We’re back from Angelina’s home town, Yangjiang. It was an experience that will be etched in our hearts forever. Yangjiang is a coastal city of the South China Sea. There were millions of people riding bicycles, motorcycles, scooters and rickshaws without any traffic lights needless to say it was utter chaos. People on the streets were selling chickens, geese, rabbits, dried fish, fruits, vegetables and many other things. It was funny to see people have a live goose tied to the back of their motorcycle or to be carrying them by their feet. People do not go to stores to buy their meat and produce, they just buy everything fresh or alive on the street and then take it home and do everything themselves. So, there are no slaughter houses or processed foods of any kind. “Survival” is the word that comes to my mind about the kind of life people are living here.
Our first stop was Angelina’s orphanage, Jiang Cheng District Social Welfare Institute. It’s so difficult to think about this is where she spent 11 months of her life. We had to climb four flights of stairs before reaching her orphanage. When we started climbing the stairs Angelina started crying. I know that she was probably thinking that we were taking her back and from that point I became emotional and couldn’t fight back the tears. When we reached the top of the stairs off to the right is where all of the children were. Just seeing row after row of baby cribs lined up with children just waiting for someone to come and pick them up was too much for me. I just wanted to grab as many as I could and take them home. The picture below shows some of the children in the orphanage.
One of the care takers took us to where Angelina was abandoned. The location was at the front entrance of a water plant, less than 50 yards away from the orphanage. It was very obvious that her birth mother wanted her to be found and taken care of. I can’t imagine the pain and anguish she must have felt giving up her baby. With China’s one child policy enforced it left her birth mother with no other option but to abandon her child in hope that she would have a better life. Angelina was about 3 days old when they found her.
Sorry that I cannot go into further detail, it’s just too sad…
