Yihuang Visit

It is early Monday morning here, so this is the big day that we bring Nathan into our family. We are still in Nanchang now, but we travel by train at 8am to Changsha. It is a 3 hour train ride.


On Sunday we went from Nanchang to Yihuang by van. It was about 2.5 hour ride each way. We were really dreading the trip, but found it to be very worthwhile. Yihuang is where Abby was born and lived for the first eight months of here life. Traveling there and see the country side was very interesting. Not like anything you’d see in the US. There were rice fields and other crops dotting the landscape with little villages with 10-30 brick houses. Most were very broken down and many did not have glass in the window openings. The soil was the reddest that I’ve ever seen. It was fairly flat for most of the trip, but nearing Yihuang it got quite hilly. The roads going were surprising good concrete and blacktop roads. Interestingly on some roads one lane would be closed off with 100ft stretches of grain laid out presumable for drying. Lots of road and sub-development construction outside of Nanchang and Yihuang. Not much machinery, but many manual laborers.

Yihuang was appeared to be a fairly big (small by their standards) and spread out area. Mainly 3-4 story buildings, not much taller than that. Everyone lives in apartments. The orphanage director met our vehicle in a cab several miles out to guide us in. Arriving at the SWI, someone lit off a long string off fire crackers. And I’m not talking about those little fire crackers in the US, these were big ones that would take your hand off. I didn't realize at the time (Jackie did), but they lit these off to welcome Abby back. Pulling into the SWI area, it was just as Jackie and I had pictured it. The orphanage was in the same building as Abby had been in. The new larger building behind is for elderly people that cannot care for themselves. We first went up to the 3rd floor were they had a meeting room setup with Watermelon and grapes on the table and big sign saying “Welcome dack home Lin Li Han”. The orphanage director was not the same man that was director when Abby was there, but the assistant director was there when Abby was at the orphanage. The assistant director was one of the people that came to bring all 6 girls to the Lake View Hotel in Nanchang were we first met Abby. She remembered us, and even knew our year of birth (amazing). She remembered Abby as a fair skinned plump girl. They showed us Abby file. Much in the file was in the adoption papers that we got 8 years ago, but a few pages were new to us. One was the finding add that was placed in the paper looking for her parents. This has been a requirement for many years in order to satisfy that no one had come forward to claim her before she was eligible for adoption. Then to our surprise Abby’s foster mom showed up. Echo (our guide) had told us on Saturday that they couldn’t find the foster mom, but on Sunday Echo told us that they had found her. She was a very small sweet older lady. She had 2 boys of her own and 2 grandchildren. Abby was almost as big as her as you’ll see in the pictures. She had come on short notice all the way from her village which was about an hour bus ride. Her village speaks a different dialect than mandarin, so Echo spoke to her using the assistant director to translate. We presented gifts to the director and foster mom and they presented gifts to us. The foster mom gave as fresh Lotus fruit grown in her village and the orphanage gave us a book about Yihuang and a banner similar to the welcome one. We got to ask several questions before leaving the room. We found that Abby was in the orphanage for less than one month before the foster mom took her in for the next 3 months. She was then back at the orphanage for the last 3 months. We then got a tour of the children’s area. Approximately 46 children are under the care of the orphanage, but half are in foster care. In the baby area, I counted 12 children between 1 and 3 years of age. We got to see the room that Abby slept in. There were 2 rooms with about 6 metal cribs each. And one other room for older kids. Then there was a fourth room for play. This was the hardwood floor room that we had gotten pictures of Abby in. All the young children were in this room at the time we visited. All these 4 rooms were on the first floor. It was much much smaller than I had envisioned. I don’t even know were the facilities for bathing were. There was also an outside play area with some jungle gym type equipment.

Next we went to another building for lunch. They prepared a very nice family style meal with about 25 varieties of dishes to eat. Jackie & I tried many things. Understandable Micah and Abby were somewhat less adventurous. Several people and 2 kids joined the celebration lunch. One of the kids was a girl that was 14. They figured that the girl probably help out caring for Abby and the other girls 8 years ago. They claimed she had a mental disability, but Jackie and I had a hard time telling it. Thus the girl couldn’t attend school and was caring for the other children. Lunch included a good conversation amongst everyone on the rising housing costs.

After lunch we walked down to the SWI gate where Abby was left at 2 days old. We snapped more photos and gave our goodbyes and then left. All totaled about a 2 hour visit. Very very worth the trip. Invaluable is the only way we can describe it. Throughout the visit Abby was pretty quite, but I’m guessing this was a lot for her take in. Hopefully the visit will stick in her memory for many years so that she has a better understanding of where she originated. Sorry for the long post, but I had to get it all written down or I’d forgot details with my bad memory.

-- Craig