the one of Sara’s infancy. It mattered not a bit, however, to her. I watched her closely for signs of anxiety or confusion, but none appeared. Instead she exuded the comfortable informality she displays when she is most at home. She drank in the sights and sounds, loving her surroundings.
The Children
Louise led to us a wing called “The Rose Garden.” There we joined a group of about 15 toddlers from a nursery known as “The Snoopy Room.” The aiyis and the children were clearly used to tourists, and didn’t pay much attention to us at first. We joined the children on the mat and within moments were caught up in play. A Canadian volunteer, living for some time in Shanghai, chatted with me about the orphanage, her experiences there, and gave me details about the children around us.
One very bright little boy, to whom she had taught quite a bit of English, and who sang for us eagerly, had a heart condition. We saw children with cleft lips, though most appeared to have had some surgery. Sara and I each spent much time with two lively, affectionate children, each of whom had one ear that was smaller than the other.
As we grew closer and closer to these loving, fun children, we inevitably mourned that we could not somehow whisk them to our own pediatrician, “Dr. Barry,” and help them toward health and families of their own. We worried that these inconsequential health issues would disqualify them for adoption as “healthy babies,” and prolong their waits or perhaps put an end to any hope of adoption. I promised Sara that we would continue to help them when we returned to New York City.
Although the Center had set out an ambitious itinerary for us, spending time each day in different parts of the institute, Sara expressed a strong desire to return to her friends in the Snoopy Room. So for three days, we spent each morning there, meeting the girls and boys in the playroom with increasingly happy reunions, returning to the nursery for snack and quiet play, and then assisting with lunchtime feeding.
Lunch & Nap Time
Lunch was quite an event. Each child was served a large bowl of noodle stew. In the interests of efficiency, the aiyis would insert a heaping spoonful into the child’s mouth, adhere the food to the roof of the mouth, and slide the spoon out. Moments later, like little birds, their mouths would open again for another mound of food.
We were amazed at the capacity of these tiny children to ingest these huge portions, in such short time, and it gave me quite a bit of insight into Sara’s apparent hunger in her early days with us. Sara easily picked up the feeding method, stuffing the children happily, wiping their mouths with a warm cloth in between bites.
As each child finished lunch, those who could walk would go over to his or her assigned crib, remove shoes, and neatly tuck the socks inside. Arms would go up for a lift into bed. It was nap-time. There was a great assembly line of diaper-changing, snuggles, tucking, and back-patting. All fifteen settled in, quieting down readily. If we inadvertently led one to the wrong crib, the children would shake their heads in protest. They knew whose nest was whose.
On the walls of the nursery were many photographs of children who had been adopted, sent in by their new families. The children loved to look at these. They would name the family members: Mama, Baba, Mei-mei, Jie-jie. Sometimes they would point to me and ask, quizzically, “Mama?” “Sara’s mama,” I would have to answer, pointing her out, so afraid to raise hopes. I snuggled them securely, hoping to impart enough extra love to carry them through some of the days and nights ahead.
Pooh
The girls and boys adored Sara. They would clamor for her attention, and the aiyis would name her: “Jie-jie” (big sister). She particularly loved one little boy she called “Pooh,” for the picture of Pooh-Bear on the t-shirt he wore the day we first met him. Pooh amiably followed her everywhere, and Sara declared him, over and over, to be “so cute,” feeding him lunch everyday and showing him how to operate our digital camera.
As she fed him, played with him, and loved him, I watched her transform from the needy child in search of more love to the loving one, able to give others what they did not yet see in themselves. Her sense of ease grew by the moment.
Our three days came all too quickly to an end. We missed the children terribly the next morning, when we awakened but did not go to see them. We wandered the Yuyuan Gardens, where Sara got an amazing Shanghai hair-do from an expert beautician in a stall that sold hair ornaments. She emerged with a head covered with flipped ponytails and spectacular fuzzy clips. Then we took the train to Hangzhou, about two hours away.
It is a spectacular city, on a lake thick with lotus blossoms, surrounded by mountains. On the horizon pagodas jut into the sky. We saw no Western tourists there, staying at the Shangri-La, a lovely old resort along the shores of the lake. We visited the tea museum, saw an exhibit on qi-pao (the Mandarin-collared silk dresses all the Davis girls love), rode old wooden boats to the islands that dot the lake. It was beautiful, restful, and seemed still to have a foot in old China, the perfect counterpoint to restless, brash, futuristic Shanghai.
From Home To Home
Sara came home with a full heart. She loved every moment of her trip, and declared that “everything” is better in China (though I think she had in mind particularly the food, especially the delicious fresh-squeezed fruit drinks we found everywhere). Far too quickly we found ourselves back on the north-bound train, rocking along the rails toward home, sisters, Baba and our busy lives.
We had a joyful reunion on the platform we had left not so long ago, and the sisters’ painful memories of our absence vanished as soon as they saw their new qi-pao.
On Sara's nightstand now sits a picture of her and Pooh. In it we see the many layers of her life, past and future, knowing that with Gladney’s help she has built a solid foundation. We see, too, Pooh’s image, and the many unanswered questions in his life, and feel very grateful that with our help Gladney will not forget him and the others we left behind. We know that Gladney’s China Initiative will bring meaning to our lives, and theirs, for years to come.
