China Day 6 - Finding Spot

March 10, 2015 - Day 6 – Finding Spot

Something happened today that was to simply put in one word… amazing. Typically when a child is in an orphanage in China, they will have paperwork on file with notes about where the child was found, what their health assessment was upon admittance, immunizations, etc. If you remember, Theo was abandoned in a large city in China called Jinan, in the Shandong Province. His file has very little information because he is so young and also due to the fact that he has been in the orphanage for less than a year. Other children who were adopted as part of our group to the CWI yesterday were given a packet of information related to developmental milestones, but the orphanage president said Theo was not old enough to have such a document. She did, however, hand us a lime green piece of cloth that was rolled up and taped with a date and his name on it. She said that he was found with it last year. The only other piece of information we have from the orphanage was the note on his file that says he was found in a market.

Rewind a few months ago where one of Laura’s Swedish friends on the Jinan Facebook page sent us a video that she was sure was about our referral child (Theo). It was a news clip about an abandoned baby found on a street corner last March, 2014 in Jinan. He was taken to a children’s hospital by a woman and a man who found the baby near a “toilet” and in a “tricycle”. The couple left RMB 200 Yuan with the baby and were very sad to leave him. Later the hospital diagnosed the one month old baby with a serious heart condition and sent him to the CWI (Children’s Welfare Institute) in Jinan.

All signs pointed to this video being our referral child because of the date he was found, the age of the child, the same diagnosis, and being sent to the CWI orphanage. 

Today, one of our free days, we tried to find the street corner in the video while out looking for another finding location for a friend who recently adopted from China. We showed the video clip to the hotel concierge and she was able to point out the intersection on a local map of the city. Our hearts were beating very fast when she said it was only a 10 minute taxi ride to this spot. And on top of it, our friend’s finding spot was only a block away.

At lunch time we rallied Theo, bundled him up, and after some more talking with the concierge and a little help from google translate (a freaking amazing app.) we were on our own and in in the taxi headed for both finding locations.

After we found the first location, a restaurant where our friend’s child was abandoned, we walked down the street to the intersection from our video. It was massive. A 5 point intersection! We could have never found the right spot without watching the video again and pausing it right on the image of the area we thought the news caster was saying the baby was found. We held my phone up all around the intersection and finally one of the buildings looked right. We fast forwarded the video a bit more and a small alley with a fence and red banner came up. I wasn’t sure but we started scanning the area for a fence that looked like the one in the video. We were standing right in front of it!

Street corner in Jinan

Laura took charge and started taking photos of the whole area, walking around and looking for a toilet. A shop owner approached us and didn’t speak any English, but we used google translate again and I started asking several questions about last year and if she knew of a baby that was found. She was very nice but not too helpful. We also wanted to be careful about how many people we showed the video to for fear that someone may try to take Theo (who was fast asleep on my chest in the ergo carrier) if the wrong person saw it.

Behind the alley

After our brief conversation, the woman told me bye-bye and we walked a little further down the alley way… a market! We were in a market. It was making sense now. The video, the intersection, the market on Theo’s paperwork. Maybe this is where he was found…

Just when we thought things were starting to come together, Laura saw the public restroom which is labeled in English on the sign “toilet”. I got chills. We took some more photos.

Public restroom "toilet"

Being near lunchtime and not having any food yet, I started making some comments jokingly about the street vendor food and that we should just take a chance and eat some. Laura did not appreciate my humor. A woman made eye contact with me and a thought crossed our minds that maybe these people are local to the neighborhood and come to the market often. What if they had heard about the baby from last year? So we took a chance and approached the woman with my phone stretched out video ready to play. I fast forwarded to the part where the woman in the video who found the child was being interviewed in the hospital from the news clip. I hit play.

You should have seen this woman’s face go from confusion, to surprise, to confidence and wave one of her friends over to have a look. We had no idea what she was saying, but they pointed over to one of the vending carts and there she was… the woman from the video, the woman that found him and rescued him. She wore red. A red hat, a red apron, and was just as she was the morning she found our son.

With another shocking look, the first two women tried to explain something to her in Chinese and pointed to my phone, so we did what anyone else would have done… played the video again. She started smiling and nodding her head, to which Laura and I started pointing to Theo instinctively saying “baby” over and over again. Her mouth opened wide and she had a big smile. Then her husband came out from the storefront. After hearing from his wife, he was teary-eyed and began shaking our hands. 

By now a crowd was forming and making me a bit uncomfortable while Laura had tears of joy trying to talk to the woman. We used google translate over the next several minutes trying to talk with her, her husband, and the rest of the crowd that gathered. They were in shock that he was so big, and although he was asleep, many of the people were pulling back the jacket I had covering him to get a look at his face. Soon a younger man came up and was trying to help us communicate with the woman and her husband. He asked us where we were from and we said “America, Florida”. He turned to the woman and said something in Chinese. And she seemed happy. We tried to get her name, address, and let her know that we were so thankful. The couple wouldn’t take any money from us, but they did pose for a few pictures before saying a tearful good bye.

The woman and her husband who found Theo last year.

Using google translate with the woman.

After saying goodbye to all the locals and Theo's guardian angels.

I was anxious, Laura was a mess, and Theo was out cold. What an afternoon. We flagged down a cab after a brief walk to the local children’s hospital and took a ride back to the hotel. We were without words. We are both still in shock as we write this blog. We wish we could have taken more photos, made some kind of video to document our wild afternoon, or confirm for sure that whatever address or names we got were correct.

What will Theo think of this experience when he is older? What questions will he have that we should have gotten answers to when we had the chance? How many days will go by before the little market off of Jingshi road will stop talking about the Americans who ended up with their abandoned baby?