The Village

During our stay in Nanchang, Evelyn and Karen arranged for us to visit a village. This was important to all of us. Had our babies stayed in China, they probably would have grown up in one very similar to the one we visited.

On Wednesday morning, we boarded our bus and drove outside of the city to a small village. Before you imagine shacks and dirt roads, you should know that we would have had to have driven 3 or 4 hours to find a village that primitive. The village we visited was composed of several paved streets lined with identical government-built homes. Well, they were identical in the sense that they were originally built identically with the same government-approved design and the same government-approved gray concrete. Over the years, they had deteriorated. Some of the homes were under renovation, but I don’t believe that they could ever be renovated to the point that that they did not scream poverty and depression.

Evelyn and Karen explained that the biological mothers of our children probably lived within one of these types of villages. They could not have lived farther away due to the cost of traveling to a city like Nanchang to abandon their baby. So, we walked the streets, growing more somber with the heavy imagined scenes of our new daughters living in this very village, walking these same streets, and watching Americans stroll by with their digital cameras.

We started the tour of the village at the grocery store. The store did not have automatic doors or refrigerated produce and meats. Instead, the meat was a just-killed hog, cut into pieces, and hanging from a line on the street corner. The produce lay scattered in boxes on the ground.

We spent about 45 minutes walking down the street beside the grocery. Most of the villagers were either under 4 years old or over 60. Everyone in between these ages was either in school or was in the city working. You need to understand that “working in the city” does not mean that they commute. City workers cannot afford to commute, so they find some sort of cheap lodging, and send their money home to the grandmothers and great-grandmothers raising their children. Once or twice a year, they return home to visit. That’s once or twice a year – not once or twice a week.

About half-way down the street, we came to a woman washing clothes (in cold water on a cold day) by dipping them in a bowl and then beating the clothes with a stick. A little farther down, a man stood on the side of the street and washed his hair. He was fully clothed, so I guess he wasn’t concerned about getting his clothes wet. He lathered and rinsed his hair with water from a bowl.

Some of us had brought lollipops to hand out to the children, and were rewarded with smiles from the young and old alike. The caretakers brought the children out to see us. Everyone was friendly. They were as curious about us as we were about them. We were “The Americans With Chinese Daughters” and we would be talked about for the rest of the day.

We had a connection with these villagers. They were our kinsmen, in some respect. The difference between us was that we would leave the village on a warm and comfortable bus. They would never leave.

Thank you, Evelyn and Karen, for making us realize that we need to remember that this journey was not just about us becoming parents. It was about our daughters having a future.