A Visit to Li's Orphanage

We arrived in Guilin today. The cold and rain is a bit brutal after a week at the beach in Sanya! Apparently we brought the rain. We had a single goal in Guilin-to visit Li’s orphanage and to view her adoption file.

Our adoption agency representative from 5 years ago was able to set up a visit to the orphanage and arrange a translator which all worked very smoothly. We went from the hotel to the Orphanage with our translator and met with two women who do all the babies’ files. The older one "remembered" Li, or was at least there 5 years ago. She remembered my mother visiting 2 years ago and I had a picture of them together. We met the man who named Li and learned that he meant for her middle name to mean "strong jade" (we were told precious jade originally)-that was great because most people can't translate the Chinese character for her middle name Yao. We saw the Playroom built by a charitable group called Half the Sky, one of the young children's playrooms and one baby room-all from the outside. We looked at Li’s file which had very little in it and no information we didn't know. We did take a picture of the only picture in her file, one we had never seen. The staff seemed content to see us but not overly excited. It seemed pretty routine for them. Our translator does adoption work in Guangzhou and was home in Guilin on vacation. He was young and nice. The whole tone was very easy going. We joked with the man who named Li (who must be 30 at tops) who drives the babies and runs errands etc. No one had any real emotional response. We drove by her finding place but in the past 5 years it has been converted from a hospital to an apartment building so we could only take pictures from the outside. We asked about her foster mother (who she was only with for a month and we never knew her name). We asked if she was still caring for babies. They said that they weren't allowed to give us a name and they had forgotten who it was and many of the foster families from 5 years ago no longer took kids.

I am not sure what we expected, but I think it was what happened. We learned a few tidbits, but nothing more. Li didn't feel any connection and we weren't allowed to go into any of the rooms with kids. We were definitely shown the model rooms. I think also being in China for 4 months has made so many things feel routine that there were no big surprises to be had. Perhaps if we had been with a group gearing up for this visit we would have been allowed to spend more time or actually go into rooms with babies, but they were certainly not offering us that opportunity.

We are glad we had the chance to visit and take some pictures. Perhaps we can return when Li is older and she may have a stronger response to the place she spent the first 10 months of her life.