Eric's Beijing Diary

This morning we left the village. There was a car in the village heading into town, so we hitched a ride. We rode the shuttle to Lishi, then caught the bus for Taiyuan, the capital city of Shanxi Province. The orphanage is about an hour outside of Taiyuan. As we approached Taiyuan, Claire noticed that the countryside looked familiar, so she got up and asked the driver if the orphanage was nearby. He said "no," so she sat down. But Claire was right. Suddenly she spotted the orphanage and asked the driver to pull over to the side of the freeway. Cool. We avoided the hassle of going all the way into Taiyuan, and then trying to find a local bus back out to the orphanage. We climbed over the guardrail, slid down the embankment, squeezed through a barbed wire fence, and hiked to the orphanage.

Jean had arranged for me to stay in the guest house. The accommodations here are very nice. Not luxury, but it felt really good to have a hot shower. That's one thing they don't have in the village. This village is not quite as poor as the one we left this morning. But it is certainly not wealthy. Same thing--vegetables and noodles. But it's good stuff. The children here are very friendly. Most of them have some kind of handicap. But they are cheerful and talkative. When we first arrived, we were served some apples and tea. I was cutting slices of an apple and giving them to a couple kids. When I got busy talking and didn't move fast enough, I was reminded very loudly:

Ye-ye hao!

We met a guy who is either a priest or a brother, and had been adopted himself. His parents are from Korea, but they live in Beijing. They have adopted 20 orphans over the years, including three they just recently adopted from the orphanage here. It takes a special kind of family to adopt handicapped children. I am afraid many of these children will be staying here for some time.