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March 25 Monday 2002
I avoid writing about my desire to adopt a child, because it is so difficult.
As I write, Joan, the manager of the local Macdonald's and eight months pregnant herself, just sat down at my table.
She talks to me on and off about the possibility of classes for the counter workers and managerial staff here. We discuss
her impending childbirth, and my tentative efforts to adopt.
David, an executive in freight shipping at Shenzhen Airport, approached me at the beauty salon a few weeks ago. He was
getting his hair trimmed, while I received a foot reflexology session. Sitting beside one another for forty minutes opened
a lot of conversational doors.
"My wife is a social worker,' he said, "She knows people at the Baby Home."
"Maybe she can help me."
"She can. She will."
Far from being a repressed people, the modern Chinese have a can do attitude. Everyone in Canada would tell me a dozen
reasons why it just can't be done. Not only David here, everyone I speak to here seems anxious to connect a childless Canadian
professional and an unwanted baby, in a stable and legal relationship.
"Go up to Fujian Province," says the dad of one of my rich students. "It is so easy with the government
there."
"l know a judge in Szechwan Province who will give you his five year old girl," says the nephew of The Matriarch.
"They would like to have a boy. He can arrange the papers for you."
"Go ahead," says the daughter of The Matriarch, "We will help you bring her up."
"Why don't you adopt these children?" Says Candy, showing me a newspaper in Nanning, asking for help in finding
a new home for two beguiling orphans. "I would like more children, too."
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