She told me she could help me find some jobs in China after my fellowship is done, and when I asked her what kind of jobs, she showed me a series of international NGOs in Beijing and Shanghai. They encompassed everything from Rotary in China to an organization in Shanghai that helps educate and better prepare teachers working in isolated, poorly supplied, rural mountain towns, to an organization that helps orphans and other disadvantaged children have more opportunities. I was very interested and very impressed.
With the organization helping children, my aunt has more personal experience, because it was through this organization that she and her husband decided to help Chenrong, a now 17-year-old orphan from Guizhou. They have a son of their own, but they clearly wanted to mean something in another child’s life too. Originally they just sent Chenrong money to help with her studies. But when she finished middle school and was forced to start looking at jobs because she couldn't afford to go onto High School, they changed their approach. They decided they would bring her to Beijing to live with them and finish her studies there. So she has been living here with them for the past 3 years and attending a very nice girls boarding school in the Southern part of Beijing.
ADOPTION IN CHINA
Now, to give a little background, you cannot legally adopt a child in China if you already have one because of the One Child Policy. (Don't ask me why, I have yet to find someone who can explain it to me too.) So my aunt and uncle seem to have "adopted" Chenrong in all ways except legally. She lives at their house, and they pay for her schooling. And, more significantly, every time I saw this aunt and Chenrong together it was clear that the girl had found a mother-figure and a dear friend in my aunt.
The first time I met Chenrong in 2007, she had just arrived in Beijing and she was a slender, quiet girl who seemed quite intimidated by my loud Chinese family. She was a darker complexion than my other cousins and quite pretty. I remember how she watched her surroundings with gentle, dark eyes that carried a seriousness and awareness of everything that made her seem much older than her age. At the restaurant surrounded by us, her body seemed to disappear into the couch and blend in with my aunt, who was, even then, sitting proud, concerned and protective by her side. Even then it was clear that the two of them from now on would be inseparable. I met up with them 2 years later in 2009, and I remember how the two of them would babble and giggle together in the back seat of my uncle's car like two young playmates. Although Chenrong had a bedroom of her own, my aunt told me that sometimes the girl was lonely and scared at night, so the two of them would share the big guest bedroom bed, which was usually reserved for grandparents when they visited.
COLLEGE TESTING BASED ON YOUR REGISTERED RESIDENCE
Chenrong is now back in Guizhou because she wants to take the gaokao, the College Entrance Examination that is required for all Chinese High School seniors. Chinese people all have a hukou, which is a sort of residence permit that comes from where they were born and where their parents are from. You must take the gaokao where your hukou is from, so Chenrong decided to go back to Guizhou for the year to prepare for the test there.
The reasoning behind the testing where your hukou is from is that each place is given a different test. So places like Beijing, where the schools are better, have harder tests, while poorer provinces like Guizhou are given easier tests. Minority ethnicities (like the Tibetans, Mongolians, Manchurians, Naxi, Yi people, etc.) are given a certain number of extra points, because the assumption is that Mandarin is not their first language. I suppose the idea is similar to affirmative action. Except that I have also heard that students who test in Beijing are given some extra points to assure that they have an advantage in going to a University in their home city. So, yes, the effectiveness of this affirmative action is debatable...
ORPHANS IN CHINA
I asked my aunt and uncle about orphanages in China, and told them that it seemed that a lot of Americans were adopting Chinese children. They explained that the orphanages in the big cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Kunming had quite a bit of money. "A lot, a LOT of money" my aunt emphasized. But many of the orphanages in the countryside had nothing. I told them I though foreigners should adopt from those orphanages instead. They explained that they can't, because the Chinese government won't let foreigners see the ones in the countryside. The orphanages, like where Chenrong comes from, aren't "clean" enough.
All this talk of orphanages made my aunt bring out some pictures of when they first took in Chenrong, and some other pictures of other orphans who had come to Beijing for fun, through the same organization that had introduced them to Chenrong, for Chinese New Year. Chenrong's boarding room at the orphanage where she sullenly posed didn't seem unclean. It wasn't large, but it certainly wasn't inhumane. They asked, somewhat jokingly, if I would be interested in going to Guizhou to see the orphanage. I told them emphatically yes, I would love to. They seemed a little surprised, but pleasantly so.
There were many other pictures of little girls and boys posing with a few Americans who had also come, through the organization. 3 of the children had stayed at my aunt and uncles house. She pointed them out to me in the pictures:
"This little boy," she pointed to an adorable little boy grinning broadly with his arm around a young American man "Is also from Guizhou, from a different orphanage than Chenrong. He stayed with us. His father used to beat his mother and so one day his mother killed the father."
My uncle tried to add to the story, but my aunt wouldn't let him.
"His mother is now in jail and this little boy is at the orphanage."
"This little girl," she pointed to a girl shyly looking at the camera as she stood by herself to the side of a group of other children gathered with their arms around a foreigner, "also stayed with us. She was a sweet girl. Her father didn't want her. Especially after her younger brother arrived," She looked at me to see if I understood why. She didn't seem satisfied with my reaction, so she continued, "Because rural families don't want girls. He didn't want her, and so her mother killed their father. Her mother was given a life sentence"
Here, my uncle successfully intervened and helped translate "life sentence" into English.
My aunt continued, "After, her mother was put in jail, the little brother died. Her father was killed, her mother's in jail and her little brother is dead. Now she has no one." She looked at the picture again. "We mostly took pictures of the kids who stayed with us." She paused while looking at the girl's face, "She really was a good girl."
The next picture had the third child who stayed with them, another little girl.
"She was one of three sisters. Her father didn't want them. Any of them," she said, not really hiding her bitterness.
"Girls aren't wanted," she explained, "because they just grow up and get married off.”
“When I was little,” she continued, “I wasn’t able to sit at the dinner table with the others. I would have to wait until they were finished. My little brother was allowed to eat with guests, but I had to eat in the kitchen. Even when my parents met my husband, I wasn’t allowed to sit with them at the table.”
I couldn’t think of any reaction to this. I could merely sit and wonder at this woman’s resiliency—her ability to admit how girls aren’t valued enough in China, and yet to become a successful business partner with her husband anyway and adopt a girl daughter when it was illegal to have a second child.
Myself, I am the only child of the eldest son of the eldest son of the eldest son. In China I would have been quite the disappointment, being the final ending of our family name along the most important branch. But in America, I never knew. Perhaps my grandfather was a little disappointed at first, but he never let on. Especially with my grandmother’s liberalism, and when it turned out that I was the only granddaughter they would have. I ended up growing up in my Chinese side of the family feeling special because I was the youngest and the only girl. Perhaps this is why I look up to the women in my Chinese family—I have always associated Chinese women with strength and importance.
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