- Gaoming Welfare Institute, Guangzhou -
- Guangdong Province, China -

by Mrs. Yannie Fan
( Edited by Diane Vanderpool)

June 19, 2000
 
After 31 hours of rocking on a train from Nanping to Guangzhou, I was headed to Gaoming City on Tuesday, June 19th.  I was accompanied by Muoyan, a new friend of mine.  I thought I could go on my own nevertheless, right upon arriving at the first bus station, I was convinced it was too naive and too foreign to predict the complexity and inconvenience of the transportation from a metropolitan city like Guangzhou, to local small town like Gaoming, (75 km / 47 miles).

Right across the street from the Guangzhou Railway Station there were at least four long-distance bus stations.  All of them were very crowded and unorganized.  We searched one after another and failed to find any information about how to get to Gaoming, even with Muoyan's Cantonese dialect and her experience traveling to a town close to Gaoming early this year.
 
After two hours of searching for the right bus to Gaoming and another hour or so riding, finally, we are here at the Gaoming City Social Welfare Home.  Standing at the gate, I can not believe this is the facility of a welfare institute.  Around two large green lawns, there are two big five story buildings covered all with white and green ceramic.  To which building should we go?  We are lost again.  Waves of children's laughs and shouts are coming from the building on the right.  Muoyan insists that it cannot be the orphanage.  She is right.  An old grandma shows us to the building on the left.
 
In a big office on the third floor, we are greeted by two women, vice director Ms. Liang and book-teller, Ms. Luo.  Once I take out all the pictures of Gaoming children, Liang and Luo cannot take their eyes away.  Ms. Luo used to be a care giver and can recognize all the children's names.  The two woman are talking to each other, making comments on each one of the children and correcting my translation of the girls Chinese names.  I had to guess some of the girls names by pinyin, which couldn't be that accurate.  There could be several characters with the same pronunciation.  Tones can be helpful but characters still can't be precisely correct and with certain meanings.
 
Mr. Li, director of the Home, is gone to Guangzhou to escort five children to their American parents at the White Swan Hotel.  Muoyan asks Ms. Liang to call Mr. Li and tell him of our arrival since Ms. Liang cannot make decision if I can take pictures and make video shots.  Mr. Li is on the way back from Guangzhou and tells Ms. Liang,  "Have the lunch prepared.  I will be back within one hour for the guests".
 
We met each other at a restaurant.  Mr. Li is a tall man and talks to us in OK Mandarin.  He has been working at the Home for 1½ years, and is in charge of working with the Ministry of Welfare Affairs at Beijing... going canvassing for quota of international adoption... as well as working with the local affairs departments, and asking for funding to improve the facility of the Home.  (Mr. Li does a similar job as Mr. Lin at the Nanping institution).

 With the efforts made by generations of directors, the children, together with over forty grandparents (elderly persons), moved into this palace-looking Home in 1996.  Ever since then the children and the old aged have been able to hear other children's voices from the kindergarten building that recruits the children of the employees from the Welfare Affairs Department of Gaoming City.  "The normal orphans can go to that kindergarten too.", adds Ms. Liang.
 

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