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Resources
For detailed information on adoption from China, an excellent source is the Families with Children from China website, offering background for prospective parents, guidelines and answers to frequently asked questions, travel and health information, updates on new rules or legislation—in both the United States and China—that affect adoption, personal stories from families who have adopted, guides to Internet sources, and a listing of local FCC chapters on the Web at www.fwcc.org.
The China Center of Adoption Affairs maintains a website at www.chinaccaa.org, which offers extensive information on Chinese adoption protocols, including recent updates and changes in the laws, and information on required paperwork.
For extensive background, research, and current information on adoption in general, the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute is a valuable resource. Contact the organization at 120 Wall Street 20th floor, New York, NY 10005-3902; telephone 212-269-5080 or on the Web at www.adoptioninstitute.org.
Pact, an adoption alliance based in the San Francisco Bay Area, is an excellent, well-grounded source of lifelong education and support for adoptive families, particularly on issues of race and cross-cultural parenting. The organization offers seminars and other programs specifically designed for adoptive families. For more information write: Pact, 4179 Piedmont Avenue, Suite 101, Oakland, CA 94611; telephone 510-243-9460; or on the Web at www.pactadopt.org.
Teaching Tolerance is a wonderful and necessary program—offering a magazine, videotapes, and school presentations—produced by Morris
Dees and staff at the Southern Poverty Law Center. For information, write: Teaching Tolerance, 400 Washington Avenue, Montgomery, AL 36104.
Charitable Initiatives
The Foundation for Chinese Orphanages, with support from adoptive families, provides help to numerous institutions in China. The address is 8 Berkeley Street, Cambridge, MA 02138-3464.
The Amity Foundation, an experienced China-based humanitarian aid organization based in Nanjing, has been working in orphanages for more than a decade. Among the projects: rehabilitation for disabled children, grandmothers’ programs, providing special attention to infants and young children. Fund-raising by Families with Children from China-New York benefits these and other projects. Donations may be sent to Families with Children from China, Fund-raising Appeal, Box 865, Ansonia Station, New York, NY 10025.
Half the Sky Foundation is a joint endeavor by American adoptive families, Chinese officials, and child development specialists in both countries to establish early childhood education, infant nurture programs and Big Sisters programs in orphanages, plus Family Villages foster care. On the Web at www.halfthesky.org. Or write to Half the Sky Foundation, 740 Gilman Street, Berkeley, CA 94710.
Love Without Boundaries provides medical help, nutrition, and other support to children in China’s institutions. Visit www.lovewithoutboundaries.com, or write to Love Without Boundaries, 306 South Bryant, Suite C, PMB 145, Edmund, OK 73034.
For a more extensive listing, see the Families with Children from China website (www.fwcc.org).
Permissions
The author gratefully acknowledges Alan M. Lee and Fang Fang Lee for permission to print “You Would Be Proud.”
“For All the Little Girls from China,” copyright © Penny Callan Partridge. Reprinted with the kind permission of the author.
A Letter to All the Lost Daughters of China, copyright © 2000 Anchee Min. Published with permission. All rights reserved by the author.
Lines from the poems “Climbing Stork Tower,” by Wang Zhi-Huan, “News of Home,” by Wang Wei, and “Traveler’s Song” by Meng Jia from Maples in the Mist: Children’s Poems from the Tang Dynasty, translated by Minfong Ho. Used by permission of Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, William Morrow & Company. Copyright 1996 by Minfong Ho.
Poems from Chinese Mother Goose Rhymes, edited by Robert Wyndham, copyright © 1968 by Robert Wyndham. Used by permission of Philomel Books, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Excerpts from poems by Jia Jia, “Women of the Red Plain,” by Li Xiaoyu, “The Silk Dream,” and by Luo Xiaoge “Drizzling Rain” from Women of the Red Plain: An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Women’s Poetry, translated by Julia C. Lin. Copyright © Chinese Literature Press 1992. Used by permission.
Quotations from Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction by Faye D. Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp. Copyright © 1995 The Regents of the University of California. Used by permission of the publisher.
Quotations from Red China Blues: My Long March from Mao to Now, by Jan Wong, used by permission of Random House, Inc.
Quotation from Earth Odyssey: Around the World in Search of Our Environmental Future, by Mark Hertsgaard, used by permission of Random House, Inc.
Quotations from China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power, by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. Copyright © 1994 by the authors. Used by permission of Random House, Inc.
Quotations from The Woman Warrior, Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston. Copyright © 1975, 1976 by Maxine Hong Kingston. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Quotations from Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography, by Peter Conn. Reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press.
Quotations from Bound Feet and Western Dress, by Natasha Pang-Mei Chang, used by permission of Random House, Inc.
Quotations from Chopstick Childhood in a Town of Silver Spoons, by Nona Mock Wyman. Copyright © 1997 by Nona Mock Wyman, published by MQ Press. Used by permission of the author.
Quotations from Golden Lilies, by Kwei-li, translated by Eileen Goudge. Copyright © 1990 by Eileen Goudge, used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA), Inc.
Quotations from Revolution Postponed: Women in Contemporary China, by Margery Wolf. Reprinted with permission of Stanford University Press.
About the Author
Karin Evans has worked as a writer and editor for numerous publications, including Outside, Rocky Mountain Magazine, the San Francisco Examiner Sunday Magazine, Health, and Hippocrates. She spent two years as a stringer for the Hong Kong bureau of Newsweek. She has edited a number of books, and her writing has appeared in such publications as More, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, the San Francisco Examiner, The Denver Post, and the Los Angeles Times. Evans served for six years on the board of Half the Sky Foundation and, with Amy Tan, coauthored the text for Mei-Mei—Little Sister: Portraits from a Chinese Orphanage, by Richard Bowen. An avid hiker and cyclist, she lives with her husband, attorney Mark Humbert, and their daughters Kelly Xiao Yu and Franny Yi Xuan in northern California. She is currently studying toward an MFA degree in poetry at Seattle Pacific University.
1 The latest regulations and subsequent rules for foreign adoption can be found on the Families with Children from China website (www.fwcc.org) as well as on the website of the China Center of Adoption Affairs (www.ccaa.org). In the decade since we went through the adoption process, there have been numerous changes in the rules, and there will likely be more.
