Hello From Shanghai - Page 3
 

"Where are all these children from?", I asked Ms. Wu.
 
Ms. Wu responded to this question without any hesitation: From places such as the train station, stores, the hospital, elementary schools, private residences, or by leaving a child with a stranger on board a train or in the waiting room of the station. Some with physical handicaps were even found in dumpsters, public restrooms or rice patties. Judging by a child's clothing or a piece of clothing wrapped around the baby, you can tell that all of these children are from rural areas.

"What do you feel when you accept one of these children?"

She said that she believes that the parents should be severely punished. Now the government has to pay the expenses for someone else who should have taken the responsibility.  Pointing to a boy who has a large birthmark on his right cheek, she said, "His parents abandoned him just because of this mark!"

I kept asking about the children's gender, since all the children were dressed in different clothes and it was sometimes difficult to tell.  Mr. Huang said they prefer to have the children dressed as individuals, rather than wearing uniforms, as they do in many of the other institutions.  As per the children's clothing, all of the children are dressed in westernized pants, without the open crotch, split pants so common in other parts of China.

Unlike the ratio in the nursery room, the ratio between children and caretakers are much larger in the kindergarten and elementary groups. In this section, there were 8 adults taking care of 28 infants.  Adult caretakers work in 24 hour shifts.
 
 Next, we toured the Zhenchan School, founded by Master Zhenchan, the Chairman of the Shanghai Buddhism Association.  This school provides special education for the aged 4 to 16.  The kindergarten and elementary age children are divided into 4 groups according to their ages.  In each classroom, there was one teacher/caregiver and from 24 to 28 children. In each of the rooms, the children were sitting around two large rectangular tables, playing with plastic Legos and wooden puzzles, and drawing and coloring pictures.

"How do you name these children?"

We give each child a family name by looking it up in the Handbook of One Hundred Family Names.  All of the children coming into the institution during the same month would have the same last names.  Li (Lee) is the family name for all the children accepted by the institution this month, June 2000, the room teacher tells me.

The other two classrooms at the end of the building are for teenagers.  A group of 8 young boys and girls were eating chicken stirred with water bamboo shoots.  One of the young girls was doing the cooking.  She scooped some chicken and bamboo shoots to my plate with a shy smile. The teenagers have cooking class twice a week, as part of their curriculum.

The last room in the building is a library with many children's books and 20 computers that are separated by the book cases.  About 10 students, slightly older than the cooking group, are using the computers.  They are working on their writing and computer skills, by copying stories out of picture books.  Using Chinese software, they type in Pinyin letters and select Chinese characters to make sentences.

To Be Continued...

INDEX          1    2    3      4