Family Forum / Parenting / Adoption / September 2008

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-china-orphans_slider_9-14sep2
1,0,6762056.story

Relatives hold on tight to China quake orphans
Many hoping to adopt children are stymied

McClatchy/Chicago Tribune Newspapers
11:29 PM CDT, September 20, 2008
By Tim Johnson

MIANZHU, China — Four months after a massive earthquake upended this
region of Sichuan province, child welfare officers scurry to sort out
the fate of 532 orphan children.

Countless couples have stepped forward to adopt a "quake orphan" as
part of the huge wellspring of charitable concern that the disaster
untapped among ordinary Chinese citizens.

So far, only one quake orphan has been adopted into a new home. The
rest of the orphans are not tangled in bureaucratic red tape. Rather,
they remain in the tight embrace of grandparents and aunts and uncles
who refuse to let them go.

The tale of the quake orphans underscores the strength of extended
families in the era of China's "one-child policy," the three-decade-
old family planning rule that limits most Chinese couples to one
child. Most orphans have no brothers and sisters. With parents dead,
many grandparents fear the family tree will wither, so they cling to
the orphans as a way of clan survival.

"Generally speaking, the grandparents and the aunts and uncles don't
want the child to be put up for adoption," said Wang Hong, deputy
director of the office of the Ministry of Civil Affairs in nearby
Deyang, the regional capital.

Yet offers to adopt orphans keep rolling in, in some cases from
couples whose hopes of adoption were aroused by the disaster.

The magnitude 7.9 Sichuan earthquake shook China from east to west,
and touched the nation deeply. The official death toll remains at
69,226, with 17,923 missing.

The story of one orphan, Zhong Andi, a 10-year-old boy, conveys the
conflicting family concerns and crosscurrents at play as child welfare
officials and family representatives jointly decide whether an orphan
is better off with loving, but often poor, relatives, or with adoptive
parents.

The boy's parents were crushed in the small snack bar that they
operated in nearby Hanwang when the quake hit at 2:28 p.m. Andi
survived unscathed at his elementary school.

Zhong Yunxiu, the boy's aunt, stood on a dirt footpath between rice
paddies outside the poor mud and brick home she shares with the boy's
paternal grandparents, explaining the difficult and lengthy decision
to part with him. "At first we didn't agree to give up guardianship.
But all the schools around here are destroyed. And we considered his
future," she said.

They met the prospective adoptive parents, a couple from the nearby
provincial capital of Chengdu. The father works in real estate while
the mother has a job in a bank.

The paternal grandfather, Zhong Wanyou, 76, said the clan had "a
discussion for a long time" and that he personally came to the
conclusion the adoption would be good for Andi, whom he affectionately
described as "naughty." Finally, on Sept. 5, the papers were signed.

Li Boshan, head of the social affairs department in this city, said
the adoptive parents maintained a good attitude toward the boy's
relatives.

"The adoptive parents told him, 'You cannot forget your family roots,'
" Li said. He will go back to see his grandparents regularly."