Adopted children discover China
Updated: 2012-07-04 02:59
By He Dan (China Daily)
|
|||||||||
Learning to write the Chinese characters for "love" and "happiness" in a Beijing classroom was the first activity for a group of American families on a cultural tour of China on Tuesday.
But this was not a typical tour group, although the parents may have been born and raised in the United States, their children were born in China, before being adopted to be raised on the other side of the world.
Thomas Shuo Fahnle, 10, learned Chinese calligraphy and paper cutting with great interest at the cultural class, accompanied by his adoptive father David Charles Fahnle.
The boy, wearing a hearing aid, dipped his brush into black ink and then painted on blank paper following the teacher's instructions.
However, for the first three years' of his life, he could not hear at all, said his 58-year-old adoptive father.
Kelly Grace enjoys playing with her American foster mother Annie Laurie Ritchie at the China Center for Children’s Welfare and Adoption in Beijing on Tuesday. Nearly 200 children, adopted from China, and their families are visiting Beijing on a heritage tour. WANG JING / CHINA DAILY
|
The boy had being fostered by a child welfare institute in Beijing until he turned three when the single father adopted him in 2005. After seven surgeries he can now hear from both ears.
"I have been a teacher of deaf children for 36 years and I know this is the area I really know something about," Fahnle said. "When I chose him, I knew his medical history and knew what I could do both educationally and medically to help him to hear and improve his academic skills, and at the same time give him a caring and loving home."
Thomas kept showing his father his "masterpieces" from the class and received compliments and encouraging words in return.
The harmonious scene made it difficult to imagine he greeted his father "with violence" at their first meeting.
"I look so different from you guys (Chinese), so when I first visited him in the orphanage and tried to hold him in my arms, he cried and he spat at me and he tried to bite me. It took a while for him to trust me and get confident around me," Fahnle said.
He said he understood the boy's panicked reaction as he had been taken care of by different nursing staff as a baby and because there are many babies in an orphanage, "he never knew who he could call mom or dad, he never had his own toys, and nothing really was his".
"I believe the Chinese orphanage system has done wonderfully in delivering a nursing service but that cannot replace parenting," he said.
- Relief reaches isolated village
- Rainfall poses new threats to quake-hit region
- Funerals begin for Boston bombing victims
- Quake takeaway from China's Air Force
- Obama celebrates young inventors at science fair
- Earth Day marked around the world
- Volunteer team helping students find sense of normalcy
- Ethnic groups quick to join rescue efforts
Most Viewed
Editor's Picks
Supplies pour into isolated villages |
All-out efforts to save lives |
American abroad |
Industry savior: Big boys' toys |
New commissioner
|
Liaoning: China's oceangoing giant |
Today's Top News
Health new priority for quake zone
Xi meets US top military officer
Japan's boats driven out of Diaoyu
China mulls online shopping legislation
Bird flu death toll rises to 22
Putin appoints new ambassador to China
Japanese ships blocked from Diaoyu Islands
Inspired by Guan, more Chinese pick up golf
US Weekly
Beyond Yao
|
Money power |