December 4-5

Perhaps the more accurate title for this post is "Recovering in Guangzhou," because that's a little of what it feels like we're doing! Deborah continues to heal from her cracked rib and fights the head cold she's had since we arrived. Sydney has a little cough every now and then, although she and Emily seem to be in pretty good shape. Emily seems to rub her ears and eyes frequently, so we've decided to get her started on a round of antibiotics for a few days just to clear up any kind of infection she may have, especially in her ears. Tom and I continue to be healthy, but Guangzhou remains a place to recuperate before returning to the U.S. on that long series of plane rides with an 11-month-old and a 23-month-old!

Yesterday we spent the morning in church and getting the lay of the land, refamiliarizing ourselves with Shamian Island. Deborah continued to rest - she even fell asleep in the afternoon and had to be awakened to join a group for Thai food for dinner! We did a little more shopping, but we spent most of the afternoon resting. Tom and I took the girls for a walk on the riverside yesterday evening before the weather turned really cold, then joined the group for dinner at a nearby Thai restaurant. The Thai restaurant is the same we visited when we adopted Sydney, but in China nothing is the same two times in a row, and our Thai restaurant adventure was no exception! Although we arrived at the restaurant as a group, and we had reservations, the long table provided by the restaurant simply would not hold all of us. Maggie, our CCAI representative, argued and fussed with the wait staff to get them to add a table, but they simply would not do so. As a result Maggie joined the five of us for dinner at a separate table. We were served later than the group and ended up receiving our food later than the group, so we really did not get a chance to chat with our friends. One of the members of our group ordered a very hot soup that really burned his mouth and, as he put it, "smelled like someone had already eaten it once" - he ended up leaving the restaurant for a few minutes to catch his breath. Others in the group enjoyed his soup quite a bit! Our dinner was tasty, I am pleased to report, but Sydney and Emily - and especially Sydney - was quite a handful throughout the meal. We were glad to leave and return to the hotel.

We didn't sleep particularly well last night. It took Emily nearly an hour to settle down to sleep, and she slept fitfully all night. We gave her some cough medicine midway through the night as she coughed off and on. Deborah was awake, in pain, and coughing several times throughout the night; as a result of Deborah and Emily's stirrings, I, too, slept fitfully. Sydney managed to sleep through it all - she can really be an angel from time to time!

This morning started with showers, diaper changes, and the glorious but crowded breakfast buffet, then a group trip to visit three locations: Six Banyan Tree Temple, a Buddhist temple; a provincial handcraft store, featuring porcelain, jade, and embroidery; and the Chan Family Shrine and Museum. We had visited the temple and the shrine before, but the shop appeared different than the one we visited during our last stay in Guangzhou.

At the Six Banyan Tree Temple, one highlight is the optional Buddhist blessing of the babies. We participated in the blessing with Sydney last time and again with Emily today. But as Christians, we participated with mixed feelings. Deborah and I don't see entirely eye-to-eye on the issue. She sees the ceremony as a gift to the babies, a gift from China that, to this point, has treated the babies with indifference if not downright hostility. She finds the blessing of the babies a cultural opportunity, not a religious experience, and a symbol of respect to the culture from which the babies come. I see the ceremony as a religious event that celebrates gods and system of beliefs that runs counter to my own religious convictions. However, we chose to participate in the ceremony because both of us believe the ceremony has no specific meaning or influence to us as Christians. That is, the ceremony is a Buddhist ceremony, but the blessing itself is one that only our God can bestow. So we prayed to our God during the ceremony, asking Him to bless Emily and protect her throughout her life. And we offered up to God our grateful thanks for the blessing that Emily is, and will be, in our lives as a family. We marveled at the fervor with which some of the locals bowed and prayed as the Buddhist monk incanted the blessing, and we soaked in the unique cultural experience we witnessed and participated in.

Shopping returned us from the spiritual to the material world! Tom, Sydney, and Deborah all purchased several things and spent lots of money - mostly on gifts for family and friends. Most of the prices were quite high, but we were able to find the 50% off section and discovered a few good prices. Christmas stockings will be full! And the Chan Family Shrine and Museum is fantastic, filled with artifacts that Mao's Cultural Revolution all but obliterated except in several protected pockets like this shrine. (We learned its protection from the Red Guards and the Cultural Revolution came as a result of it housing an official government printing office of some sort!)

We returned to the hotel around 1:00. As a returned, Grace, another CCAI representative, explained in greater detail China's one-child policy, which is worth retelling here as it directly affects our ability to adopt Sydney.

By and large, the official policy throughout the country of China is "one family, one child." However, in the rural farming areas where economic hardships abound and livelihoods rely on subsistence farming, the policy allows a family to have a second child in specific circumstances. Since males are vital to traditional Chinese farming culture - males work the fields and factories and therefore bring in the family's money, while females marry away to take care of another family's parents (and often require a dowry) - rural families may try for a second child if the first child is female. The family must wait 5 years before trying to have a second child. If the second child is also female, the family has no chance to try for a son again. And if the first child in the family is a son, the family may not try to have a second child.

In urban areas, the one-child policy is more strictly enforced. Families in urban environments, like Guangzhou, are allowed only one child regardless of the child's gender. And, as Grace pointed out, this is less problematic in the urban environment; in fact, many families chose to have no children in order to retain their wealth. However, at least one exception exists: if a a male and female, each only children, marry, that couple may have two children without penalty. The penalty for violating the one-child policy is severe, something like 100,000 RMB or more.

The one-child policy and the corollary laws, like laws against putting children up for adoption, are major causes of the abandonment of female babies in China. And it is this policy that, remarkably, enables us to adopt such wonderful, blessed babies like Sydney and Emily.

We've noticed again on this trip that the Chinese people speak of the one-child policy dispassionately, almost glibly, without mentioning the staggering moral and ethical implications the policy has on families, perhaps even on the family structure, in China. What kind of training in ethics, morality, or family value could possibly prepare a poor farming family in a rural village for this life-and-death decision: to keep a female child and face certain poverty throughout a family's entire life, or to abandon a female child in hopes the child is discovered and, miracle of miracles, placed into an adoptive family somewhere outside of China where opportunities abound, where food and love and education are plentiful? The question, the entire issue, is imponderable, yet our girls will one day face the question and be forced to begin to understand.

Onward through the day! We took Emily for her Chinese health checkup this afternoon, a requirement of the U.S. government for her visa application. We returned to the same clinic, about a 10-minute walk on the island, and took Emily through the three assembly-line like stations: ear, nose, and throat, including a basic hearing exam; general physical condition, especially skin and internal organs; and height, weight, and measurement. The exam took less than 10 minutes. Emily's temperature was normal, 98.6; her weight is 19 pounds; and her height is 73 centimeters (about 28.7 inches). We'll verify all of these measurements with Emily's pediatrician when we return to the U.S., of course, but this gives us a rough estimate of her general health. Interestingly, although we adopted Sydney when she was 13 months, she weighed only 17 pounds when we received her. It appears that foster care agreed with Emily!

For the rest of the afternoon, we shopped in what turned out to be cold and windy weather. We picked up Tom's custom articles and the girls' matching dresses, then wandered into a local charity shop called "A Gift from China," where the proceeds from sales go toward supporting orphanages and foster care in China. We picked out things to buy tomorrow, but we had few RMB so decided to wait until tomorrow to complete the heavy-duty shopping. We ate dinner at Lucy's again - western food called us all, so Sydney enjoyed a PBJ, Tom and Deborah ate hamburgers, and I at a ham and cheese toasted sandwich. We then spent the rest of the evening protected from the cold wind in our hotel room, letting Emily and Sydney entertain us.

Tomorrow Emily's visa paperwork will be delivered to the U.S. consulate, and we will stick in the hotel room for about an hour to await any questions or clarifications that might arise. But we expect everything to go smoothly, so we'll look forward to shopping quite a bit tomorrow.