Pingxiang
We flew to Nanchang on Oct. 17th and spent a few days resting and retracing our steps from our original adoption trip. We even stayed at the same hotel, the Gloria Plaza. For those of you who watch "Survivor", this season was filmed about an hour outside Nanchang. On Oct. 22nd, we met our Chinese guide who took us to Pingxiang via train, a 4 hour ride through a very rural agricultural area --- the heartland of China. In those 4 hours, we only saw one tractor. All other fields were farmed by water buffalo and sickle. The area is surprisingly mountainous and, like other parts of China, very smoggy. Coal mining is one of the principal industries in Pingxiang. The weather in October was pleasant with hazy sunshine and warm temperatures (mid-70s).
Once in Pingxiang, we stayed at The Dynasty Hotel, a very comfortable and convenient 4-star hotel near the city center. Virtually no one there --- or anywhere else in Pingxiang --- spoke English. During our 2-day stay in the area, we didn't see any other Western faces and we were clearly regarded with much curiosity. A few notes about Pingxiang: according to our guide, it is a city of 1.8 million that dates from the Tang Dynasty but the 'modern city' was founded in the early 20th century. It is one of the 5 largest cities in Jiangxi Province after Nanchang, Gan Zhou, Jingdezhen, and Jiujiang. In spite of being considered a 'rural' city (by Chinese standards), we found Pingxiang to be very pleasant and modern and we actually liked it much better than Nanchang. Im sure there is a little bias since its our daughters hometown.
When we visited the orphanage, we were greeted by firecrackers and a red banner that proclaimed "Welcome Home Dou Ping!" (our daughters Chinese name). Our guide explained the banner is a Chinese tradition for brides called Sui Niang Jia which means "Coming Back to Mother's Home". The Jiangxi Civil Affairs office gave us a copy of the silk banner as a keepsake. Firecrackers were actually invented in Hunan province (not far from Pingxiang) about 2,000 years ago so it is also a tradition of honor to light them on special occasions such as a birth, a death or a birthday.
The current SWI director Zhong Hui had a small reception for us with fruit and bottled water and presented our daughter with a framed portrait of Chairman Mao in a red silk box. She let us review our daughters file which contained several of the letters we've written to the orphanage over the years. Apparently, this file is retained for 80 years. The retired director Huang Wen Lan, whom we met during our original adoption trip, came back to see us as well. We were also greeted by three of the staff who brought our daughter to Nanchang 4 years ago for our adoption: Hu Gui Lan (the Assistant Director), Hu Ping Mei (the director of accounting), and Chen Xen (the Director of the Children's Program). We toured the children's section and sang songs with a group of handicapped children who all looked clean, well-cared for, and had smiles on their faces (especially when we passed out bags of M&Ms). We also met one of the Hugging Grannies sponsored by the Amity/Altrusa Foundation.
We were then escorted across town in the in the orphanage van to a technical college to meet a young girl whom we sponsor through the Amity/Altrusa Foundation. She attends the college but is still in the care of the orphanage. Amity/Altrusa provides the funding for her education and we receive an annual report of her progress.
Afterwards, we went to see the 'old' orphanage where our daughter spent the first month of her life. It is in the middle of town across from the Ping River. The new orphanage, which is still in town but in a more industrial area, was built in 2002 although it was not occupied until early 2003. The old building is now an Old People's Home. From there, we took the staff to lunch nearby and had a lovely banquet to celebrate.
In the afternoon, the van took us to the Autumn Harvest Square, a big park downtown, where we met our daughter's foster family. We had been given photographs of them when we adopted our daughter but we did not know their names or anything about them. It was definitely one of the highpoints of our trip to get to meet them. They live in the countryside about 30 minutes away where the foster father is a coal miner. The foster mother has fostered 8 children including a baby she has now. (Interestingly, I was able to locate 5 of these babies, counting my daughter, beforehand through the Yahoo Group for Pingxiang families). The foster parents seemed to be as happy to see our daughter and visit with us as we were with them. We were the first family to come back to visit them and we were able to deliver photo albums from 4 of the other babies they had fostered. As you can imagine, they were very surprised and pleased to see pictures of all their daughters. It was a touching and memorable reunion and a very good experience for all of us.
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