The Ultimate Resource: Orphanage Data Books

I didn't realize when I began collecting finding ad newspapers in 2002 just how much valuable information they would provide. At that time, orphanages didn’t provide the finding ads to adoptive families; the ads were simply an “internal” procedural artifact required by the Chinese government in order for a child to be internationally adopted. As our collection of finding ad newspapers grew, I began to realize that the information contained in the ads could provide a picture of a different nature, a demographic picture, of an orphanage’s adoption program. By compiling the finding ages, genders, health data, finding location, and even, in some cases, the Chinese names themselves, I was able to draw important conclusions about the children's finding circumstances, such as whether the location was frequently cited by the orphanage, how common a child’s finding age was, and whether there were patterns that displayed non-random findings. With all of the data from a particular orphanage, I found I could compare a single finding—the proverbial “tree”—against the backdrop of the entire “forest” of findings from that orphanage.

Although we are able to synthesize the data from the finding ads into a very informative Birth Parent Search Analysis or Orphanage Reliability Analysis for adoptive families, in those reports we are only able to touch the surface of an orphanage's finding data. We are excited to now be able to offer adoptive families the opportunity to obtain the finding ad data for their child's orphanage as early as 1999, compiled and organized into a beautiful, 6"x9" hardbound book.

Our data books tabulate the information contained in the finding ads for every child submitted for international adoption from that orphanage from either 1999 when the finding ads started, or from when the orphanage joined the international adoption program.

We are currently releasing the books for Guangdong Province, but will have Jiangxi, Hunan, Guangxi, Anhui and other Provinces available in 2013. The Orphanage Data Books come complete with beautiful illustrations, a helpful introduction, and a summary of orphanage information that will allow adoptive families to identify other children found at the same finding location or on the same day, detect patterns not covered in our analysis reports, or just possess all of the primary data for their child's orphanage.

Not only will the publication of the records in the Orphanage Data Books be of interest and use to adoptees and their families, the finding ads represent a historical record of the tens of thousands of children adopted internationally from China, much like the immigration records of Ellis Island tell a story of the 12 million people who migrated to the United States between 1892 and 1954. Although of limited importance at the time they were created, the Ellis Island records are now actively mined for individual and collective information by direct descendants of the immigrants.

We are very confident that adoptive families will treasure this record of their child's orphanage for years to come.  

New Offerings from Research-China.Org

Two years ago we recognized that many adoptive families were growing interested in searching for their child's birth family in China, either at the behest of the child them-self, or in order to have information down the road.  As a response to this demand, we introduced our "Birth Parent Search Analysis" (BPSA).  This report contains two primary sections of data and information -- information on the overall demographics of the orphanage itself, including specific information on the child's finding location; and information how patterns and other characteristics of the orphanage and the child's finding impact a birth parent search.  The report draws on the hundreds and often thousands of children submitted by each orphanage for international adoption.  The report has been very popular, as has been the Birth Parent Search Group that was created to allow informed adoptive families a place to share ideas and experiences relating with China's adoption program and their individual search experience.  Research-China.Org's Birth Parent Search Group is the largest and most informative China Birth Parent Search Group in existence.

But many adoptive families are not interested in conducting a birth parent search, but are curious to know more about their child's orphanage program.  How many boys have been adopted, where are most of the children found, can the finding information given be trusted, or is there evidence that findings are "non-random".  To present "just the facts" we have created a new report, our "Orphanage Reliability Analysis" (ORA).  This report focuses more intensely on the qualities, exploring more deeply the patterns and characteristics of an orphanage, and providing more detail concerning your child's finding, as well as a general look.  This report provides a deeper analysis as to the integrity of the orphanage information. 

If you are contemplating a search for your child's birth family, and want to associate with similarly-minded adoptive families, our BPSA is the single most important step you can take on that journey.

If you currently have no plans to conduct a search, but have an interest in understanding your child's history in more detail, our ORA will be of tremendous benefit.

Research-China.Org is very confident that either of these reports, based on more than a decade of data from each orphanage, will provide answers to adoptive parent's questions and concerns, and allow them to honestly and factually answer the questions of their adoptive children.

New Adoptee Birth Parent Search Group

Over the years, we have noticed an increasing interest among the "pioneers" of China's international adoption program, as near adult and adult adoptees have contacted us for assistance in searching for birth parents.  In response to this increased interest, we have formed a sister Birth Parent Search Group just for adoptees.  This group is set up, and will be run by a Chinese adoptee.  Experienced searchers are part of the group to assist with questions of procedure and methods, but by and large this group is to allow adoptees to assist each other in a safe and understanding environment of like-minded and supportive fellow adoptees.

If you are an adoptee from China, older than 16, and would like to join our trail-blazing project, simply sent a membership request to the group moderator at Adoptee-Search-Group-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.  Our group moderator will be in touch to confirm your membership.

We hope this group will provide older adoptees the tools, resources, and experience to conduct a successful search.

Brian

Time to Change the Usual "Story"

Recent announcements by the Chinese government made the following essay from our subscription blog timely. 
 _________________________

I can't even remember what prompted the conversation, but it involved the topic of our work, and a story we were working on.  As we were eating dinner in our backyard a week or so ago, my youngest daughter Meilan asked how she had come into the orphanage.  When we first adopted her, she displayed some mild anger issues, and one day soon after coming home she explained that she never understood why we had brought her to the orphanage.  We gently explained that we had not brought her to the orphanage, but that we had adopted her from the orphanage.  "We have videos we can show you of your adoption sweetie.  We would never have brought you to the orphanage."  Later we found out the reason for her confusion -- her birth family had brought her to the orphanage, relinquishing her under the guise that she would be educated "in the city" and then returned to them.

So, here we were, eight years later, discussing some aspect of our research, and our youngest asked "Was I brought into the orphanage?"  Before my wife or I even had a chance to answer, our oldest, Meikina, turned to her youngest sister and, with contempt on her lips, flatly stated.  "Meilan, we were left on the side of the road by our birth mothers."

The contempt was not for her sister, but for the thought.  Meikina viewed the idea that her birth mother had abandoned her on the side of the road with pure contempt.  Meilan, confused by Meikina's answer, turned to me and asked, "Is that true?"

I used to think so.  I entered the China adoption program in 1996, a result of the controversy surrounding the "Dying Rooms" and publicity over China's "orphan problem".  I, like thousands of other families then and now, assumed that the children in China's orphanages had ended up there through anonymous abandonments at places like the Civil Affairs Bureau, an area school, or the local hospital.  The abandonment stories of my daughters became almost holy, with reverential visits to the finding locations, emotional interviews with finders, and sacred "Lifebooks" with photos, maps, and drawings.

In 2000, I returned to China and interviewed one of Meikina's two finders.  She recounted how she had been walking to work with her coworker one morning, had heard a baby's cry over the noise of the crowd, had investigated and found a cardboard box containing a small, two-day old baby girl.  As she described it, the baby was dressed in "countryside clothes", had an empty bottle lying next to her, and two hundred yuan in cash with a red birth note.  The finder's words became a sacred text for me, and I would journey to the Civil Affairs Bureau whenever I was in Dianbai, to sit and watch the location, imagining over and over Meikina's finding as described by her finder.  For me, it was clear that Meikina had been abandoned on the side of the road by her birth mother.

The Hunan scandal of 2005 was the first crack in the veneer of authenticity for me and our adoptions, and those of many others.  Here was an event that seemed to contradict everything we knew about China's orphan problem.  Testimony given in that trial showed that rather than having more babies than they could handle, as had been commonly assumed by Westerners, that in reality by 1996 orphanages in Hunan, Guangdong, Chongqing and Sichuan were beginning to feel pressure to go out into the countrysides surrounding their orphanages and look for kids.  Employees began to be pressured to find kids or lose their jobs; rewards began to be offered for each child brought to the orphanage.  In the Duan case alone, over 1,000 children were moved from near and remote distances to the Hengyang County, Qidong, Hengshan, and other Hunan scandal facilities, and stories fabricated for each child: "Found abandoned at the bus station," "found abandoned at the Xinhua Book Store," "Found abandoned at the Hengyang Meat Processing plant."  The Hunan scandal records show that over 95% of the children adopted from these orphanages had not been abandoned, but had been transported from other areas, where "finders" had received the children from birth parents.  Rather than being abandoned, these thousands of children had been "relinquished", a term that more accurately conveys the chain of custody that occurred.

The Hunan scandal served as the "paradigm shifter" that allowed future research and media investigations to reveal that issues of baby-buying,  Family Planning confiscations, and other extra-legal methods of obtaining children were frequently and pervasively used by orphanages to procure children for adoption.  First-hand accounts of birth families, foster families, Civil Affairs officials, and finders reveal that nearly every orphanage in Chongqing, Jiangxi, Hunan, and the other large supplying Provinces employs some manner of "incentive program" to recruit children into their facilities.  Some pay money, others work with Family Planning, others make false assurances to birth families of education and other opportunities in order to have those birth families relinquish their children.

Thus, for the vast majority of children adopted from China, the official story of how they came to be in the orphanage is a falsehood, created by orphanage directors in order to be able to submit a child for international adoption.  The description of their being found at the gate of some facility by some unnamed or named individual is almost always a lie.  In the lion's share of cases, the children submitted for international adoption were "relinquished" -- given by their birth families to someone, who in turn brought the children to the orphanage.  Only a small percentage of children were truly simply found abandoned.

Why does any of this matter?  Because I believe that for a child to be told their birth family "abandoned" her when that is not the case creates a feeling of contempt and anger for a birth parent where none is deserved.  My wife Lan returned to re-interview Meikina's finder last year, over ten years after my visit.  This time there was no orphanage director sitting "disinterested" nearby as she was asked the questions.  This time the interviewer (my wife) knew the right questions to ask, when to accept and when to question further.  This time the truth was recounted -- that the story of Meikina's finding was a fiction, that her finders had no idea where Meikina came from.  This time the orphanage director confessed, in the face of this contradictory evidence, to having built a fairy tale in order to get Meikina adopted.  Do I know she wasn't found abandoned in 1997?  No, but I now know enough about her orphanage to seriously question whether children were found abandoned, rather than being "relinquished" by the birth family directly or indirectly.

So, at that dinner last month I told my daughters that.  I told them that we had always been told that children had been abandoned by their birth families, left at various locations to be found by others.  But I told them that our research had caused us to question whether that was true.  I told them that in our experience, almost all of the children for whom we had done research showed that they had not been abandoned, but that rather they had been given by birth parents to people who arranged for them to come into the orphanage.  We explained that the reasons were complicated, but that it was very unlikely that their birth families had really abandoned them on the road as Meikina had stated. 

As I thought back over that conversation, I wondered at the tone of Meikina's statement.  There was some real pain in her comment, and I wondered if it was real, or just my imagination.  So, as we are wont to do in our house, we conducted a poll.  I asked all three of my girls to rate, from 1 (highly negative feelings) to 10 (very positive feelings), how the following descriptions made them feel:

1)  I was abandoned by my birth family at the gate of a school
2)  I was relinquished by my birth family and brought to the orphanage

I chose "relinquish" (which I had to interpret for my girls) because it is as neutral a term as I could come up with.  The word itself carries no connotation of impropriety or corruption; rather it simply implies that a child was transferred from one person to another until they reached the orphanage.  Thus, the comparison is really between being left "alone" (abandonment) or being constantly supervised (relinquishment).

The results were interesting, but not unexpected.  In answer to the first scenario (being abandoned) the girls assigned an average score of 2.6.  This score hides one completely neutral score of 5, because, as Meigon explained, she did not find the scenario overly emotive.  The other two assigned a 1 or 2 to the scenario (highly sad).

The average score rose substantially for the second question, using "relinquished", with the average score rising to 6.6, with individual scores falling between 6 and 7.5.  Meilan explained her increase, going from 1 to 6, with these words:  "In the second case I was protected, and in the first case people might not reach you in time."

I think, given the overall realities of China's adoption program -- the abundant evidence of ongoing ethical breaches, the documented instances of widespread baby-buying, and the stories of Family Planning campaigns and abuses -- that adoptive families would do well to "re-invent" the traditional story of how their child came to be in the orphanage.  Rather than promoting an "abandonment"-centered history, with the customary photos, visits to the finding location on heritage trips, etc., more accurate and more emotionally satisfying to our children would be a "relinquishment"-centered story-line.  This would involve the blunt admission that we simply don't know how our kids came into the orphanage most of the time, but that the evidence in most instances suggests that our children were transferred, person to person, to the orphanage.  Not only is this scenario likely to be most accurate in the majority of cases, but it will be emotionally healthier for our children.