Wish You Happy Forever Page 10

  Within six months, the new preschool teachers and nannies were reporting back to ZZ and Wen steadily, giddy with small triumphs. We shared the coming-out stories with our supporters in newsletters and e-mails. The children’s victories might seem slight against the soap opera of our own behind-the-scenes adult machinations, but there was no doubt in our minds who the true victors were.

  As word got out, government study groups were sent from Beijing to examine the situation. Small Cloud Zhang was invited to give a few lectures at local teachers’ colleges. She told ZZ that we’d changed her life. Suddenly she was the authority on child development, and in steady demand. “But I’m not a teacher!” she protested happily.

  ONCE HOME IN California, Anya and I had begun an uneasy and cautious rapprochement. After a couple of weeks, she let me dress her now and then. I was sometimes allowed to give her food. Occasionally she even joined us on the big bed for a family snuggle, though she carefully kept her distance from me. She eased up on the spitting and biting business (that slap, thankfully, was a one-time thing), and she began doggedly tailing five-year-old Maya, who must have ascended a pedestal while the rest of us were sleeping. Suddenly, Anya was handmaiden to her big sister, responding to her every whim and parroting her every move.

  Our new daughter seemed to have decided that this family stuff wasn’t a complete disaster after all, and neither, possibly (time would tell), was her mother.

  MOST CHINESE WOMEN were required to retire when they reached the doddering age of fifty or fifty-five (and just try to get a new job if you’re a woman laid off post-forty), but because she had useful language skills, ZZ managed to hang on at CPWF until she turned sixty. The moment she retired, Half the Sky hired its first employee, and ZZ began what she now calls her “real career.”

  While still in graduate school, Wen became our second, part-time employee. Half the Sky now had two staff plus me. I then hired Ivy Yu, a recent Berkeley grad and our most loyal volunteer, to help me run the Berkeley office (our dining room table). Still not imagining the day would come when we’d need seventeen hundred staff to keep our operations going, our team of four marched boldly into the next phase of Half the Sky’s development.

  I’d been gathering names of potential program sites from the beginning—orphanages whose kids came home to their new adoptive families with attachment difficulties, hints of abuse, or signs of neglect. Whenever I read a sad story on the adoption lists, I took notes. With increasing frequency, parents were writing directly to me, sharing their stories of troubled adoptions and traumatized children.

  Letters of thanks from adoptive parents came to us too. After a period of adjustment (and some healthy grieving for their nannies), children from our Half the Sky programs seemed to be thriving in their post-adoption lives. Infants and toddlers who attached early were able to transfer those attachments to their new parents easily. With plenty of evidence of success in hand, it was time to expand our efforts.

  Using my trusty World-Cart map of China and assorted plane, train, and bus schedules, I figured out how we could visit twenty trouble spots in six provinces in just nineteen days. ZZ and Wen didn’t even wince at the itinerary. As far as I know, nobody in China ever winced when I announced an all-new plan, a whole new deal. This is one of the many things about the Chinese that I love.

  Then bad news. Kindly Mr. Shi, our handler at the Social Workers Association, had been transferred from orphan issues to veteran affairs. I was crushed. The new guy was Mr. Yang. ZZ called him Lao Yang (Old Yang), so I did too. Thin, drawn, and humorless, Old Yang was a cipher. Even when we eventually met in person, I couldn’t glean anything about him except that he was embarrassed by his bad teeth. (I knew this only because he covered his mouth when he spoke, and so nobody ever understood what he was saying.)

  ZZ submitted my orphanage request list. Old Yang came back to us with approval to visit ten cities—none of them on my list of trouble spots. That news reached me two days before my departure for the big trip.

  Hi ZZ,

  Can you help me figure out how we might convince Old Yang and the ministry that it is not sufficient to send us to ten of the nicest institutions in China? If we accept only institutions on the approved list, we won’t be going to a single place where the children are most in need.

  Hi Jenny,

  I am a Chinese, and have been working and dealing with the leaders for long years. Thank you for your trust of my hard work to let them understand your heart. I have spoken to them on your good intentions for the children, but still they have to discuss and think about and negotiate with each other. It has been driving me crazy in the past years! But I believe also, like you, as long as we try, nothing is impossible!

  Yet again proving herself our secret weapon, ZZ negotiated further and won. Our Half the Sky Study Tour of 2001 was set.

  Over eighteen days, ZZ, Wen, Old Yang, and I visited fourteen cities spanning the country from Shanghai to Chengdu and points south; most of them had been on our trouble list. We breezed through the provinces of Anhui, Jiangsu, Yunnan, Sichuan, and Guangdong and the municipality of Chongqing. We dined at banquets and shook the hands of smiling strangers. Tailed by endless entourages of anonymous officials, we wandered through bleak orphanages—hallway upon hallway, room upon room.

  To our hosts’ dismay, we always asked to skip the famous tourist attractions and headed straight for the places that made nobody proud. This became our modus operandi at Half the Sky. Another four years would pass before I finally visited the Great Wall.

  I knew that this failure to tour was frustrating for ZZ; she’d cut her teeth as a government tour guide. I finally relented and took a break in sunny southern Yunnan Province, famous home to fifty-two minority groups. The Kunming orphanage director escorted us to that capital city’s famous botanical gardens. My eyes glazed over at mu upon mu of floral displays.

  In fact, all I could see or think about were the young girls in tattered ethnic dress, some of them no more than eight or nine years old, begging out front, cute hungry babies strapped to their backs. When we exited the gardens, I stopped to give them a little money. I took their pictures. A policeman stuck his hand over my camera lens. “Forbidden! No pictures!”

  Now the Kunming orphanage director—who I think had liked me when I smiled nicely after she proudly told me that she’d been a factory manager and that she ran her orphanage the same way she’d run the factory—didn’t trust me anymore. She snarled at ZZ that I didn’t understand and made things worse for the children by giving them money. I was chastened and apologized for my bad behavior.

  “I guess she won’t welcome Half the Sky to Kunming any time soon,” I said to ZZ with regret.

  “One day they will all welcome us,” she said.

  IN EACH CITY, we were met at the airport or train station by the orphanage director or a local Civil Affairs official or the vice mayor or a department head from the institution. How high the rank of the welcoming delegation told us plenty about the degree of enthusiasm for our programs. In any event, first stop was food, always.

  Over lunch and the mandatory reception room pit stop, I’d try to take a quick read on the director and staff. Did they get what we were talking about? Did they care? Would they try?

  Finally, when we saw the children, all the lost little girls, we had a brief golden moment to draw our conclusions. They were, again, our teachers and true tour guides. Their faces, the texture of their skin, the language of their bodies, and especially their eyes told us all we needed to know about the level of care and caring. So I studied the beautiful faces, hundreds upon hundreds, acres of innocence betrayed.

  In central China, they were bundled against the winter chill—puffy little mummy-babies, two to a crib, immobilized by layers of clothing. In the steamy south, less clothing but no more action. Tied or bundled or unfettered, it didn’t seem to matter—the children had forgotten what children do. Almost everywhere we went, they lay flat on their backs or were propped in walkers or l
ined up in little chairs. Almost everywhere, they barely moved; their eyes were vacant, noting their visitors with indifference, if at all. I longed to hear them cry or laugh or have two-year-old tantrums. Almost everywhere, it was quiet.

  We had only a short time with the children in each place, but when I looked into the faces of those in charge, I just knew where our programs could thrive—I could see it in their eyes. In fifteen years, in more than fifty orphanages, we’ve had to close only one program because the administrators were too corrupt and too indifferent to do what they knew was right for their children. In that place, the nannies we paid and trained didn’t do their jobs because, although we sent it faithfully, they didn’t receive their pay. The children spent their days alone. Nothing felt more horrible than shutting down that program. Even if the children never saw the benefits (and in that place they never did, except on our visiting days), while we were still in their lives at least they had a chance.

  Despite the gloom of the places we saw on that Study Tour of 2001, I was filled with hope—for now I felt sure we could change things in a big way. Again and again I whispered my pep talks and promises—this time with full confidence that I knew what I was whispering about.

  Better than my promises, ZZ and Wen seemed to derive new energy and authority now that they were full-fledged Half the Sky staff. Wen waved orphanage directors over to bedsides. “See here, how this child won’t make eye contact? See how her arms and legs are so limp? Her brain is being damaged from lying here day after day like this.”

  ZZ chimed in, “You should let the children run free. That is how they grow normally. You are stunting their growth.”

  The locals looked worried. They clucked and murmured among themselves. I stood by and silently cheered Wen and ZZ on. Despite a dedication to preserving face for themselves and those they respect (or think they should), the Chinese seem to be capable of criticizing one another with a bluntness that no Westerner would ever dare. ZZ, who was of a certain age (the worst offenders, for sure) and knew all too well what a good humiliating tongue-lashing felt like, thought nothing of pushing to the front of queues and telling young guards and ticket-takers and shop girls how poorly they were doing their jobs.

  And in one town, our aging minibus driver plowed into a young woman on a bicycle. Even as she tumbled, he started yelling at her. She sat up, dazed, in the middle of the road, cars whipping by, and our driver screamed at her about the rules of the road. Thankfully, she was only bruised.

  The woman limped away. Dumbfounded, I looked at ZZ. “He lost face in front of a foreign friend,” she explained without a wince.

  DESPITE MY FOREIGN ignorance of Chinese ways (ZZ kindly explained I was “the other kind” so couldn’t possibly understand), things were definitely looking up for Half the Sky—even in the apparently unreceptive-to-change Guangdong Province. Old Yang, who had reluctantly arranged our trip and now never let us out of his sight, told us that the Civil Affairs people in that intensely competitive provincial office quarreled over who among them would get to be our escort and enjoy all those tasty banquets.

  While driving through Guangdong, provincial Civil Affairs Bureau Division Chief “Call me Jane” Wu, the victor, was in a grand frame of mind. She told us she didn’t think her main competitor, Ms. Yeh, should be doing PR because Ms. Yeh was unattractive and brash. Old Yang said there was some truth in that.

  “In what way is she brash?” I asked.

  “For example, she demands your name card instead of asking sweetly,” Jane said. “It’s obvious this shows she thinks she’s the boss.”

  Obvious. Everyone agreed.

  “Let’s sing!” said Jane. And so they did.

  ZZ’s rich contralto soared along with Jane’s hearty soprano in a medley of favorites from the Cultural Revolution (“The East Is Red”; “Sailing the Seas Depends on the Helmsman”; “I Am a Little Member of the Commune”).

  The more I work, the more I love it. Aye-hey-hey! Aye-hey-hey!

  Always thinking of the good character of poor and lower-middle peasants,

  Loving the collective and loving labor,

  I am a little member of the commune!

  Through the minibus window, I could see old tower houses scattered here and there in the lush southern landscape. They were elegant fortresses that had been erected by the families of men who’d traveled to North America, their “Gold Mountain,” at the turn of the previous century to build railroads and pan for gold—the young men who helped to build my hometown, San Francisco. While they toiled in that hostile distant country and judiciously sent their earnings home, their women built towers and ramparts to protect the new family wealth from bandits.

  I leaned against the glass, my ears humming with songs of revolution, and thought about how far I was from San Francisco—how much my life had changed and yet how much I felt at home in this faraway place. I wondered how many young men ever returned from Gold Mountain.

  The crumbling towers looked lonely and oddly feminine now among the squat, tile-faced blue- or green-windowed village homes favored by later generations. Near one village, we drove past a young woman working in the fields with a baby on her back. A shutter clicked in my brain. Time stopped. I saw a still image of the two in my mind’s eye and for an instant I knew they were Maya’s mama and little brother. We were only a few hours from the bus station in Guangzhou where our baby had been abandoned. It was possible. In fact, I was certain. I wanted to yell out, Stop the car! Turn around! But the ladies were in full voice and I did nothing.

  BEFORE HEADING HOME, we flew to Beijing to meet with Madame He LuLi—vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the People’s Congress, president of CPWF, and former vice mayor of Beijing. There weren’t all that many powerhouse women in China in those days. I hoped she might give me some advice.

  The Party Congress was in session, and central Beijing traffic was pretty much shut down. When we finally reached the China World Hotel, we were escorted into an elegant formal reception room. It would be my first meeting with a true dignitary. I scanned the room, trying to figure out how to have a conversation when all parties sat lined up around the perimeter of the room, facing center. No looking in the eyes for this bunch. Madame He arrived, and we all stood. She was seated (center chair, of course), and then we all sat. After introductions, I perched sideways on my gilded throne and did my best to make contact.

  “Madame He, we saw many beautiful buildings on our tour of the welfare institutions, but we didn’t see much activity inside. Unfortunately, it seems there is very little being offered to stimulate the children and give them the love that all children need,” I ventured.

  “When people have money to spend for the first time, they do with it what they understand,” she said.

  I shared a bit of our Half the Sky story and hopes for the future. When I asked her for advice about how to best proceed in the Chinese way, Madame He said we should actively seek media attention, especially at the local level. She said we should get the ordinary people involved.

  “Tell the Chinese people, and they will want to help you!”

  Could that be true? So simple?

  I’D RECEIVED QUITE different official advice at a U.S. Consulate residence a few days earlier when ZZ and I were in Guangzhou. We watched the elaborate southern Chinese tea ceremony performed flawlessly, respectfully, by our American host, a U.S. visa official. But the words . . .

  “First thing to know is that you can’t trust the Chinese,” our host said. “They look at you and just see money.”

  “Stay under the radar. If you don’t, the government will throw you out,” said the commercial officer.

  “You’ll never get the Chinese to go along with your ideas,” said a man from public affairs.

  “If I were you, I’d just go home,” said our host.

  I looked at ZZ’s face. Impassive. A polite smile.

  “Thank you for the advice and the delicious tea,” I said.

  “Be careful,” they s
aid.

  WE MET BRIEFLY with Old Yang’s boss—the president of the China Social Workers Association, our new partners. President “Red Sun” Liu’s freshly dyed, greased-flat helmet-hair glistened in the afternoon light as he made a direct play to push our trusted CPWF right out of the picture.

  “CPWF functioned as our matchmaker,” President Liu explained. “Now that the match is made, we don’t need them anymore.”

  ZZ fumed as she diligently translated every word.

  “We also suggest that the salaries and benefits Half the Sky pays should come through our association,” he oozed.

  “But President Liu,” I said, doing my best ooze back, “your association has signed an agreement with CPWF and Half the Sky that defines everyone’s responsibilities. This has been settled. And just today Madame He LuLi took time away from the People’s Congress meeting to reaffirm her support of our partnership.”

  His face folded into the China Smile. The meeting was adjourned.

  PRESIDENT RED SUN Liu would not stand in our way. Nobody would; I was determined. And I came away from my meeting with He LuLi convinced that, at least at that time in China, no loyal Chinese would be congratulated for dismissing foreign funding for “good works” or anything else without a darn good reason.

  So we seized the moment. In 2001, we expanded our programs in Changzhou and Hefei and added one new site from among those we had visited on the big trip. Then, working hard to nurture government relations, we offered to do our bit to help China “develop the west.” Our plans for fall 2001 included new centers in Chengdu and Chongqing in western China.

  But then came September 11.

  Chapter 8

  Unless There Is Opposing Wind, a Kite Cannot Rise

  September 13, 2001

  Dear Chengdu and Chongqing volunteers,

  This is simply the worst of times. In the last couple of days we’ve heard from a couple of you expressing concern and anxiety over the idea of traveling away from home and to the other side of the world next month. This is completely understandable, and is certainly compounded by the prospect of either bringing or leaving behind your family. If you know that this is not the right time for you to make this trip and wish to withdraw, please know that you are not alone.