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D. Willian Moss
Given how much bad news we pick out, it's nice to see a story that, while sad in some ways, is also inspiring. China is not without its heroes. From the Los Angeles Times, this is the story of an old couple in Gansu province's Anding village, on the edge of the Gobi desert, who have made lives for themselves by adopting the cast-off children of their village. Most of these Children were abandoned for reasons of illness or deformity, a frequently lethal disadvantage where the one-child policy puts an extra premium on healthy children. Now, as this couple ages, the question is who will take over their philanthropy:
Local officials say they have sent castaways to Chen because they have no other way of caring for them. A new orphanage sits empty--it takes too much money to operate.
Instead, local officials pay Chen and Zhang to do the work for them--less than $80 per month for the eight children for whom the couple now care.
That meager sum, plus the little cash Chen brings in by picking through trash, and all the love the couple can muster, has been enough to save dozens of children from certain death.
Chen, a sturdy 82-year-old, and Zhang, who have no children of their own, say they have cherished every one of the youngsters who has come into their three-room brick shack across the street from the train station.
Their oldest now is Yuan Yuan, 12. She was born with a lump on her skull the size of a peach. Someone had left her in the yard of the local municipal building when she was about 1.
Chen and Zhang finally saved enough money three years ago to pay for an operation to remove the growth and allow Yuan Yuan to live a more normal life. It cost about $80.
Like the rest of the children, Yuan Yuan calls Chen and Zhang Grandpa and Grandma, or yeye and nainai.
"We love our grandparents. They work so hard for us," Yuan Yuan said. "I don't miss my parents. They are so cruel. They left us because they knew we were sick."
The youngest child now is 2-year-old Ling Ling, named after the baby Chen found at the railway station. The first Ling Ling never recovered fully from being left in the snow and suffered frequent coughs and seizures. She never crawled or walked, and she died when she was 4.
Chen found Ling Ling's namesake crying in an alley. Born with a hunchback and uneven legs, she was just days old. Now the girl with pretty eyes loves to cling to yeye and nainai and keep them company while the older children are in school.
"If you throw a puppy out on the street, someone might pick it up, but throw a baby out on the street and no one bothers," Zhang said.
The sickest child in the household is 9-year-old Long Long, paralyzed and suffering from liver disease. Chen found him one day in a paper box under a blazing sun, crying.
Another child in the house, Quan Quan, was born with a cleft palate. Chen found him when he was about 1 at the farmers market, crawling on the dirt, eating rotten vegetables. "Everybody knew he had been abandoned for days and was starving," Chen said.
"He couldn't walk yet, and his neck was this thin," Zhang said, shaping her thumb and forefinger into a ring. Today, 6-year-old Quan Quan performs well in school and loves to help his brothers. He likes to play with a kitten and Qiang Qiang, 10, a small boy with a bad heart.
Of the 42 children Chen and Zhang have taken in over the years, 21 turned out to be healthy or suffering from mild disabilities and were adopted. Thirteen very sick children died. The loss of Ling Ling, their first child, still hurts the most.
"We buried her in a ditch by the river," Chen said. "We couldn't afford cremation."
Now Chen worries that local officials may take his children away on the grounds that he is too old to be their caretaker. He believes a recent flurry of news reports about the children that suggested official negligence embarrassed local officials.
Wang Yanfu, deputy head of the district civil administration bureau, said officials are prepared to rent a house and hire two workers to feed and care for Chen's children.
"We sent him the kids before because he was young, in his 60s. Now he is too old," Wang said. "We are trying our best to convince him [to quit]. But if he doesn't want to, there's nothing we can do."
From: China's infant castoffs find home, by Ching Ching Ni, The Los Angeles Times (via the Chicago Tribune), August 3, 2005.
And that's the sad side: bureaucracy moves in to take over more directly as Chen Shangyi and his wife, Zhan Lanying, both in their 80s, become too old, at least in official eyes.
On some level I'd like to believe that this will work out well for the children involved. That home will be rented and helpers hired. But somehow, that seems the remotest of possibilities.
Update:
Gordon's got this one too, with a nice photo as well. Take
a look.
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Source: "imagethief".
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