Wish You Happy Forever (5 page)

They went on to assure me that my country's wanton behavior would not affect our future cooperation. It did strike me that I was way out of my league here. I was a mere mom with a mission, and here I was blithely exchanging diplomatic cables.

I had crossed a line, and I think I knew it. But there I was, on the other side. And I was growing mighty fond of our new partners. I couldn't wait to meet them.

Chapter 2

Do Not Hope to Reach the Destination Without Leaving the Shore

There was one other bump on the road to China, and it wasn't getting any smoother with time. I'd lost count of the number of people who'd told me that what I planned was now absolutely impossible. Out of the question. The situation was worse than ever. Foreigners were no longer welcome to even
visit
government orphanages, let alone set up programs inside them. “Forget China. Your daughter's an American now.”

And if it were up to the Chinese government,
everybody
would forget China, at least as it had to do with orphans. During the time that the Human Rights Watch report, the story that had opened our eyes, was being compiled, a British film crew, posing as an American orphan charity organization seeking to make a donation, had captured what they said was undercover documentary evidence of terrible and widespread neglect in Chinese orphanages.
The Dying Rooms
had been regularly airing ever since, even featured on
60 Minutes
in the United States. Rather than fading, the international uproar it had provoked continued to grow.

China responded to the loss of face by denying abuse, publishing a white paper refuting the allegations, thanking the world for its comments, and then . . . firmly closing the doors to all foreigners, well intentioned or otherwise. By now, even parents in the process of adopting had a hard time getting inside orphanages. If they did manage it, they rarely saw more than reception rooms.

FOUR MONTHS HAD
passed since our lunch with Norman, and still no word. For all I knew, he hadn't done a single thing to secure permission for us to launch a program in Guangdong Province or anyplace else. Probably somebody who wasn't busy imagining a movie in her head would have predicted this back at the lunch table.

I couldn't let a few bumps slow me down. The children were waiting. Anyway, I had a real partner now—a partner with connections, the
guanxi
(special personal relationships) that could make things happen. I wrote CPWF again and explained that, actually, if they would be so kind, I needed some help with government introductions.

Ready or not, I was going to China.

THE CHINESE CONSULATE
in San Francisco was full of would-be summer travelers waiting in obedient, ragged queues. When I finally made it to the first window, the clerk hesitated over my application. He put down his red rubber stamp. He gave my paper to the fellow on his left. He reached for the application of the person behind, dismissing me.

“Next window,” he said.

“Is there something wrong?”

The clerk pointed to the window at his left and focused full attention on the document before him. I no longer existed.

There was no line at the next window. My new clerk did not look up when I arrived. He was sorting passports, rubber-banding them into tidy stacks.

“
Nihao
,” I said brightly. I nodded at my visa application, now on his counter. “That's me.”

Not until all seventeen stacks of passports were filed into cardboard boxes did the worker bee pick up my application. Now he studied every line. After forever, he squinted up at me.

“Your occupation is writer.”

“Yes.”

“What kind?”

Ah, stupid me. “Oh! No—I'm just a screenwriter.”

“For movies?”

“Yes.”

“Let me understand, the writing you do is dramas?”

“Yes.”

“You are not writing for the press?”

“No, no.”

“You are not a journalist?”

“Oh no, definitely not.”

He thrust a new form at me. “Write that down. What you just told me.”

I did.

“Do you swear you will never write anything for the press?”

“Okay . . . yes . . . sure.”

He took my papers and stamped them with three different red chops. Then he looked up at me and squinted through his glasses.

“This is for me: You go to China, you should write good movie about it. Not like
Red Square
. And why you not go to Shanghai? It best city. Write movie about
it
.”

“
MAYA, DO YOU
remember the babies at the orphanage? All your little sisters? Some of them were so sad because they didn't have mommies to love them. Your mommy knows how to help those little girls not be so sad. I need to go to China to make that happen. I'll be gone for just a little bit, and Daddy will be with you every minute while I'm away. I'll always come back to you.”

It was that fleeting and lovely after-bath ritual. Toweled dry and sweet smelling, Maya was tugging on her pajamas.

“You know that, right? I'll always come back. . . . Maya . . . ? Sweetie, your jammies are backwards. Let me help.”

“I do it
all my byself.
”

Arrow straight to the heart. Parental guilt strikes. Big-time. And, I admit, never quite leaves.

July 1999

Dear Friends:

I am composing this while sitting in the lounge at the Tokyo airport waiting for my flight to Beijing. I am going this time, not to adopt a child, but to launch a very special project. It's a project that grew from watching my precious daughter Maya blossom from a sickly, scared waif into a happy, confident little dynamo in two short years.

Last year, on the first anniversary of Maya's adoption, I was feeling particularly grateful for the gift of my daughter's life in mine. I decided I had to give something in return and, having listened to your stories, I thought that many adoptive parents like you might feel the same. My thoughts always come back to the children who wait and to those who will spend their entire childhoods without families.

When I was waiting for my referral, someone told me that a girl who grows up in a Chinese orphanage has only three choices in her adult life: to become an orphanage worker, to join the military, or to become a prostitute. I never was able to check out the truth of that statement, but I do believe that education and self-esteem can give every kid at least a fighting chance to do better.

With a small group of adoptive families, I started Half the Sky Foundation. Our plan is to establish early childhood development centers in China's government-run orphanages. We've joined forces with Beijing-based China Population Welfare Foundation and, with their assistance, we have received approval from the Ministry of Civil Affairs to set up a pilot program in two orphanages. My trip to Beijing is to visit orphanages in three provinces and to choose those two sites!

We want to make Half the Sky a collaborative effort of all adoptive families who share our desire to give something back to the country that was their child's first home, and particularly to its institutionalized children. Will you join us?

Well, there may have been a bit of wishful thinking in my message, but this was no time to be timid. I took a deep breath and sent the e-mail. A year and a week after I saw Maya through that kitchen window, here I was, off to Beijing to meet with officials of China's central government. To be allowed to tour I didn't know how many orphanages. To select sites for a pilot program. Nothing I understood of China (which was still close to nothing) told me that this would be happening. I couldn't wait to get on that plane.

As we lifted off from Tokyo for the last leg of the journey, I took it as a great sign that the entire Chinese women's soccer team was on my flight. Just the day before, they'd been barely defeated by the U.S. team at the Women's World Cup final game at the Rose Bowl. More than ninety thousand fans were silent in the stadium and forty million viewed on TV as the game was decided in penalty kicks. Even though they weren't victorious, the Chinese team could share credit for helping bring women's sports to a whole new audience. Let's hear it for the girls!

And when our plane touched down in Beijing, we did. The girls were welcomed like rock stars. Flowers and cameras flashing and tears and applause. What a welcome to China for Half the Sky! I smiled as I wove through the adoring crowd.

BEIJING WAS ONE
big construction zone. Streets were being repaved and buildings were being put up or taken down. The muggy skies were thick with dust. My eyes stung and my throat was sore by the time I reached our hotel.

“All of China is being rebuilt for October 1, National Day—our fiftieth anniversary celebration,” the desk clerk at the Jianguo Hotel told me. “Just outside they're going to put in a new subway line.”

“I don't see any construction out there,” I said.

“It will begin tomorrow.”

“But it's already July.”

He smiled.

Sure enough, when I woke the next morning, I heard lots of pounding and crunching. I looked out the window at what appeared to be the entire People's Liberation Army (PLA) attacking the sidewalk with sledgehammers, pickaxes, and shovels. Not a sign of heavy equipment. When I asked later that year, I was told that the subway line had been more or less finished (or at least had
appeared
to be more or less finished) in time for National Day.

I spent my first full day recovering from jet lag. Wen Zhao, my Reggio expert from Nebraska, had arrived in Beijing sometime in the night and was bubbling with excitement about the adventure about to begin. She'd caught the fever.

We escaped the hotel and its PLA pounding and strolled through a tree-lined Beijing that was still, in 1999, full of bicycles and
hutong
s. We weaved among hawkers and their fake Pradas and Calvins in Silk Alley. We wandered past the elegant American Embassy, looking embarrassed behind smashed windows. (The bombing was not mentioned to me once during this entire trip.)

Little troops of tall, gaunt young men in uniform marched through the diplomatic area, saluting one another with white-gloved hands. Such perfect precision, such rigidity on such a blistering summer day.

“Wen, do you ever think the Reggio approach might be fundamentally contrary to the Chinese way of doing things?”

“You're not getting nervous now, are you?” Wen laughed. “Don't worry. Most Chinese people want to try whatever is new. Our plan should work if we can find the right teachers. We won't make our final hiring decisions until after our training, after we've seen how open these young teachers are to new ideas, after they've developed some mini-projects and then shared their reflections, and most important, after we've watched them with the children. Trust me, they will love Reggio.”

“Oh, I do trust you,” I said. “Completely. Hey, maybe we'll be famous. Maybe rich families will be begging to send their kids to our orphanage schools. We'll be turning them away at the door.”

“Ha! You're right!” Wen said. “I suggest we'll have to name our schools Famous American Half the Sky Schools. China loves famous things and American things. Even private kindergartens are called Harvard and Princeton. With a name like that, we might even change the whole education system!”

“Let's go get our permission to do this thing!” I said.

“We don't have permission?”

WELL, WE SORT
of did. No one had said no. In early June, I'd written to CPWF asking how the introductions and approvals were going. Two weeks had passed in silence. I then called Beijing and spoke with Zhang Zhirong, who was lovely on the phone. Yes, they'd received my letter and yes they were making plans for our visit. The next day I received a fax:

We welcome you visit China for a very significant project. For better preparation, first of all, we had meetings trying to figure out our future cooperation. Meanwhile we have also contacted the relevant government agencies such as the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the CCAA to make introduction of your foundation and to share with them your good intention and the program action plan. In general, we all recognize the goodwill of the program, but for better understanding, the following questions need to be explained further. After receiving your response, we would follow up with further coordination and writing report to the Ministry, and afterwards to respond to you as soon as possible since time is pressing for your coming visit.

The letter went on for two more pages. It sounded sort of positive, but endless. I immediately wrote back, announcing the firm date of my arrival. I answered questions as well as I could, laid out as much as I knew of our plans, then guessed at the rest, figuring it was all going to change anyway. I'd learned this from film production. You pitch a great story and lay out a careful and highly detailed plan and budget, and the moment the crew sets up for the first shot everything begins to unravel and plans are revised. Constantly. The trick is to keep the momentum. Keep moving in a more or less forward direction.