July 18th, 2004.  The day they brought Jasmine to my hotel and left for good.  Some guy, her "grandma", and another little girl.  They spent maybe 10 minutes together, and then left.  The door shut, and Jasmine cried and screamed.  I expect I was the first man to ever pick her up.  She finally just collapsed and fell asleep, but woke up several times crying.  The next day we went to the China welfare agency (A communists style building, with leaky ceilings and creaky stairs).  I remember it being very hot.  She came in the yellow clothes, but I put the bib on her because she was drooling so much.  Jasmine would say "that must be a baby because she has no hair..."

"This is what she looked like.  13 hours to Toyko, 3 hours to Bejing, 4 hours to Xian, 1 hour drive through the country, and they handed me to her in the hotel lobby.  She was sick, tired, dirty and crabby.  I loved her on first sight"

"The typical Chinese roof probably dates from c 1500 BC, but it is known only from the Han dynasty (202 BC - AD 200). Graceful, overhanging, sometimes in tiers, with upturned eaves. Roof tiles were colorfully glazed and painted."

My camera isn't this bad -- I'm telling everyone that China really is over saturated in color (or the rain made the colors bright).  Amazing to look at the sky, it was just 'white-out' from pollution.  The pollution when I was there was over powering, tough to even walk out side without my eyes watering.

It looks like attitudes towards baby girls in South Korea is changing, but wow, China is 120 boys to 100 girls!  What an imbalance!

According to a study released by the World Bank in October, South Korea is the first of several Asian countries with large sex imbalances at birth to reverse the trend, moving toward greater parity between the sexes. Last year, the ratio was 107.4 boys born for every 100 girls, still above what is considered normal, but down from a peak of 116.5 boys born for every 100 girls in 1990.

The government also played a small role starting in the 1970s. After growing alarmed by the rise in sex-preference abortions, leaders mounted campaigns to change people’s attitudes, including one that featured the popular slogan “One daughter raised well is worth 10 sons!”

Demographers say the rapid change in South Koreans’ feelings about female babies gives them hope that sex imbalances will begin to shrink in other rapidly developing Asian countries — notably China and India — where the same combination of a preference for boys and new technology has led to the widespread practice of aborting female fetuses.

“China and India are closely studying South Korea as a trendsetter in Asia,” said Chung Woo-jin, a professor at Yonsei University in Seoul. “They are curious whether the same social and economic changes can occur in their countries as fast as they did in South Korea’s relatively small and densely populated society.”

In China in 2005, the ratio was 120 boys born for every 100 girls, according to the United Nations Population Fund. Vietnam reported a ratio of 110 boys to 100 girls last year. And although India recorded about 108 boys for every 100 girls in 2001, when the last census was taken, experts say the gap is sure to have widened by now.

South Korea, Where Boys Were Kings, Revalues Its Girls - New York Times

Jasmine spent the first year in the Xi' an orphanage and was part of the Grannie program at the Xi'an orphanage.  I've since found out that the Grannie program was developed and sponsored by Spence-Chapin, who I continue to support. 

A Joyful Visit with the Grannies and Children in Xi’an

by Rita Taddonio, Director of Spence-Chapin’s Adoption Resource Center

For the past five years, Spence-Chapin has been sponsoring a granny program at the Child Welfare Institute in Xi’an, China. I have visited four times to offer trainings to the grannies that would enable them to help with the children’s development. This summer I returned with Susan Campbell, an occupational therapist and Joan Radigan, a special educator. I was extremely excited because one of our goals was to support an additional granny program for children between the ages of three and five.

It was a joy to return to Xi’an and see the children sitting on their grannies laps to hear a story read or grabbing their grannies’ hand to pull them to see the new toys we brought. The obvious signs of attachment the children have with the grannies and the sense of comfort they derive from their presence makes me aware of the meaning and power of this program. It is particularly moving because I am conscious that most of these children will remain at the orphanage and so having an adult who lights up when they come into the room or is completely interested in their painting is most important.

The success of the first granny program for infants to age three is the reason we were determined to extend the granny program to cover children who are between the ages of three to five. Continuity in care and attention is so important that it was clearly the right thing to do. We found children we recognized as having been in our Birth to Three Program now happily playing with grannies hired for the new program.

Our visit in July 2006 lasted two weeks. The first week we spent training the grannies and staff in the Birth to Three Program. Eleven out of fifteen grannies were new to the program so we reviewed basic developmental stages, how to encourage age appropriate skills and basics about how attachment forms

The second week we focused on training the grannies and staff who work with the three to five year olds. Again, we reviewed basic child development, how to encourage creative play, interaction between the children, language and other age appropriate skills. Every time we passed the children’s room, they started clapping and waving because the activities we did with them were so much fun.

When we asked the grannies to evaluate the training, their responses were very positive. One granny said, “I am so happy that I know how to help my baby. Before all I could do was hold her because I thought she could not move on her own but now I am able to get her to crawl to me.” The grannies were particularly interested in how to stimulate infants and how to help special needs children.

I had the opportunity to meet with government officials, notably the head of Child Welfare for Shaanxi Province. He was very impressed with our program and asked that Spence-Chapin consider opening more granny programs in his province. When I asked how many he thought were needed he said he thought every orphanage in his province should have a program such as ours. That was quite a compliment and offer of support especially since it came from a government official. He suggested that I visit a more remote orphanage to see the kind of need he was describing. So I took myself to AnKam— a days train ride followed by a long car ride—to see the orphanage.

I found AnKam to be a fairly typical rural orphanage, situated in a new building which provides light and space for the children. However, there were only two caretakers for 38 children and no developmental toys or activities in their daily routine. A perfect place for us to consider establishing a granny program..

Returning every year to China to support and train and grow the Granny Program has been one of the most rewarding things I have ever done. A personal thank you to everyone who has enabled Spence Chapin to make such a profound difference in the lives of children.

 Think how many more babies like Jasmine there are that need homes...

Big mystery indeed

ACCORDING to a State Department report released this week, American citizens adopted 6,493 children from China in 2006, a decline of 18 percent from the previous year’s total of 7,906. And yet, just over a month ago, this newspaper reported that China had prepared strict new criteria for foreign adoption applications because the country claimed it lacked “available” babies to meet the “spike” in demand.

China has always limited foreign adoptions, and it does not publish reliable statistics on the number of children in its orphanages. So how is one to know whether the decrease in adoptions reflects a lack of supply or a lack of demand?

In the week following the report on the new guidelines, more than one bewildered person said to me, “But I thought there were lots of babies in orphanages in China!” My response was to helplessly reply, “So did I.” My understanding of this was based not on conjecture, but on having been to China twice to adopt, having seen orphanages with my own eyes, and on research and other eyewitness accounts. Many hundreds and perhaps thousands of orphanages operate in China, most of them full of girls.

According to a February 2005 report in The Weekend Standard, a Chinese business newspaper, demographers in China found a ratio of 117 boys per 100 girls under the age of 5 in the 2000 census. Thanks to China’s one-child policy, put into effect in 1979 in order to curb population growth, and a strong cultural preference for male children, this gender gap could result in as many as 60 million “missing” girls from the population by the end of the decade, enough to alarm even Chinese officials.

Source: The Mystery of the Chinese Baby Shortage - New York Times