A little child shall lead

A number of Chinese adopted children are returning with their new overseas families to live in China for a while, in the hope that getting in touch with their roots will help the kids in the long run. Tiffany Tan speaks to the families.

As children's voices fill the lobby of Beijing’s Lido Hotel chanting the Christmas song Santa Claus is Coming to Town, a girl on the balcony sways to the choir’s rhythm. Dressed in a red sweater and jeans, wearing wire-rimmed glasses and her dark hair in two ponytails, the 7-year-old appears to be just like any other Chinese child in the hall. That is, until she swivels around to a blonde woman behind her and blurts out, with a distinctly American accent: "Mom, look there's Santa!" From an orphanage in Chongqing, Ruth went to live with Lynn Kogelmann in Richmond, Virginia, in late 2007. In the United States, she attended public school, took ballet lessons and went trick-or-treating for Halloween.

Aminta Arrington (left), her adopted daughter Grace (center) and her two siblings visit friends in Tai'an, Shandong province, where the American family lived for four years before moving to Beijing. Provided to China Daily.

Then, in July, she and her adoptive mother packed up their things and moved to the Chinese capital.

Kogelmann, a 38-year-old single mother, wants to give Ruth an opportunity to widen her horizons by living overseas. One of the places on her wish list was Ruth's birth country.

"She's definitely very American, but she has a Chinese heritage and we don't want to lose that," the Chicago native says at their Beijing home, as Ruth sings happily in the background.

"This is just giving her a chance to experience the culture, learn the language be able to see that she kind of comes from two places."

Mother and daughter are planning to stay in China for two to four years.

Kogelmann has found a job as a counselor at the International School of Beijing, where Ruth is a second grade student. They rent a three-story house not far from the school, which they share with a pet cat named Snoopy.

Kogelmann is among a handful of parents of Chinese adopted children who have decided to bring their families to live in China for a while, believing the experience will help their kids grow into healthier and happier people.

Since China ratified international adoptions in 1992, tens of thousands of its children have been placed in adoptive homes overseas.

China's family planning policy of one child per couple (though there are various exceptions to the rule) and a traditional mindset that emphasizes the importance of male heirs have led many families, especially in rural areas, to offer up their female infants for adoption.

Some 80,000 Chinese children have ended up in the United States, one of the top adoptive countries, according to US media reports.

After almost six months in Beijing, Kogelmann and Ruth still have trouble eating the spicy local dishes. Kogelmann also struggles to communicate in the basic Mandarin she has picked up at work and at home.

But at the same time, their move has borne fruit. Some of the signs began appearing after only the first couple of months.

"Socially and emotionally, she seems at such ease here, and she loves learning in her Chinese language classes at school," Kogelmann says in an e-mail in mid-September. "This move is really solidifying her identity in ways I couldn't even have imagined when we started this process."

Chris and Aminta Arrington understand Kogelmann's joys and difficulties, as well as her reasons for coming to China. They too are Americans living in China, and they are also parents of an adopted Chinese girl.

The couple, who also has two biological children, brought their family to China in 2006 so that their adopted daughter Grace could intimately understand the Chinese part of being Chinese-American.

"This is a rich, deep culture, and for our daughter not to know this would genuinely be a pity," Aminta, 42, says at the family's apartment in Renmin University, where she and her husband both teach English. "That shouldn't be taken away because she was adopted."

Chris, 52, adds: "Can you imagine if you didn't have part of that identity? If it was just blank? How would it affect your whole emotional makeup?"

After four years in Tai'an, a city in Shandong province, and now almost three years in Beijing, the couple believes they're accomplishing this goal.

Attending Chinese public schools has turned 9-year-old Grace, her older sister Katherine and younger brother Andrew, into near-native Chinese speakers. While Grace is still shy around strangers, she'll happily devour Chinese food.

The Arringtons, who come from Lynden, Washington State, have also visited Grace's foster family in Jiangxi province.

In Hanlu village, they learned about the girl's life nine months before she was adopted, met the people who took care of her and even saw her first high chair.

"I did not have the facts surrounding her birth or her finding to give to my daughter," Aminta says in her memoir, Home is a Roof over a Pig: An American Family's Journey in China.

"But I could give her something else. A whole village that remembered her. A knowledge that she was not just Chinese, and not just from somewhere in Jiangxi province, but she was from a certain place. Not words on a map but a real place alive with the faces of those who lived there and loved her."

Aminta's book, published in the summer, is just one of the bonuses of their journey.

As the Arringtons prepare to celebrate what might be their last Christmas in China, they reminisce around the dining table about the Chinese friends they've made, learning about Grace's native land together and growing ever closer as a family.

Contact the writer at tiffany@chinadaily.com.cn.