A little child shall lead

Chris and Aminta Arrington with children Katherine, Grace and Andrew on a trip to Nanjing, Jiangsu province, during the recent October National Day holiday.

"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.