When foreign couples adopt children from China, they typically travel to and meet their new child in the capital city of a province, such as Guangdong in Guangzhou Province or Fuzhou here in Fujian Province. But the orphanages where these children are not usually in the capital cities (although they do have some as well).

A number of children whose adoptions have been completed in Fuzhou, for example, were cared for first in the Jinjiang Child Welfare Institute right here in Anhai, not far from my Wife’s Elder Sister’s apartment and the Anhai Hospital where she works.

Since starting this blog a few weeks ago, it’s been my pleasure to be in touch with some parents who have adopted children that stayed in this orphanage and to provide them with some information about this area related to their children’s experience, such as how far from Anhai the town of Cizao lies, where one adopted child was found abandoned (it’s less than half an hour from here); where in Anhai another child was found (turns out it was the Longshan Temple we visited on New Year’s Day); where the Jinjiang Hospital, where another child was found is located (it’s in Qingyang, where my Wife’s Younger Sister lives and Younger Brother works).

I had considered making a visit to the orphanage, but schedules and bureaucracy unfortunately won’t match up well enough while we’re here for that to happen.

One couple whose adopted child came from this orphanage was able to visit sometime in the past few years, though; their story and some pictures of their visit are on the fujiankids.org, an informational Web site about orphanages in Fujian. There is also a Yahoo group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JinjiangFamilies/ for parents whose adopted children came from the Jinjiang orphanage here in Anhai.

Both my Mother-In-Law and Wife’s Elder Sister have visited this orphanage, however, and I asked them some general questions that I didn’t see addressed on the fujiankids.org Web site, so I’ll share these insights here.

First, I asked about the children–girls mostly–who end up being adopted from the orphanage. Were they abandoned by couples who instead wanted a son? Are they the children of the “Northerners,” the workers who come here mostly from Sichuan and Anhui Province? Some are, in both cases, but it turns out that most of these baby girls are the children of young local “unwed mothers” whose boyfriends chose not to or were not able to do the “honorable” thing by marrying them, but who didn’t want to terminate the pregnancy–which bureaucratically and “socially” would have been easier–often because of feelings for the unborn child.

That caught my attention. I’m not denying there are some ill effects of the preference for boys–heck, the Chinese government acknowledges that with major programs and information drives–but from my little platform here, I want to let parents who have adopted girls from China know that many of them were born because their birth mothers felt love for them even before they entered the world, and that they made it into the world and to the orphanages because of that affection. It’s not easy to hide an “unauthorized pregnancy” to term in China, and some of these young women probably went to great lengths with some personal risk to carry their pregnancies to term, and then they or probably some close relative left their children somewhere they were sure to be found safely: a busy tile market; a popular well-visited temple; a local hospital.

I haven’t read any of the books published in the West about girls adopted from China, but if none of them give this angle, then you can pass this on to your daughters when you feel the time is right.

I also asked about boys born to these mothers; why aren’t they in the orphanages in such great numbers? Some end up there, but most healthy boys whose mothers or parents can’t keep them are adopted in China, most even before they reach the orphanages, many times by relatives or family friends–and thus the mother can still see her child grow up.

And lastly, a few annotations on China’s one-child policy.

Is every couple restricted to just one child? No, there are exceptions. In _some_ rural areas where more hands are needed for work, two children are allowed, though in some cases only if the first-born is a girl. Some “ethnic minorities” are allowed more than one child (though this clause has prompted some families to go to great lengths, with historical research and court filings, to try to prove that they, by virture of their particular surname, are ethnic minorities–”Look, in this 1,000 year-old document, that parenthetical footnote says that some guy surnamed “Ni,” just like us, came to visit from that region over there, which of course as we all know was a hotbed for ethnic minorities!”); if a first child is born disabled, the parents are sometimes allowed a second child; and most pertinent to the Jinjiang region here: if the parents are self-employed–i.e. not government employees, from the Provincial Governor on down to the most humble field worker on a government-administered rice farm–and thus are receiving no government benefits, they can have as many children as they want. Or put better, they can have as many children as they can afford, because if you don’t receive government benefits, that means your health care costs are high, you have to pay to send your children even to the public schools, you have to pay a large fee to receive additional children’s identity cards, and so on. Basically, you receive zero financial support from the government, but have to pay _very_ high fees for otherwise free or “low cost” government services.

But this is Anhai, in Fujian Provinces Jinjiang region, where some vast fortunes have been made, and so some of the wealthier families have–and are able thusly to afford–two, three, four, and occasionally more children. These are typically the families with the sprawling “mansions,” large gated courtyards with a Benz, BMW and maybe a Volvo for grandpa and grandma parked therein, and–in one case–an elevator, the only one anywhere in town, carrying its inhabitants throughout the house’s five floors in the center of the house.