The baby came with the elevator

My life as a mother began on Sunday November 1st 1998 in a strange world at the other end of my globe


By Liz Haltrup
Copenhagen, Denmark

The chaos at Beijing Airport Sunday Nov. 1st 1998 was almost therapeutic to all of us: the struggle of getting heavily packed suitcases, strollers, bags and boxes with gifts of eight Danish families checked in before being overtaken by hundreds of Chinese travelers, seemed for some half hours to keep the thoughts away from the one main topic: would we get our children today, or would the authorities wait till the day after at The Civil Affairs Office.
Our adoption agency didn't have much experience with adoption proccedures in Jiangxi Province, so their representative in China, Eva, wasn't able to tell us when we would actually become parents, as the procedures are different from province to province.
The question was answered upon arrival at Nanchang Airport. Our guide for the next five days, Mrs. Zhong Guilan, cheerfully announced that in less than two hours we would get our babies!   Needless to say that the excitement grew to almost unbearable hights. Four children would come from Gao An orphanage and the other four from Nanchang Orphanage. All the children were born in 1997 between May and December. The oldest were the Gao An babies, who also, according to the health information, seemed to be the smallest. Other than that we didn't know much about the children. My baby, named Gao Kun, was born on May 11 and was the second oldest of the group.


A necessary luxury
 At Nanchang Eva had us booked into the entirely new Gloria Plaza Hotel, situated centrally just opposite one of the few actual sights of the city, the Tengwang Pavillion. The hotel is of a very high and international standard. We paid about  $ 62 pr room/night just off season at the beginning of November - and we probably got a fair discount due to the size of our travel group. We all got our rooms at the 14th floor with a magnificent view over the city and the rivers - on clear days, anyway - and our rooms were equipped with a babybed and a stroller. The staff was genuinely friendly, and all along I think it was worth spending some money on staying as comfortably as possible, while adjusting to my new status as mother.  
One of the restaurants at the hotel had a big Western/Chinese buffet which we immediately attacked, and we just barely had something to eat, when it was announced that the children from Gao An orphanage had arrived.


Delivery on the 14th floor
 The procedure, we all agreed upon, was to have the children handed over outside of our rooms, in order for the children not to have too bad memories about the rooms which we had to stay in for five nights. My sister and I rushed to our room, washed hands and tried without much luck to be calm, until we were called outside. My sister was given the task of taking pictures and videofilm the handing over. I was the last one to get outside for my baby, and of course I didn't have eyes for anything or anyone else but her and the woman who brought her. Later, I was told that all the others in our group were standing around crying when they saw us get our children.
Kun - whom I gave the name Maj Elise - immediately broke into a very loud cry and yelled Mama Mama. She cried like that for an hour or two before she calmed down. I was told that she had been very attached to the woman, who was her fostermother. She had been in fostercare most of her life together with another of the babies, Gao Dian, whose Danish name is Frederikke. All the children had been in fostercare, we were told. Both Kun and Dian were clean, wellfed and seemingly well cared for. They had a very regular lifestyle with set eating and sleepingtime and had learned basic skills like washing hands, using a spoon (this is my guess, as Maj very quickly started using both spoon and fork). One of the other babies was quite dirty and had a cold, and the last baby had been diagnosed with hepatitis B just after her parents-to-be left Denmark, so they had to deal with that, while in Beijing, where they also got vaccinated. However, Song, as her name is, seemed to be OK and was quite cheerful already the first night. Song had started a treatment with some herbal medicine, and the parents were recommended to take enough medicine for two years back to Denmark. They did just that: it came in three large boxes and weighed 56 kilos!
The four children from Nanchang Orphanage came to the hotel about an hour later. Some of them were somewhat bigger than ours, and they had also been in fostercare, the parents were told. The fostermother of one of the children even came back to the hotel some days later to see the baby and to give the mother some pictures they had taken. Apparently this fostermother had been extremely attached to the baby and had a very har time letting her go. This was confirmed afterwards in some letters the new Danish mother got from the foster family. They had a son of 20 and wanted a girl very much. The fostermother knew the baby was up for adoption, but only a few days before our arrival was she told that the child would leave the country.
Like most other adoptive parents to China we were not allowed to go and visit the orphanages. The Gao An-group discussed the possibility of going on a trip to Gao An during our stay, but that was before we had the children. The trip  never materilized. Too busy getting to know the children! However, we were urged to stay in touch with the fosterfamilies or the orphanage and send them some pictures now and again. It provides you with a lot of good-will, if you want to go back and seek permission to see the files of your child at a later stage.

Efficient authorities
The day after Adoption Day , on Monday Nov. 2nd,  we all went to The Civil Affairs Office and later to the Notarial Offices (2 different ones as Gao An is a county of its own), and we ate a late lunch with the staff  from the two orphanages. Four days later all the papers were brought to the hotel - four sets per child in three copies each - and the Nanchang-parents even got the passports for the children as well. The Gao An-parents had to go and collect the passports on our last day - we were at the police office for app. 15 minutes. All of us were very impressed with the authorities and the fast work in getting the documents ready,  of which one revealed that Maj Elise had been found  abandoned the day after her birth on May 12 in Denfang village, Dacheng town, Gao An city  by a person named Deng Runzhi. This is when I started crying - because it couldn't have been easy to leave such a beautiful, healthy  newborn child to an unknown destiny, and because I realised for certain that now she was my daughter!


Attention!
Nanchang itself doesn't offer a lot of sights and points of interest. However, we did some interesting walks with the baby in the stroller, and especially towards evening there's a lot of life in the streets, and you can experience a genuine Chinese atmosphere. Visiting shops and markets is fun, there's a very beautiful porcelain-shop and some jewellers that are hard to leave alone...But everywhere you go, you must be prepared for the attention you create  -  to have lots of people crowding around you to look at the   child and to discuss the interesting phenomenon of Europeans driving around with a Chinese baby in a stroller. They are not too used to people taking their infants out in public areas  before they can walk. Most people find the babies cute and offer smiles and various goodies to eat - and from the elderly women practical advice on how the child should be dressed (warm) and sit in the stroller! We carried a small note saying in Chinese that the child was an orphan and that I had adopted her.
Beside a big variety of market-type shops selling everything from TV-sets, fridges and fireworks, Nanchang also has a big departementstore where you should be able to find everything you might need for the baby, including diapers, formula, clothes and strollers. Compared to European pricelevel, the prices on most goods were lower. It's basically only necessary to bring along what you might need for the first 24 hours with your child.


Back to a new life
Even a luxury hotel can become somewhat dull, and after five days at Nanchang we all looked forward to go back to Beijing to prepare for our trips back to Europe. At the airport my child started crying very hard again - I didn't seem to be able to comfort her. She might have been afraid that I would leave her there with someone else??? Her mood shifted remarkably, however, when the plane was well underway - just during a chaotic situation with some boiled water spilled over the woman next to me. At that point - with me sitting with three dinnertrays stacked in front of me, - Maj Elise started to play with her toy, acting, flashing smiles to everybody and enjoying herself a lot. For her, I'm sure  this was the point of no return, where she realised I was still with her and would bring her back here to our a new life together.

On Day Two after the adoption she began flashing smiles at me.