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Dear Families, June
9, 2000
By the time you read this letter, I may be on board an airplane,
flying over another hemisphere to Shanghai, China.
With the arrangement
of the vice chairman of Sociology Dept of Fudan University, I will
visit the Shanghai Children's Welfare Institute first and then a
Chinese family with an adopted child. From Shanghai, I will
go down all the way south to visit the Nanping Children's Welfare
Institute in Fujian Province, which has a long history of "raising
a child wife for a young son". From Nanping, the train will take
me west to Guangzhou, Guangdong Province. I am going to stay
in Guangzhou for 4 or 5 days, visiting the two institutes in Guangzhou
City and GaoMing Town.
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Yannie Fan
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Hunan Province,
directly north of Guangdong, is my next destination, There I will visit
three institutes, in the cities of: Chenzhou, Changsha and Yueyang, respectively.
Hubei is the fourth province on my journey. There I am going to visit
two orphanages. First, I will visit the Wuhan Social Welfare Institute.
Then I will visit the Tuanfeng Children's Welfare Institute, a small children's
home located two hours to the east of Wuhan, by boat ride. The boat
then will take me east to Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province. The Jiujinag
Children's Welfare Institute is involved with UNICEF and is developing
a model program there.
I designed this travel route because most of our children are from those
five provinces, (six, if including Anhui Province), and all the institutes
are state-run. I am going to Tuangfu at a request of a family with
a ten-year-old girl who told me, "I'll recommend one of my friends for
your adoption", when she learned of my dream to have a girl like her.
The girl was adopted by her Chicago area parents when she was 6
1/2 years old. She still remembers all her play partners at the orphanage.
She gave me all their names and a Chinese letter written by her
to the director. I promised her to take every means to pass the
"HELLO" to her friends and her auntie, a cook at the orphanage, who took
her home for nights for the first two and half years of her life.
Afterwards, I am heading north to my own hometown, Hefei, the capital
city of Anhui Province. Like so many cities in China, Hefei also
has many children in need of adoption.
The Hefei Children's Welfare Institute is a "Window to the World", as
the director Zhang Yuxia tells everyone who visits. I will go to
the institute a couple of times while staying in Hefei. It has also
been arranged for me to visit some foster families who are now taking
care of children that will be adopted internationally.
I will take a break in Hefei, accompanying my 75-year-old mom to sweep
my dad's grave. Chinese people hold a memorial ceremony at cemetery
and pay respects to our passed-away family members on April 4, 5 or 6
respectively, according to Chinese lunar calendar. It is called
Sweep a Grave Festival. I will bid farewell to my family and friends
after a lecture to some teachers and principals of elementary and high
schools in Hefei on the topic of American primary education system.
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