Intelligence Online
NEWS
STORY
 |
'WE HAVE BABIES, BABIES EVERYWHERE.'
- A Chinese attendant at White Swan Hotel. -- REUTERS |
Charlaine Feng, the hotel's assistant manager, insists there
is only one name for the place. "We are called the White Swan
Hotel," she said matter-of-factly.
But people who have come to this hotel over the past few
years use other names. They like to call it the "Baby Hotel" or the
"White Stork Inn."
Anyone who visits can easily see why. There is usually a
crush of baby strollers in the hotel lobby. There is a crowded children's play
room sponsored by the toy maker
Mattel
on the lower level. And there are baby cribs on every floor. Not to mention
lots of crying babies.
Most parents at the hotel are Americans, in their 30's, 40's
and 50's; most children are Chinese, typically less than a year old.
This is, after all, where Americans who come to adopt in
China often spend their early days with their newly adopted children, at this
luxury hotel less than a block from the United States Consulate, where the
paperwork for most adopted Chinese children heading to the United States must
be processed.
"We came here three years ago, so we're used to this
crowd," said Shepard Hurwitz, 52, an orthopedic surgeon who with his
wife, Gretta, had just adopted a second child from China, a 1-year-old girl
they named Leah.
The White Swan Hotel — which boasts a giant, indoor
waterfall, a pond stocked with carp and a view of the famed Pearl River —
has a strange lore in the world of adoptions.
Last year, more than 1,500 American families came to this
hotel to lodge, tour and shop while waiting to have their adoptions approved
by Chinese and American authorities.
Because the hotel is located in the consulate district on
Shamian Island, a tiny, flowery strip of land that is tethered to the city of
Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton), there is no better place to stay. Or
seemingly no other place to stay.
Adoption agencies often book large portions of a floor at
the White Swan for a group of American families traveling together to adopt in
China. So a visit to virtually any floor yields the cries and scents of a
maternity ward.
"We have babies, babies everywhere," said Carey,
the Chinese attendant on the 12th floor.
The Americans typically get here after waiting more than a
year to adopt a child. They apply through adoption agencies in the United
States, which push them through the complicated process. The State Department
said that about 4,500 adopted Chinese children were issued visas to enter the
United States in 2001.
Some of the parents here at the White Swan said they came to
adopt in China because the children here are generally bright and healthy.
They are almost entirely girls — the Chinese preference for boys combined
with the government's restrictions on family size mean that infant girls are
more likely to be abandoned.
There is also less of a risk that Chinese biological parents
will come to the United States to press legal action to reclaim the child
later, some parents said.
The process works something like this: after working with
the adoption agency for months, if not a year, the adopting parents get a
picture of their child in the mail. Then, about four to six weeks later, if
they decide to accept the child, they get on a plane and travel to an
orphanage in one of China's provinces to pick up their child.
Then comes Guangzhou and the White Swan Hotel. Buses arrive
each week with a new set of families.
Marty Brennan and Carol Sherner came to see their children,
David and Tammy Sherner, adopt an 11-month-old girl from an orphanage in
Chongqing.
It was the couple's first trip to China and David Sherner,
46, greeted the Chinese by passing out potato-shaped buttons from his native
Idaho, home of the famed Idaho Russett potato.
His mother walked the streets of Guangzhou wearing a T-shirt
that read "paternal grandmother" in Chinese. In English, she sang
the praises of her new granddaughter, Grace. "She's beautiful," she
said. "She's the prettiest one I've seen."
To ease the transition for parent and child, the White Swan
recently began offering each adopted child the most powerful symbol of Western
values it could muster: a blond Barbie doll that holds in its grasp a baby
that is unmistakably Chinese.
Parents said they liked the gift; the children, being less
than a year old, are speechless.
There are other clues the hotel specializes in adoptions,
like the army of English-speaking attendants stationed on every floor, ready
to wheel in new cribs, deliver diapers or fetch a bottle of baby food from the
bazaar of baby- and tourist-friendly shops on the lower level.
The hotel even operates on baby time. "They're doing
work on the floor below us, but they make sure it stops during nap time,"
Mr. Hurwitz said.
Some parents here at the White Swan admit that there is
something discomforting about lodging at what looks like a baby factory. But
many here were so moved by the first experience that they came back to adopt a
second or third child from China.
Liz Avery, 55, came here from Syracuse, N.Y., five years ago
to adopt a girl she named Hailee. She returned to China a few weeks ago with a
couple she had met on her first trip. They were returning for a second child.
Ms. Avery returned because she wanted Hailee, now 5, to see
China and the hotel again. She was interrupted taking pictures of Hailee near
the fish pond.
"I'm taking pictures of her here because I took
pictures of her five years ago here," Ms. Avery said with glassy eyes.
"She liked to watch the fish and she still loves to watch the fish."
Hailee was malnourished when she was adopted. Now, her
mother said, she's healthy and her height now matches those of her peers.
Hailee also looks happy. She's wearing a pink headband and
what her mother describes as her trademark Barbie sneakers. And she kept
running in circles and reaching into her mother's backpack to pull out little
candies.
"We took her out of school for a month to make this
trip," Ms. Avery said. "But I'm glad we did it. This is a special
trip for us. I wanted her to see where I met her."
- by David Barboza,
New
York Times, and Singapore Straits Times 31 Mar 2003
