Abandoned Children

I volunteer at an orphanage every Saturday. Every Saturday, I spend four hours on trains, buses, and subway lines to spend three hours at small care facility for children attached to the elder care center in a suburb of Beijing. The center is not an official registered orphanage. All the boys and some of the girls are physically or mentally challenged in some way although some of the girl babies seem fine, although I surmise they will end up developmentally challenged from lack of care and stimulation. These children are not up for international adoption. They are the forgotten abandoned children in China. Actually, there is also a mental hospital next to the center which we are not allowed to enter although we hear screaming occasionally and we speculate that there are many disturbed children inside.
These children are mostly well fed and clothed. Basic necessities are taken care of through international donations, and I assume some support from the government via the elder care center it is attached to. On the surface, the orphanage is well lit and heated. There is a colorful plastic jungle gym in the hallway and this week, Valentine's Day cards on the wall, a reminder of an activity done with other activities during the week.

Faced with the one-child policy, everyone's preference is for a healthy boy. Parents who have a mentally or physically disable child are allowed to have another child, and many of those first-borns are abandoned. Few parents are willing or prepared to take care of mentally or physically disabled children so they take the chance to have another "normal" child. Even in this outskirt of Beijing, preference for boys can be seen since there are some baby girls at the center who do not exhibit developmental problems. This preference fades amongst well-heeled city-dwellers who spoil their daughters as much as their sons.

What is most disturbing is the little attention each of the children receive. But who is responsible? It would be easy to blame the ayis who mostly treat the children with indifference. But most are uneducated and probably have never been taught how to handle cerebral palsy, Down Syndrome, the adorable cleft palate babies, or the innumerable other ailments these children have. Their misfortune for being placed at a dead-end job in an orphanage, and the daily toil of their lives shows in how they treat the children. I see them casually pick up and plop down babies a foot above the crib bedding. They yell commands at the children and there is some swatting of heads, at least this is when we are present. These ayi's who work for this center are paid something like 800 rmb (100 USD) a month and only have one or two days off a month. They work around the clock to make sure that the children are fed and generally stay out of trouble. When asked what will happen to these chilren over Spring Festival when most of the ayis will go home to their families, one ayi replied, "oh, there will be a few who will alternate and the security guards will help out too". I can only hope that these chilren won't develop diseases or get into trouble with minimal care and supervision the next two weeks.

When I go with a group of volunteers, we clean and one group does activities with the older children who do not attend school or seem to have any regular structured teaching or activity time. I usually spend more time with the babies who are given so little care. They cry so little because they've been conditioned to believe that crying doesn't necessarily mean you will be picked up, wiped, spoken to or any of the other things parents would do. My job is to encourage them to roll over, crawl, walk, make sounds and achieve other developmental milestones.

There is one baby boy. Last month, he was sick with an awful mucus-y chest cough and had trouble breathing. Then he developed a skin infection and rash all over his face which means he is no one's favorite to pickup. Everytime I hold him, his entire body is completely stiff, his little hands and feet completely clenched together. His eyes dart around and he cannot make eye-contact. I try to massage his little muscles, but none of us know what is wrong with him, and I'm not trained to know what to do.

Some of the volunteers are organizing a benefit for these children in March, but we worry what will happen to these children long-term. Without a chance at school, or physical therapy, and caretakers who understand their specific conditions, these children have little chance of being able to take care of themselves one day. It's not just about donations for food or toys, these children need long-term care. The ayis need to have more time off and be paid more so they can afford to care for these children. They need training on how to deal with children with disabilities. Everyday just becomes waiting it out for these children. I try to imagine life from their POV and I fail. But I do see their faces light up and the countless "bao bao's" (hold me!) that assault us the second we come in the door every Saturday afternoon. I know how much I look forward to seeing them on Saturdays. I know how worried and frustrated I am when we leave around 5:30pm every Saturday, fretting over whether that baby with the cough will get better, or whether that adorable cleft palate baby with 2 teeth sticking out will finally get surgery, or if the girl who is always left in a playpen in the hallway will be picked up by anyone this upcoming week, or if she will be left to waste away...

I also know that these children are the luckier ones. If orphanages exist like this on the outskirts of Beijing, what must they be like in other more remote provinces? in Henan where over 200 HIV/AIDs orphans are supposedly quarantined into a warehouse? As orphans, these children are given a surname by the center. They are all named 党 "dang" or party, as in Communist Party. Ironic since for me, they stand for the emptiness of promises for communal welfare. We are all responsible for these children, most of all the government that put in place one-child policies that incentivize parents to abandon handicapped children.

This is what keeps me in China.

welcome to my blog

To kick off this blog, a little ditty on the states and countries I've been to. I know quality > quantity (oh boy has living in China taught me that lesson), but it's nice to have a geographic imagining of the places I've been, and oh, the places I'll go!

United States of america:


create your own visited states map

I've been to (the airports of) other states in passing but I'm trying to be honest here. Have I really never been to Michigan? or the Carolinas? Looks I really need to roadtrip through pretty much all of the West. It's a shame that my cousin is from New Mexico and yet I've never been...Route 66 anyone?

Now for this earth:

create your own visited countries map

Here I thought 2 years abroad was finally licking my wanderlust now looking at the map makes me dream about all the places I have yet to see: Cambodia, Vietnam, Brazil, Argentina, Cuba, North Korea, South Africa, Egypt, Denmark, Australia, Spain, Italy, India, and Nepal are at on the immediate short list. And in two weeks, the Philippines will also be highlighted red.