I was struck by a news story on CNN this morning. A seventeen-year-old Chinese boy who was adopted at age 7 by an American family from an orphanage in China had recently found his biological family in rural China. His adoptive parents got in touch with a lawyer who in turn used the internet to help track down the boy’s family. Any such story can end tragically, but it turns out this boy’s family is alive and well – and didn’t know what had happened to him.
The boy, the second, and therefore illegal son, of two doctors, was sent to live with relatives in a village outside his hometown. Brought up to believe the relatives were his real parents, he was then sent back to town to attend school and live with his biological parents, people he was told were relatives. Going back to the village one day, he was lost at the bus station. Neither part of the family could find him, one can only assume they all thought he had been kidnapped (something that sadly happens all too often). Luckily for the boy, he was found, sent to an orphanage and then later adopted by the American family.
There are plenty of fuzzy details to this story. Why couldn’t a school-age boy describe his family and home? Why does it seem neither side looked very hard for him? But the central issue I’d like to discuss is not the story itself, but rather the subject of extended family child rearing. I think it’s fascinating and something little understood outside China.
When my son was born in Shanghai four years ago, a common question I received from Chinese people was whether I would send him home to live with my parents. I was stunned but soon began to understand that the practice isn’t uncommon here. It isn’t simply a product of the rising middle class getting ahead either. My housekeeper, mother of three, spent twenty years working in a factory in Urumqi, Xinjiang Province (a 72-hour train journey from her home in Shanghai). Once her children were old enough, they were each sent home to be looked after by her parents. And today, she and her husband care for her grandson; he lives with them and sees his parents when they are on home leave from jobs in Qingdao. Many young parents who both work look to their parents or extended family to look after the children.
While hard for me to imagine this kind of arrangement, I find there to be something rather satisfying in thinking of a family network such as this. Now, in the case of the boy who was lost and then adopted, the family network clearly broke down. But I think this is a rare case. The worst stories are the ones we see on the news and read in the papers. But in truth, the love and attention that most Chinese dote on their children is something to behold and I am glad to raise my family in a place that does cherish them.
From Sara Naumann, About.com's Guide to China Travel, guest-blogger for Chinese Culture.
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