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adopting in China

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

So it seems that adopting a baby in China is still an option.

I hadn't heard much about that in recent years, but at our hotel there is a large group of Spanish speakers all with babies of about the same age. At first I thought nothing of it. But then Mari quietly said something about "adoption" and I had another look. Sure enough, all of the babies were Asian.

Given that my time as a father has been spent nearly entirely in Asia and that all of the children I know have wholly or partially Asian features, it just didn't dawn on me to look at the 'race' of the babies. Yup, babies all look Asian, makes sense, nothing to see here.

I'm really pleased to see that this is bringing needful parents and children together, even if it does result in the unwitting migration of tiny people to the other side of the world. The parents were uniformly beaming, I'm sure that the children are heading to a better future than they'd know if left unadopted in a country already home to 1.? billion others.

And I have no question as to the perseverance of these new parents. Having spent twenty minutes with Chinese beauracracy just changing some Japanese yen, I can only possibly imagine the dimmest outlines of the nightmare involved in adopting a child in this country. Hotel full of Spanish strangers, I salute you.