Yesterday was a day when I, like many of us, experienced some conflicted emotions. Not only over John Edwards's revelations, which have been hashed and analyzed here beyond my ability to add anything to them. But I also felt conflicting emotions over something else.
For a while, I was watching the opening ceremonies to the Olympics with my younger daughter. Three and a half years ago, we met in a South China city. She clutched a bag of pulverized animal crackers in her hand and cried in fear and anguish. I cried, too--with joy, and with sorrow. She'd lost so much in her young life. Within 48 hours (or less) of her birth, she was tucked into a cardboard box with a blanket and left at a gate in a public place where someone would be sure to find her. Two months later, her tiny photo appeared, with a couple dozen others, in the local newspaper. A regular thing, these ads. Before children in China may be placed for adoption with anyone, native or foreign, they must be certified as orphans. So public notices must be posted of children found abandoned, to give the parents or other family the opportunity to claim them. Typically, no one does.
Another year goes by, and she has adjusted well to her life at the orphanage. She was, as far as I know, well cared for and loved. She was certainly alert and healthy when we met, though angry and sad and frightened for several days. She'd lost the only caregivers she remembered, and she was stuck with this big dork who didn't look anything like anyone she knew, and who spoke in a language she couldn't understand. But, after a few days, she loosened up and started smiling, deciding that since I was feeding and cuddling her, she could give me a shot.
I was only in China a couple of weeks, but I was amazed. On the one hand, the place is incredible. Civilizations have flourished there for thousands of years. The mind-boggling things to be seen there are too numerous to name. But in many ways, it's obviously an awful place. The environmental degradation. The wholesale exploitation of workers for near-slave wages. The oppressive government, complete with the social engineering which created the conditions that resulted in the abandonment of my little girl.
The people amazed me, too. I didn't really know what to expect, to be honest. I'm not sure, if I were Chinese, how I'd feel about a bunch of foreigners swooping in to take our baby girls back to live with them. But they were unfailingly polite and even, it seemed to me, supportive. We heard many comments: "She is very lucky." "Now she can have the opportunity to go to school and get an education." "Now she will not grow up in poverty." "Now she can be somebody and have a family who can love her." And, incidentally, "She is very beautiful." All true. But she was leaving this amazing place, rich in heritage, that lives in her blood still. Whatever else I do for her, I can never be that for her.
And so, last night, I watched some of the opening ceremonies. With my beautiful, healthy, happy, goofy American daughter whose brown skin and black hair and deep chocolate-brown eyes are nothing like mine. I couldn't help feeling conflicted about it. The political oppression, environmental degradation, the nightmarish government, the lack of openness--all of that has been well-documented and discussed here. It's all true. And even with the incredible Olympic venues, many people's homes were razed to build them. But the spectacle was breathtaking beyond words. I couldn't help feeling teary.
China is a deeply flawed country that still means a lot to me. Kind of like some people I know.