Packages of Hope - China 2005

The trip to Siping involved a visit to a very dear friend. Hannah, whose Chinese name is Huang Hua, will always be a part of our family. Hannah is a professor of English at Changchun university. She teaches graduate level English and courses in western culture. She is also Chinese part of the International Assistance and Adoption Project ( IAAP) team. She represents this adoption agency in China, and as such, her job functions are varied. She translates documents from families for delivery to the CCAA in Beijing, she obtains child status from the orphanages and translates them back for the families in America. She acts as tour guide and facilitator for families traveling in China, and also works with orphanages (once the child has been matched to a family) to help in an easy (or at least easier) transition to their American family.

This is how I know Hannah. She assisted us in our adoption of our two daughters. We first met her in 2000, when we were deciding on an agency to adopt through. She was visiting our town of Orlando, and the agency head, Dick Graham, had chosen the Disney Contemporary Resort as a place where old and new families could meet Hannah.

When we saw the multitude of joyous children and parents flocking around Hannah like a happy shepherd, we were sure of our choice.

Since her start in the field of adoption nearly 15 years ago, she has assisted in over 400 adoptions to foreign (non-Chinese) families, most of them special needs children.

A few years ago, Hannah and Dick noted that the special needs children, many of whom were receiving live-saving, low-cost corrective surgery in China, were developing serious complications (or worse) following surgery, or were not very well prepared for surgery. Hannah and Dick sprang into action, and founded the American Special Chinese Children Assistance Center (ASCCAC). The center is currently located in the downtown area of Siping, and provides American-style child caregiving to special-needs children who are about to undergo, or who have just undergone, corrective surgery.

Hannah is an inspiration, and the warmth brought about by her smile was as infectious in 2000 as it was as I exited the baggage claim from the new ultramodern airport in Changchun to greet her.

With my other projects in China, I was a bit leery of the challenges I would face, and was worried about the teamwork challenges. However, I knew that Hannah and I could take on anything. So devoted was I to her, that even our 2nd daughter Annalise, carried Hannah as her middle name, in Huang Hua’s honor.

My heart was elated to once again be working with this very remarkable woman (an angel, as I thought of her), who was the source of so many families’ happiness.

Changchun was a bit warmer than Lanzhou, but there was still a cold drizzle coming down as we left the airport. The moist air was a welcome on my still hoarse throat. Hannah was quick to notice this, and she called ahead to her husband, a pediatric doctor at the Changchun hospital, to see if he could get any medicine for me. I opted instead for soup and tea, bound and determined just to get through my stay in China without the help of any medicine.

On our way to my hotel, Hannah discussed our plans for the next day.

I had become accustomed to the political intrigue surrounding our collective determination to help children in China, and this mission was shaping up to be one of the more interesting stories. Hannah, who was well plugged in to the adoption arena at the local, province, and national level, told me of all the very interesting and convoluted paths everyone had to travel down in order to make things work well in China. It involved a lot of give and take, and often led her down new and uncharted avenues, and made her available to new opportunities as well as presenting her with frustrating obtstacles.

Again, I was not surprised by such stories, but was rather amazed at the relentless charge and risk taken by all the wonderful Chinese people I had met so far, in effort to better the lives of the children in the orphanage. Thus far, everyone I had met was a warrior against the bureaucratic obstacles that stood in their way.

However, in fair defense of the various bureaucracies, I must say that I had noticed a distinguishable change, in light of my 10 years experience in traveling to China. China is changing in front of my eyes on an accelerated scale, even during this trip. Everywhere I looked, in every city I had visited, the skeleton of skyscrapers were reaching upwards wherever I looked. Old buildings were being knocked down, new landscaping was being put in. The phrases, “oh this will be the location of the new [x]” and “sorry, this is currently under construction, so unfortunately you can’t see [y]” were so commonplace, that it was an annoying mantra. Men with shovels and picks seemed more commonplace than bicycles.

China is on the move.

And this was also clear in the arena of adoption and orphanages. I had seen it in Bengbu in the form of the new orphanage being built. I had seen it in Lanzhou, in the Lanzhou SWI being remodeled. And here in Siping, a new orphanage was also being built.

With the changes in the landscape, and the new skyscrapers built with advanced technology, old buildings were being demolished. I saw the old hutong-style streets being torn down to make way for neon illuminated storefronts, and economy driven apartment complexes. Old China was being subtly and quietly erased. It seemed that all that remains will be old photos and faded memories. After all, there is no room for those antiquated one-story alleyways in new China.

And much like this rapid disappearance of these physical apparitions of an obsolete way of life, the old ways of doing things are rapidly changing. Since I have lived my life in America, I can only contrast this change against the backdrop of how “our system” operates. Many of the people I had spoken to on this trip told me how “closed door” policies were rapidly giving way to the “capitalist” ways of the west. (and here, my terminology is a bit muddled, because I am not a political scientist. I can only say that the ways in which the Chinese have operated in the past, and which I thought were a bit confusing and frustrating, are now changing into the ways in which I am more familiar and which sound logical to me. Thus I can only infer that the Chinese systems are becoming more Americanized. I cannot judge if these could be called “capitalist” in the strict sense. However, it does sound like a system in which we in America will find much more commonality with in the near term future with the new emerging China).