Lost in Translation

A couple more offerings to the "lost in translation" folder.

This sign was posted near the stairs that lead up to the top of the Nanjing southern gate.  These stairs have been there for 600 years.

A snapshot of the menu from the place we had dinner tonight.  For the record, we did not order the grilled husband, the donkey meat, or the "waist piece".

Mae's Arms and the Unadoptable

Mae's Arms
I've gotten a few questions about Mae's medical condition that qualifies her as a "special needs" adoption.  Frankly, to see the pics I've been posting you wouldn't know anything was wrong.  I'm no doctor so you'll have to give me a little slack on the explanation.

Her diagnosis is Arthrogryposis.  If you google that you'll see that there's a pretty wide spectrum as to how bad it can be.  Hers seems to be limited to her arms and I would say it's pretty mild compared to what it could be.

In more layman terms it feels like she has almost zero muscle in her upper and lower arms.  So her arms just kinda flop around a bit.  She can manipulate her fingers a bit but mostly her arms just hang there and she swings her shoulders to flop them around to where she wants them.  She's quite affective at it.

She doesn't stand on her own but she can support her weight.  When sitting or laying she contorts her lower body anywhere and everywhere to get where she wants to go.  She is very resourceful and persistent.

I don't know what the future holds in terms of surgery or therapy but I think it's reasonable to expect her to become independent as she's gets older.  She'll figure it out.


The Unadoptable
Mae shared a room with 20 other children, all special needs children.  She was the only one that was made available for adoption.  That's right, there are at least 20 children in her orphanage right now that will never be adopted, never.

The ladies at her orphanage explained that those children have severe mental disabilities and nobody would adopt them.  I tried to explain to them that there are people in the world that will adopt mentally disabled children.  If you list them, they might get adopted or might not.  But if you don't list them there is a 0% chance of then ever getting adopted.

The realities are:

• It costs an orphanage a lot of time and money to get a child listed for adoption.
• Orphanages aren't exactly over-staff and over-funded.
• We pay a lot of money to the orphanage as part of the adoption.

You can do the math on your own but all this comes together to form a gut-wrenching story.  There are kids that will never even get the chance to have a family all because someone, somewhere, decided that they weren't worth the investment.  They decided on behalf of all the rest of us, that nobody would want these children.  I don't know how that strikes you, but it punches me right in the gut.

Brocade for Dummies

December 18

Today was/is a free day for us.  No appointments, just waiting for Mae's passport to be completed so we can actually travel somewhere with her.  So today is basically a day for us to be tourists.

We have become a regular side-show at breakfast.  Although to see us in action I think we'd qualify as a sideshow even in the US.  Here's Scott showing you his cheese face.  Whenever a camera points in his direction he says cheese, cheese, cheese, and makes this face.  While we were eating our driver brought Heather her phone.  He found it in our van.  That was a huge relief.

First stop after breakfast was the brocade museum.  You can google brocade and learn all about it on your own.  In short, brocade has been made in Nanjing for 1600 years.  In Imperial China nobody was allowed to wear it accept representatives of the Emperor (soldiers, officials, etc...).  The brocade for the Imperial family was only made in Nanjing.  Using a loom that takes two people to operate, about 2 years of work will yield enough fabric for one outfit.  It was, and still is, a bit pricey to get handmade brocade.

Later in the day we bought some machine made brocade items on the street markets behind our hotel.  It's a million times cheaper and for dirt-clods like me you'd never know the difference.

The kids in front of some brocade panels that look like postage stamps.  The bodies of the dragon and fish are made using solid gold thread.

Joshua doing Taekwondo (which is actually Korean, but don't tell anyone) next to a baby monk doing kung-fu.

So the brocade museum was pretty neat but it felt a little bit like going to Jo-Ann Fabrics.  Next stop the city wall.  Nanjing has played a very prominent role in China's history and was the capital city of China many times.  The city wall was build late 1300's to protect the city and the southern gate is the largest city gate in in the whole world.  The southern gate was designed like a big trap.  It includes built in caves that would serve as barracks for up to 3,000 soldiers.  If an enemy force ever did penetrate the outer gate they would only find themselves trapped within a bigger gated area - they were fish in a barrel at that point.  The soldiers would poor out of the caves and the bloodbath would ensue.  That's crazy.

Shanks family with statues of the Emperor and his advisor who commissioned the city wall.   I think they were proportionaly generous when they decided how big to make these things.  Otherwise, this Emperor was a giant.

Heather and Scott at the entrance of one of the caves that soldiers would use as a barracks.

Next we went back to the markets behind our street and our guide educated us a bit about the whole Confucius Temple area.  In brief, it was a giant school.  Very interesting, this place just drips with history, culture, and heritage.

Lora and Joshua with our guide, Savor.  The building in the background is the only original building remaining in this area.  It was build about 100 years before Christopher Columbus sailed west.

Delicacy of the day, fried crabs on a stick.

Now everyone is napping because they're lightweights and can't hang.  In all seriousness, hotel living with 4 kids is hard, adjusting to a 14 hour time change is hard, and spending your whole day trying to establish basic communication is hard.  I think tonight we'll try to take it easy.

Mae's Orphanage

December 17

Today we had what I would consider to be a rare day for someone adopting from China.

First we took a ride to Lianyungang City which is up by the coast.  This is where Mae's orphanage was and it's near where she was abandoned/found.

First stop was Mae's orphanage.  We got a tour of her room, where she slept, etc...  We met her favorite nanny and all the other nannies.  We then had lunch with her nanny, the hallways supervisor, and the orphanage nurse.  Lunch was delicious but more importantly we had about an hour of time to pepper the ladies with questions about Mae, the orphanage, the other children, and the Chinese social welfare system.  It was enlightening for me and I consider it a great privilege to be able to spend that much time with them.

To be honest, the orphanage was really nice, as far as orphanages go.  Definitely nicer than Joshua's.  Mae did great did the visit.

In the lobby of the orphanage.

Heather and Mae with Mae's favorite nanny.

After leaving the orphanage we went to the place where Mae was found.  There was a police report filed when she was found and it named the hotel, so we went there.  The police report also named the lady that actually called the police.  That lady no longer works at the hotel but they had her number on file.  So, our guide called her up.  She remembered exactly where Mae was found and was able to describe it to our guide.  She was very happy to know that the little baby she found is going to be in a family.  Not only did we get to see the actual place where Mae was found but to be able to speak with the person that found her, that made my day.

Micah and Mae standing on the spot where Mae was abandoned/found.

It was a long day.  About 9 hours of seat time in the van, but the kids did pretty good and the rest of us managed.  Here's a few other misc. highlights/lowlights from the day:

• Heather's cell phone is missing.  There's one more place it might be but we can't look there until morning.  I don't really care about the phone, that's replaceable.  There is some information on it that I'd rather not lose.  But more than anything, if we don't find it it'll be a source of stress and we don't need any more of that.
• Among other things, I ate pig stomach for lunch.  It was pretty tasty.
• The Fermented Soy Bean Prawn Flavor potato chips taste exactly as described.

Moving

December 16 (Part 2)

This evening we moved to new rooms.  All I really want to say about that (on the blog) is all is well that ends well.  I don't actually believe that motto, that the end justifies the means, but in this case I suppose it works.

Mae is doing great.  She plays wells with the others and has been doing well with Heather and I.  She has proven to be quite resourceful with her little arms and hands.  She's also quite mobile without ever getting on her feet or crawling.  She scoots around on her bottom and if she lays down she is quite the contortionist when it comes to rolling around.  We're still trying to figure out what all her little sounds mean and really just figure her out.  One of her favorite toys is the picture book we sent her months ago.  The orphanage has clearly been showing it to her and helping her understand who we were.


Tomorrow will be a long day for sure.  We're going to drive to Mae's orphanage and see the place where she was abandoned/found.  It's about 4 hrs one-way.

Jade vs. Jesus

Very large jade dragon at the entrance to the jade market.  This particular dragon is the city-dragon for NanJing.

We went to a jade museum/market today after leaving the Civil Affairs office.  We wanted to get something small for our kids to serve as a remembrance of their Chinese heritage.  We learned quite a bit about jade and its history in China.  The people at the market explained how the Chinese believe that jade wards off evil spirits and it protects your heart both spiritually and physically.  They tried to sells us on the premise that it would do this for us as well.  It was heart-breaking to listen to.  On the ride back to the hotel I asked our guide if she believed that her jade protected her from evil spirits and she said "yes".  She went on to explain that she wears a jade bangle on her left wrist so the blood going by it will be purified and improve the health of her heart.  I was speechless but Heather was quick to explain how Christ lives in our hearts and purifies us.  Our guide just responded with "Yes, yes.  We have different cultures."

All I could think about was how our guide is either right or she's wrong about the impact of jade.  It doesn't matter how long the Chinese have believed it.  Just believing in something doesn't make it true.  Turnabout being fair play, Heather is also either right or wrong about the impact of Christ.  The fact that we believe in a living Christ doesn't make it true.

Truth, ultimate reality, is not culture-dependent.  What's true for me is true for the Chinese and it's true for you too.  The only question worth asking then is this; "Have I believed in the truth, or have I believed in a lie?"  Personally, I don't think very many people even want to ask that question - they already know the answer and they hate the answer.  It's easier to just believe a lie (Romans 1:25).

We did purchase something for our kids.  Some day I'll gladly explain to them its importance in Chinese history, art, and religion.  I will be even more glad to explain to them that Jesus Christ is the rock upon which they can build their life, but their jade is just jade.

It's Official

December 16 (part 1)

We started this morning the way all Shanks' start their morning.  Breakfast.  Update on the meat floss - it's pretty delicious but I think it's meant to be used as a condiment, kinda like eating a spoonful of bacon bits by themselves.  I played it cool though, acted like I knew what I was doing.

Breakfast this morning.

After breakfast we went back to the Civil Affairs office and signed paperwork making Mae officially ours forever.  It was generally uneventful although we had a little trouble getting Mae's thumbprint on the paperwork.  So that's it, she's ours.

The pastor at our church likes to joke that nobody gets to be the youngest NEHBC'er for more than about a week because our congregation is so procreative.  In this case, Mae is the newest Shanks but she better live it up, it won't last long.  By the way, NEHBC is the acronym for our church.  We live in a corporate town which means any name or phrase longer than 3 words that gets used more than 2 times a week becomes an acronym.

In the hotel lobby this morning.  We took this before breakfast to reduce the number of food-stained shirts in the pic.

This is probably a good time to say a word about Lauren.  I keep telling everyone that she's the Nanny/Aunt.  The thought that we would ever have a nanny is laughable but I'm paranoid that all the Chinese people will think I have two wives.  She's been a world of help and I can't imagine making it through this trip without her.  Actually, I CAN imagine this trip without her and that's why I'm glad she came.

"Nanny" Lauren with Scott