Although we do not yet have a picture of our little girl (tomorrow can't come fast enough!!!) we thought we'd post a picture of the Lianjiang social welfare institute (SWI). It's a pretty new building (1999 I think). So this is where Lian Bao Zhen spent the first months of her life. The building to the right (with the vertical pink stripes) is the orphanage and the white building right next to it says "Baby Building". Notice the gold roofed gate at the lower right which is the entrance to the SWI. We're still trying to figure out if the other (larger) pink and white building is also a part of the institute.
Here's a closer view of the gate into the SWI. I'm not sure what the characters over the entry say so if any of you are literate in Chinese I'd love to know the translation!
11.30.2006
Picture of the orphanage
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4 comments:
Kristi,
I copied your map and photos of the orphanage for our website. Hope that's ok. They were better than the ones I found.
So, a friend from work passed the picture of the gate along to someone who explained the characters for us. Here is what he said:
There are 8 Chinese characters. Let me first translate the 8 Chinese characters directly:
(1) For the first two characters, they mean "Lian Jiang", just the city name.
(2) For the third charcater, it means "city"
(3) For the fouth and fifth charcters, they mean "society"
(4) For the sixth and seventh characters, they mean "welfare"
(5) For the last character, I should translate it as "Center"
Ok, let me gather all the information together and give you a meaningful translation, which is what these 8 Chinese characters would like to tell people:
"Welfare Center supported by LianJiang Government"
In China, as my opinion, we do not like to call this kind center as orphanage. Orphanage makes Chinese people to think the Children inside are very lonely. While "welfare center" makes people to think the Children inside are well taken care by our government.
On the right side of the gate, there is a small red sign, on it, the 8 Chinese characters means "whenever you enter or exit this gate, you must get off your car/bicycle or other kind of auto vehicles, and do registration".
We adopted our daughter from Lianjiang in 2000. You are right, the orphanage, we were told, was built in 1999. It was finished just weeks before our daughter was brought there (in early September 1999). When we were in China getting our daughter we were told that the other building that "matches" the Baby Building was a building for elderly people. I'm not sure if this is true, but it is what we were told. I hope you have a wonderful adoption experience. We sure did!
I adopted my daughter from Lian Jiang SWI in 2001. I am so grateful for all the snpipets of information you all have posted. It is so good to get more information confirming what I thought I knew, that my daughter had been cared for well enough in her early years. We were so fortunate to be given a little photo album of her and her caregivers at the orphanage and when I adopted my daughter the director and her caregivers were there to give me information. It was a truly transformative moment and continues to be transforming as my daughter is now a healthy, vital, affectionate 14 year old.
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