by Jenny Bowen
The fields outside the car window were brown, flat, stubbled with waste. Still, there was an air of timeless order about the place. A row of evenly planted narrow trees lined either side of the road. Their trunks had been painted white once, now long-faded. Ghosts of what had been.
At one nondescript spot in the road, a car waited. We stopped. Three men in the standard uniform of local officials—short-sleeved shirt (black or white), black belt (silver buckle, black-leather cell-phone case), black shoes, lit cigarette—stepped out to greet Mr. Hu warmly. We rolled down the car windows. The men looked at my foreign face and said hello with a wary smile.
As we followed the local officials’ car up a dirt road toward the village—a cluster of scraggy trees and mud houses—I thought of the leaflet thrust into my hand when I first came to Henan. Someone had translated an anonymous villager’s plea into English:
Have you heard the blood plague that is surrounding our village? . . .
Because of our own ignorance, public health department’s setting up so many plasma collection stations and the national propaganda on “taking pride of donating blood” and the slogan of “donating blood to save lives of the injured,” our innocent peasants reached out their strong arms from years of hard labor. Their freshly red blood streamed into the collection stations and in turn they received “fees of nutrition” to compensate their blood losses. . . . These benevolent and innocent peasants always have dug their food from the earth. Who has pushed us into the valley of death? . . .
The young peasants died one after another leaving seventy-year-old parents and still breast-fed babies behind. Some victims hung themselves, threw themselves into the wells or took poison, unable to cope with the pain and suffering. Those who have stayed in bed for a long time moaned and cursed for relief: “God, please let me die, I can’t take it anymore.” These scenes were unbearably chilling and it made this village of only orphans and elderly without support.
Whose fault this blood plague is . . . ? And who is there to sympathize us . . . ? People of our village wish to thank you with our deepest gratitude.
WE CLIMBED OUT of the car. Assorted mongrels ambled over to check us out with halfhearted barks. Right behind them were the village officials—two men in the same basic local officials’ garb, except scruffier and with an extra coating of dust.
We were expected. Mr. Hu explained that we wanted to help the children and wanted to see their situation. The village officials thanked us and shook our hands and we followed them toward a nearby home. No ceremonies here.
I’m pretty sure I was the first foreigner they’d seen in that place, and they were curious to have a look, but there seemed to be no fear or paranoia. They were just like villagers I’d met all over China: friendly, eager to share their lives and to know about mine.
One young woman proudly showed me her chubby baby boy; two little girls tagged behind me, giggling and running away each time I turned to peek at them. I tried to take a picture of a scrawny, shirtless old fellow, bronze from countless hours of labor in the fields. He waved me away. “No pictures, no pictures.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and hastily put my camera away.
“It’s okay,” ZZ said. “The old man is embarrassed he’s lost some teeth.”
I reached out to shake the old man’s hand. “Duibuqi, I’m sorry,” I said. “I wanted to take a photo because you are a handsome man.”
“All right, then. All right.” And he posed.
I snapped a quick shot and caught up with the officials. I’d forgotten where I was. This place was charming. Just another village somewhere in China. Life goes on—no cloud of death as I’d imagined.
That changed when we entered the first courtyard.
IT WAS BARREN, save for an anorexic pig, hunched motionless in a too-small pen that was dark and shrouded with torn burlap. A lone, tired-looking chicken patrolled the hard ground, halfheartedly pecking at what seemed to be nothing more than dirt.
Although clearly long-neglected, the broad-faced brick home with a carved wooden lintel must have once commanded respect in the village. Standing at almost military attention before the door, perhaps the saddest family I had ever seen: two grandparents, a young father, and three children.
The grandparents both looked ancient, but ZZ said they were likely younger than sixty. Their eyes were red with fatigue and sorrow—as if they’d borne all the pain and suffering a human being can endure.
Behind them lurked their son . . . or what remained of him. Disheveled, gaunt, haunted—he didn’t seem to know where he was or why he was standing there. Mr. Hu told us he was sick with AIDS and dementia. I prayed that they hadn’t taken the man from his bed to greet us.
“His wife died only a few months ago,” Mr. Hu said. “In this area, more women sold their blood than men. Even after the sickness came. They believed that as long as they menstruated each month, they were all right.”
There were two girls, perhaps ten and seven, and a boy about five. It was clear that everything this family had left was being given to the children. Despite their poverty, the children looked well fed. Their hair was combed; their faces and hands, washed. Their clothes were almost clean. Someone cared. The two littlest ones looked on timidly—probably frightened of me. The big girl looked resigned.
I was sure she could be no more than ten. No hint yet of approaching puberty. Yet it seemed only a matter of time before these three lost the grownups in their lives. Ready or not, she would be the woman of the family. No hopes and dreams for her.
What could we do for these children?
THEN A FAMILY of four—mother sick (father dead), again two girls, and then the long-awaited boy.
The mom had not been tested; there were no antiretroviral (ARV) drugs available here yet. She didn’t know there were such things. She was too sick to work the land. Her eldest girl, not yet twelve, had dropped out of school to care for the family.
“Is there no help from the government, Mr. Hu?”
“While the mother lives, the local government provides eight yuan each month.”
Less than a dollar.
“We have many such families,” he said. “Almost twenty thousand in the province, twenty-three in this village alone. We are trying to get more subsidy for them.”
A local official chimed in. “Only true orphans can be helped. When the mother is gone, the government will take care of her children. They’ll be better off then.”
Don’t say that in front of her! I felt sick. A fraud.
Better off without her. The mother stood mute, chastened for being alive. I longed to help them. What could I possibly have to offer here? Was this mission drift? I couldn’t remember the rules.
My foreign self got the best of me. I put my arms around the mother. She stiffened even more in my arms. The entire room tensed. Chinese people don’t do that. They don’t hold strangers.
“What is your name?” I asked the mother.
“Rao,” she said.
Now what? I had to do something.
“Mrs. Rao, we would like to help your children stay in school,” I found myself saying. “If you agree to let your daughter return to school, we will offer support of 500 yuan each month for your family.”
Sixty dollars—a fortune in this place. I handed her the first installment. She cried. I cried. ZZ cried. Even Mr. Hu got teary-eyed. I told ZZ that my family would cover the costs if we couldn’t find support somewhere for AIDS-affected kids. I didn’t know what else to do. I’d never felt so helpless in my life.
WE VISITED ANOTHER village . . . and another. Wherever we went, the villagers knew Mr. Hu. They greeted me like I was somebody special. Someone who could help make it better. I felt worse and worse.
Zhoukou, maybe the most dismal town I’d ever seen, was the place that Mr. Hu had told us was the cradle of Chinese civilization. As we drove along the barren main drag—past a man who appeared to be dying in a doorway, past a cluster of scraggy adolescent boys practicing martial
arts with cigarettes dangling from their mouths—the fellow from Zhoukou Civil Affairs repeated the claim. He embellished a bit: “The ancient city Pingliangtai is over 4,600 years old—oldest city in China!”
“It’s here?” I asked, noting the toilet paper peddler stationed in front of our hotel. I wondered if we should stop and buy some.
“Here in Zhoukou!”
“May we visit?”
“Oh, it’s gone.”
“Are there ruins or anything?”
He shrugged. “Here is Zhoukou Guest House. You must be very tired. We will eat now.”
THERE WERE AT least six new faces at dinner, all of them male—lower-level county officials. I’m pretty sure there was no such thing as a female official in this part of China.
I sat at the mayor’s side. He had studied English in university twenty-four years earlier and wanted to see what he could remember. Nothing, as far as I could tell—not that it mattered. After we discussed the reason for my visit, and how much we really wanted to do whatever we could to help the children, but couldn’t possibly afford to contribute four million yuan to help Zhoukou finish construction of a new civic center that had been partially funded by a Hong Kong businessman who had guanxi with the vice party secretary but ran out of money, the mayor lost interest in talking to me.
The rest of the evening disintegrated into a baijiu- and cigarette-fueled argument about which county had the most AIDS cases. It was the opposite of a government cover-up. Each of my dinner partners was claiming top prize.
Quietly, beneath the smoke and din, ZZ suddenly turned to me.
“Jenny, there is one thing I should tell . . . ,” she said, struggling for the right words. So unlike her. “Today . . . they say when you touch someone with . . . the AIDS sickness . . . you may yourself—”
“But . . . that isn’t how you get it, ZZ. Ah, you are worried because I hugged Mrs. Rao?”
“Hu,” she said. “It is Hu who worries about this.”
“Let’s take a walk,” I said. “I’ll explain what I know about the disease. You can share with Mr. Hu.”
IN THE MORNING, Mr. Hu took us deeper into the backroads. “Now we will see a Sunshine Village for the AIDS orphans,” he said.
“Mr. Hu, I appreciate from the bottom of my heart that you are making these difficult visits possible. I want to make sure you know that. I only hope that we can repay your trust by finding a way to help the children.”
“You will,” he said, lighting one cigarette from another. “You will.”
The car turned into a whitewashed cluster of single-story red-roofed buildings. They looked like army barracks.
“It used to be just a home for old people,” Mr. Hu said. “There is a primary school just a few hundred meters away. The children are welcomed there.”
We got out of the car. Two local officials greeted us. ZZ and I followed Mr. Hu’s cloud of smoke down a path lined with neatly clipped boxwood shrubs. The place was silent. Not even birds peeped.
We stopped at an open door.
Standing in military formation, wearing red, white, and black sports uniforms, were five somber rows of children, eight to thirteen years old. Forty-four children. When we walked into the room, they spoke in perfect unison.
“Good morning, Teacher Jenny. Welcome to our home.”
I tried to smile. “Good morning, children. Thank you.”
From somewhere, tinny music started to play. Still maintaining their formation, the children sang and danced. None of them smiled.
I could feel the China Smile fixing itself on my own face. We applauded. Then we all stood there, looking at each other. I knew I was supposed to say something. But I just couldn’t. Finally I croaked, “Will you show me around your home?”
EACH OF THE dormitory rooms was nearly identical. Two narrow, hard beds with blond-wood headboards, each stamped in red characters that said, SHAODIAN SERVICE CENTER FOR THE ELDERLY. Between the two beds, two matching bedside tables with a single drawer. Atop the tables, two identical blue plastic electric fans and a shared hot water thermos. The girls’ dorm rooms had bright-pink bedspreads with a bamboo mat and bamboo-covered pillow. Nothing else. The boys had the same in orange. The children were separated by age and gender. They did not live with their siblings or, if they survived, their grandparents.
“Who looks after the children?” I asked Mr. Hu later, as we walked to the car.
“A local farmer’s wife comes each day to cook for them.”
“That’s it?” I said. “And the kids can never go back to their real homes?”
“Oh yes, they do. For holidays and at harvest time. If they have living relatives.”
I SAT LIKE stone in the back of Mr. Hu’s car. The road went on and on.
“It must be hard for them,” I said finally. “Those children only know life in families. Even though they were poor, they had someone. I wish the siblings could live together.”
Mr. Hu didn’t answer. We drove on in silence and smoke.
I had no answers. I was lost here.
My California-sunshine-can-do attitude was gone. I slumped in my seat, depressed beyond words. The flat fields outside looked dead to me now.
After a long quiet while, the car stopped. We were nowhere, as far as I could tell. Mr. Hu got out and told us to follow him.
In the middle of a barren field, there was a truckload of gravel, several piles of brick, and a big green sign displaying an architectural rendering of a large military compound. At least I thought it was.
“Red Ribbon Family,” read ZZ. “Sponsored by All-China Industrial and Commercial Federation.”
“What is it, Mr. Hu?”
“Home for AIDS orphans,” he said with a hopeful smile. “By next August, seventy-five orphans will live here. All of them are under ten years old.”
“Little kids. In some sort of families?”
“There will be ayis, of course. And a cook. And teachers for the school. Everything the children need—all here in one place.”
“But—” I said. And then I couldn’t hold the flood: I burst into tears. I sobbed. I embarrassed us both. I begged him to reconsider. “See, those little kids are traumatized, Mr. Hu. They watched their parents die. Now you—I don’t mean you, but . . . well, somebody wants to take them from their brothers and sisters and leave them here with nobody to hold them at night and smile at them in the morning and . . . Look . . . Please let us help, Mr. Hu. . . . Oh, wait! I know . . . I know—Half the Sky . . . in Jiangsu Province, a town called Gaoyou—we’re piloting a new program! Family Village! It’s for orphans with disabilities—the ones who won’t be adopted. A way for them to grow up in families. We could do the same thing here! I mean, I don’t know how we can pay for it, but we’ll figure it out—we always do—please, Mr. Hu—excuse me for this . . . damn crying. . . . What do you think?”
By now I was both crying and laughing—maybe a little bit crazed. We can do this! Mr. Hu looked shaken. I am sure I never seemed more foreign to him than at that moment.
A WEEK LATER, the fax machine rattled in our Beijing office. ZZ translated as she read:
The Henan Provincial Government has recently made a decision that they will not expand the building of Sunshine Villages, instead to accept the idea of foreign expert Jenny Bowen of Half the Sky to build the Sunshine Family.
At the beginning it can start with temporarily renting houses from the families who’ve had both parents die—a courtyard with about five rooms. Each new family can foster five to six orphans. . . . Twenty foster parents, five teachers, and five staff have already been selected.
ZZ looked up and grinned. “It’s a good start—do you think so?”
I jumped up and hugged her. “It’s great; it’s wonderful! But ZZ, I sure wish they wouldn’t call me an expert. They know I’m not, right? Did you tell Mr. Hu I was an expert?”
“Certainly not. But why should it matter?” she said. “We say, ‘Why add legs to the painting of a snake?’”
“Huh?”
“You say, ‘Leave well enough alone.’”
WE SAID GOODBYE to our Jingli that summer. A month before she left us, she met her new family on the telephone. Although she’d known that they would find her one day, we didn’t share the whole story with Jingli until just before they called. We waited because we didn’t want her to worry. We didn’t know if that was the right way . . . or if there was a right way. She’d been our daughter for nine months.
We gave her the box they sent—a dress that matched her new sister’s, a stuffed animal, pretty hair things . . . most precious, a photo album introducing her new family.
We watched her brave little face as she heard her mother’s voice for the first time. She didn’t understand all the words, but she got the message. When it was all over and we had all cried, Jingli said, “I so much happy.”
She moved to Pennsylvania and soon forgot how to speak Chinese. A few years later, the little girl who taught me that what is best in us may be hidden, but can never be destroyed, became my friend on Facebook.
Dear Jenny Mama:
I am sixteen years old now and about to turn seventeen. I know I’m getting old by the minute. Can’t you believe it?! My life with my family is great. I love them no matter what but not always show it. Well, at least that’s what my parents said. They think I should be a lawyer because I am good at arguing. One most important quality that is special about my family is that it is filled with love.
My favorite things to do during free time are pretty much anything that has to do with art. I’m not much of a sporty person. A lot of my friends are involved in some school sports. For wearing the brace, it’s really hard for me to participate in the fun like everybody else does. At times I really wish I could run and be able to do those things like any of my peers can. I hate to admit things like the fact that it’s really hard for me to make friends.
There are times where I do think about China. Sometimes I ponder at the thoughts of it. If you didn’t take me into your family, will I still be in the orphanage? Who knows where I’ll be? There are memories of China that connect me to there. There are shadows here and there about the orphanage I lived in. I have to say there’s not one thing I missed about that place. I love my family to pieces.