Thursday's Trip to Fengxin

It's Saturday evening and we've made it to Beijing. So, lots of catching up to do on the blog.

On Thursday we had a wonderful and emotional trip to Fengxin (pronounced Fung-shin), Zoë's hometown. Fengxin is about 1 1/2 hours west of Nanchang, along a smooth, 4-lane divided highway. A river separates old Fengxin from the new industrial zone, where within the last 5 years an entire new city has sprouted out of the rice fields - dozens of manufacturing businesses (each with hundreds of the workers' mopeds and bicycles parked outside), high-rise apartment buildings everywhere, presumably to house the workers moving in from the countryside. Our guide estimated that Fengxin has about 500,000 residents. The old town looks mostly like Nanchang, slightly run-down storefronts, high-rise buildings, a sense of bustle and growth and industry everywhere.

It took us awhile to locate the "social welfare institute" where Zoë's orphanage is housed. The complex is only a year and a half old and with so much growth and change here, like everywhere in China, even the locals we asked on the street weren't sure where to point us. Eventually we headed down a lane and up to the complex. We went through the white gates and into the circular compound that houses the orphanage, as well as a nursing home.

As we pulled up in front of the orphanage, several of the nannies came running out to greet us. They all seemed so excited to see Zoë and they jostled to take turns holding her. Before we knew it, someone had prepared her a bottle and someone else had the cream out that they rub on her eczema(?). The orphanage director had told us that there are 50 babies at the orphanage, but we only saw Zoë's room, which houses 15, 14 of whom are girls plus one slightly older special needs boy. The room has 5 rows of 3 kids. There's a play area at one end of the room, where the floor is covered with interlocking rubber mats (the same ones that are ubiquitous at home). There's a tv at that end of the room but none of the kids seemed to be paying it any mind. A couple of the kids were in the walker seats that appear in all the referral photos. The room is at the ground floor level, with a bank of windows. All the formula-making supplies were lined up along a counter by the window - quite an assembly-line process, to feed 15 babies. We were overwhelmed by how much the nannies clearly loved Zoë and the other babies. Zoë was smiling and giggling at them, and she seemed happy to see some of her old crib-mates too. We met the 3 girls who were apparently her good buddies and we have their names, so I will try to track down their future families to see if we can keep in contact. The head nanny said that all these babies will be adopted.

After leaving the orphanage, we drove back into Fengxin to see Zoë's finding place. We knew that she had been found outside a hospital, but it turns out that it was a small clinic on one of the main streets of Fengxin. The clinic is right across the street from a non-descript "national women's birthing hospital", so it is a reasonable guess that she was born in the birthing hospital and then left at the clinic to be found. The orphanage also gave us the clothes that she was bundled up in on the February morning that she was found. We spent a lot of time thinking about Zoë's birthmother, trying to picture who she is and what her life might look like, the anguish she must have gone through in giving up Zoë, and how we wish we could thank her and tell her how much we already love Zoë.

Most families aren't able to visit the orphanages these days, partly due to fears of H1N1. We were therefore really lucky to be given permission, probably because we're travelling alone.

Altogether a very emotional day (for us - Zoë was happy and unfazed). But I think we came away feeling like we know she was loved and cared for during her first eight months, and feeling good that we have at least seen her hometown and seen the places where she was born and found.

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