by Jeff Gammage
The monks begin to chant, two voices joining to create a single melody.
I wonder if somewhere, in another temple, in another town in another province, the people who gave birth to Jin Yu might also be on their knees, beseeching the heavens to shower health and contentment upon their girl.
I wonder if Chinese gods hear only the prayers of Chinese people, or if they’ll be willing to hear mine as well. I wonder if a prayer offered in my daughter’s native land will reach the heavens faster than one offered at home. If it will carry more weight with those to whom it’s directed.
The chant picks up pace and rhythm, accompanied by the steady beating of a drum and punctuated by the occasional ping of a bell. The altar is pungent, the scent of oranges strong. Another monk arrives and seamlessly joins in the chant, the harmony gaining depth and volume.
I pray that Jin Yu will always be healthy. That she will always be happy, that her childhood will be filled with laughter and friends. I pray that the resilience that helped her survive two years of deprivation will remain within her, a support through life’s trials. I pray that she will come to view her beginnings not as a darkness, but as a dawn. I pray that the people who gave life to her will find peace. I pray that their child, my daughter, will grow up to love China, and its people, that she will not give in to the bitterness that is surely her privilege.
The chant rushes on, fast and melodic.
I pray that Jin Yu will always be friends with the little girls who surround her now, her sisters from Xiangtan, restless in the arms of their new parents. I pray that these girls will reach for one another in times of trouble. And in times of joy.
I pray that Christine and I will have wisdom to help Jin Yu. Patience when she tests us. And time to see her grow.
I pray that tonight, Jin Yu will let us get some sleep.
A bell tings three times, and the chant slows to a stop.
My knees are locked, my legs stiff. Jin Yu, still in my arms, suddenly weighs a ton. I set her down in front of me, then use both hands to pull one leg forward. If this were a movie, the sound effect would be a loud creak.
Other mothers and fathers are already up and moving. They pause to drop bills in the offering box, notes of ten and twenty yuan, a dollar or two to help the temple, to ensure that the next time a new parent comes here, they will find a place to give thanks for their child.
Jin Yu takes Christine’s hand. As we step away from the altar, one of the monks reaches out for our daughter. He takes her into his arms and begins to speak to her quietly, allowing me time to record the moment on my camera. He’s young, probably no more than thirty. Jin Yu regards him the way she might regard a Martian, not frightened but cautious.
These two countrymen have not seen each other before and will probably never see each other again. Perhaps someday Jin Yu will look at the pictures. When she does, she’ll see herself, a toddler, poised beside a man in a loose-fitting robe. She will know that in the days before she left her homeland, before her past fell away and her future began, her mom and dad came here, on their knees, to plead for the blessings of heaven.
Outside, monsoon rain pounds the pavement. It is time to go.
AT SUNRISE, the Guangzhou airport is already chaotic, its yawning entry hall swarming with travelers, baggage handlers, police, hustlers, beggars, and this morning, at the end of a very long line, a weary group of American families, their Chinese children in tow.
Everyone who wants to leave Guangzhou today is in the same line. It snakes down the center of the hall, which looks like a 1950s college gym, minus the bleachers. The line leads to a single door, guarded by security agents who check the identification of everyone who hopes to go from here to somewhere else. No ticket, no entrance. Even our guide, Mary, a privileged traveler in so many ways, is not allowed through. In this place she is just another Chinese who might try to leave the country.
We can see her up ahead, near the door, waiting to say good-bye.
Time is tight. There is no more small talk among the Americans. People pat their pockets. Wallet. Passport. Plane tickets.
The line edges forward, dragging us with it.
Jin Yu is half-asleep in Christine’s arms, oblivious to her pending departure, to the start of a daylong journey that will carry her across the ocean and away from everything she’s known.
For the third time, Christine and I check the sealed brown envelope marked for American immigration officials, the papers that constitute our daughter’s ticket into the United States.
Our time in China has sped by in a flash. And gone on forever. We can’t wait to leave. We hate to go.
After thirty minutes of shuffling, half-step followed by half-step, we’re almost at the entrance.
Mary is just ahead, answering a last question from the couple in front of us, shaking their hands, wishing them well.
They step away, handing their passports and tickets to the guard.
Mary turns toward us.
What can I say to her? What are the words? How do you thank someone who has helped to unite you with your daughter? How do you thank the person who has made a critical difference in the life of your child?
Two weeks ago, Mary was a stranger. Now she’s our friend, our daughter’s ally and protector. She fought for what was best for us and, most important, she fought for what was best for Jin Yu—even when Christine and I weren’t sure what that was.
Now, our time together at an end, I could tell her, “We will always be grateful.” Or, “We will never forget you.” Or, “You must come and visit.”
It all sounds hollow, insufficient.
Before I can speak, Mary pulls the three of us—Jin Yu, Christine, and me—into her arms, holding on for a long second. She lets go and steps back, continuing to grasp Jin Yu’s hand.
“Good luck to you,” she says.
“Good-bye, Mary,” I say. There’s no use pretending this is anything else. “And thank you.”
She walks the last few steps with us, holding Jin Yu’s hand all the while. At the security gate, she gives our daughter a last kiss, then waves us on.
We press through the checkpoint, our passports and tickets in order. We fill out a departure form, then walk through a second metal detector. A humorless security officer searches our stroller and pats down our child.
Ninety minutes after we arrive, we’re ducking our heads to step through the door of the plane, then settling into our seats and buckling our safety belts. Jin Yu shows no fear, just fatigue. Dark circles hang under her eyes. She sits stonily quiet as passengers file on.
A flight attendant stands in the aisle, reading from a card of safety instructions, speaking first in Mandarin, then in English.
Two rings of a bell signal that our departure is imminent. The plane backs away from the gate, executes one slow turn, then another, lumbering on until it reaches the peak of the runway. The engines rev to a high whine. The jetliner pauses, as if deciding whether to stay or go. Then it lunges forward, picking up speed. The wings stiffly sway up and down, like those of a big, arthritic bird trying to gain flight. The engines scream. The G-forces push us back against our seats. Jin Yu clings to Christine. The plane roars on, tearing across the concrete. We’re anchored to the ground. We’re going to run straight off the runway.
The wheels jump off the tarmac and we’re up—climbing, climbing, and then turning over the city. A wing points down, and the window fills with the rooftops of Guangzhou, as sooty as the city around them. The airplane straightens, then banks in the other direction as we aim toward Hong Kong. The plane levels, and slows, the noise of the engines reduced to a roar.
In a few minutes we’ll have cleared the mainland airspace.
Jin Yu relaxes her grip on Christine. I pull a blanket across our daughter’s lap, tucking it up against her chin.
I feel like I should try to say something profound. Something about all we’ve done and all it’s meant. Something memorable, something so weighty that years from now, Christine wil
l say to our daughter, “I’ll never forget, as we were leaving China, your father turned to me and said…”
But I have no insight to offer. Here at the end, I have only questions. The comforting black-and-white certainties that accompanied me to China have all turned to gray.
Is it right to spirit this child from her country? To take from her the comfortable tones of her language, the tastes of her food, the faces of her people? No, it’s wrong. It’s the most selfish thing I’ve ever done. Jin Yu deserves to grow up in the nation of her birth. She deserves to be raised among fellow Chinese, in the home of the two people who created her.
And the man and woman who gave birth to Jin Yu should have the privilege of watching her flower. They deserve to revel in her laughter and to delight in the light in her eyes. As much as I love this child—and I love her completely—the joy of her parentage fairly belongs to others.
But if all that is wrong, then what is right? Jin Yu’s Chinese parents are long gone. Her familial home has vanished. If she were to stay in China, she would spend her childhood as a ward of the state, scratching out an existence in a leaky, rundown orphanage. Is that right? That she should be denied education, opportunity, family? No, that’s wrong too.
An orphanage is no place for a little girl. It’s no place for my Jin Yu.
Who would tell her that she’s special? Who would listen to her stories, and laugh at her jokes? Who would be there to tell her that of all the people in all the world, she is the prettiest, the smartest, the most loved?
The plane engines whine, taking us up into the sky.
The point is moot. The decision has been made. Jin Yu’s future has been changed, and I am party to those who changed it. Whether that future will be better or worse, whether it’s the one she would have chosen had she been able to speak on her own behalf, is a question without answer. At least for now. Someday, Jin Yu will tell me whether I was wrong or right to do what I’ve done. And I will live with her judgment.
Right now, sitting sleepy-eyed in a middle seat, she knows nothing of all that’s led us here, to an airplane high above the Pearl River delta. As she grows, she’ll learn the facts and realities of what happened to her. I don’t know what she will think of that, how she will balance one life against the other, rate the duality of her existence. Sitting here, watching Jin Yu fight to keep her eyes open, I wonder if she will blame me. If someday she will hold me accountable for the loss of her people and her culture. If she’ll see me as the one who stole her chance to grow up amid the familiar.
A child begins to cry somewhere toward the front of the aircraft. A few business passengers look up, grimacing. They realize they’ve picked seats on the wrong flight, the one carrying fourteen anxious children. Another girl begins to wail, following the lead of the first.
Jin Yu will take her turn. But not now. For now she is strapped in her seat, safety belt wide across her narrow waist, her head on Christine’s arm. She is fast asleep. And as China fades into the distance, lost beneath the clouds, I can think of no reason to wake her.
7 POLITICS AND CHRISTMAS CAROLS
SHORTLY BEFORE we departed for China, our adoption agency issued us a page-long list of dos and don’ts. Among them was an index of conversational topics we should strive to avoid, lest we offend our hosts:
Don’t talk about politics. Don’t discuss China’s leaders. For God’s sake, don’t mention religion. If you must bring up Taiwan, at least have the good sense not to refer to it as Free China, Formosa, or the Republic of China. Taiwan is Taiwan. And China, by the way, is China. Not Red China, Communist China, Mainland China, or any other politically volatile permutation.
Permissible subjects presumably included the weather. And maybe the state of the Chinese national soccer team.
Despite the prohibitions, and despite the too-brief, sixteen-day duration of our visit, I still managed to learn a few things about my daughter’s native country.
For instance:
In China, there are no Australians. There are no British. Or French. There are no Italians, Spaniards, or Germans, no Scots, Swiss, Serbs, or Swedes. There certainly aren’t any Americans.
Inside a court of the Summer Palace in Beijing
There are only foreigners.
If you are in China and you are not Chinese, you are a foreigner.
And as a foreigner, you are not merely a visitor from a different part of the world, but a source of persistent curiosity and occasional resentment. You are subject to all sorts of restrictions and advantages, both social and financial. As a foreigner you may be charged more, or less, herded to the front of the line or pushed to the back. You may be regarded as something strange and different and perhaps even dangerous, something to be embraced or avoided, depending on the circumstance at hand.
I learned that in China, even on the hottest days, the Chinese don’t do air-conditioning. Or at least they don’t do it very well. You can walk into a restaurant or store and find an air-conditioning unit turned on full blast, pumping frigid air into a room that won’t cool because all the doors and windows have been propped open.
I learned that in China, police officers will give you directions, but soldiers—and soldiers are everywhere—will not. I suppose they do not wish to be seen coddling foreigners by helping them find their way to the local market or museum.
I learned that despite China’s increasing engagement with the rest of the world, and even in large Chinese cities, some people may never in their lives have seen wai guo ren—a foreigner. That the sight of a six-foot, 185-pound white guy with a beard is enough to make some people stop and stare, and that a few will insist you pose for a picture, for which they will gladly reciprocate.
I learned that in China, in some places, there is no such thing as garbage. Because there is always someone lower down the economic ladder, ready to make good use of what you’re throwing away. Outside the gates of the opulent Summer Palace, young boys and old women camp beside the trash cans, pleading with visitors to hand over their empty water bottles. They are people for whom a few pennies’ worth of recycled plastic can mean the difference between eating and not.
In China, I learned that poverty looks the same no matter what country you’re in.
In America, we throw money at problems. In China, they throw people.
In hotels we met workers whose only job was to wipe the tile walls—which had already been wiped spotless by others. Alongside of highways we saw tons of dirt being pushed and shaped—and not an earth-mover in sight. No machinery, just a hundred men with shovels, and down the road from them, a hundred more. In an American department store you can wander for miles searching for a salesclerk. In China they’re lined up like rush-hour taxis—two, three, or even four attendants eager to help, or at least eager for something to do.
I learned that in China, no matter the weather or season, it’s always a good time for a Christmas carol. The people who embody what American politicians like to call mindless, godless communism enjoy nothing more than a pleasant hymn celebrating the birth of Christ. We heard carols everywhere, at every hour. At breakfast, the hotel music system played a classical rendition of “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen.” During a visit to a school, in the scalding heat of a South China summer, the children greeted us with a rousing performance of “Jingle Bells.”
In China, I learned that while the government is avowedly socialist, capitalism is booming, from the large factories that crowd highway exits to the small entrepreneurs who spread blankets on sidewalks and sell charms and teapots.
I learned that in China, many people seem to think that because you come from the richest country on earth, you actually have a clue about what’s going on in the world, and more expressly, that you have some idea of how to fix it. That you understand the problems in their community or the challenges they face in their specific line of work. During our tour of the Changsha Nobel Cradle kindergarten—a prestigious private academy—a teacher pulled me aside.
“Do you hav
e any advice?” she asked in perfect English.
It took a minute for her to register my confusion.
“About the school,” she prodded.
I told her that as far as I could see, she was doing a wonderful job. I didn’t know what else to say, because the question caught me off guard. The fact is I no more know how to run a school than I do how to pilot a spaceship.
I learned that in China, practically everyone wants to come to America, but most people can’t, and only a few will try through official channels. People told me that to ask for permission and be turned down—and being turned down is practically automatic—is to guarantee a black mark on your passport and government interest in your future travel activities.
In China, I learned that the children who are adopted into American homes are believed to have hit the geopolitical jackpot. That these girls, left in the flower markets and train stations of nameless cities, are viewed as having received, not what every child deserves—a home and caring parents—but some astonishing, unimaginable benefit.
Everywhere in China people approached us as if we belonged to their extended family, telling us about the cousin who lives in New York or the uncle who attended school in San Francisco. Then they would pinch our daughter’s big cheeks and say, “Lucky baby, lucky baby.”
People here in the United States told us the same, that Jin Yu was lucky.
At first, in that country and in this one, I would force myself to respond with a smile, to mumble some bit of bland politeness. Now I just nod.
I suppose that at a basic level, by switching her living quarters from a Chinese orphanage to an American home, Jin Yu’s medical care, nutrition, and education will improve. She will neither freeze in winter nor broil in summer. She will go to the doctor when she gets sick. She will have toys that work, clothes that fit, pets to chase. She has acquired a father and mother who are crazy in love with her, two round-the-clock caretakers devoted to her well-being.
