Nanchang: The Trail's Gone Cold

We arrived in Nanchang searching for answers, and left with more questions. We had hoped that our visit to the town where we adopted Ciana would allow us to get more information, both about the area Ciana came from, and more importantly, about her personal history. We achieved more than we might have expected on the former, but certainly less than we hoped for on the latter. Indeed, a few of the things we thought we knew are now in question, and there are new possibilities and questions regarding her history. But I am getting ahead of myself.

We arrived in Nanchang around 10:15pm, and emerged from the airport needing to find two taxis, given we were still carrying excess luggage with all the orphanage gifts. It was a chaotic scene, with several taxi drivers grabbing our bags and rushing off in different directions. We finally managed to get everything into 2 cabs with drivers that nodded in just the right way to make us think they knew where we wanted to go. What ensued was our second hair raising overland race at obviously unsafe speeds, this time through darkened streets and near invisible countryside. I probably would have been more concerned about traffic safety, had I not spent much of the ride worrying that I had not written down the license plate number of the taxi Maureen and Ciana had disappeared in.

As with our race to Red Capital Ranch, all was OK in the end. We arrived almost simultaneously at our hotel, which was labeled with the best name of any hotel we will stay at on the trip. We were about to call the Galactic International Peace Hotel home for the next three nights. For anyone reading this blog who plans on traveling to Nanchang, we recommend it highly. As we had with all previous hotels, we’d booked a suite with an extra bed. At the hotel in Xi’an the girls had learned to push the extra bed up against the sofa in the suite, to create an effective queen sized bed, and they did so again at the “Galactic”.

The hotel was beautiful.

Most of the staff spoke enough English to make communication possible. And the hotel had the most important attribute a hotel can have in Ciana and Kailyn’s judgment – a really good swimming pool. And for Mom and Dad, the in house restaurant had all of the dishes they served displayed in a large area next to the restaurant. One could order simply by walking through the area and pointing at the food one wanted. Of course, preparation and indeed most of the ingredients on display, were still a mystery, so it did not eliminate much of the adventure of ordering a meal. Apparently this approach of displaying all the food was common throughout Nanchang restaurants, as we ordered the same way when we went out to dinner with our guide and driver on our last night.

With our late arrival, morning came quickly. We were met at 9:00 by our guide, Mr. Zhang Jin Gu, a 23 year old student doing his masters in tourism administration. Whether it was the degree he was getting or simply a natural desire to show off his province to “foreign guests”, he was a wellspring of information about Nanchang, and the province of Jiangxi. We learned more about Jiangxi in the first 2 hours we spent with “Grain” (his English name) than we had in the entire week we originally spent in Nanchang. His English was above average, and while far from fluent, we didn’t struggle often to communicate. We’d recommend him highly to anyone looking for a guide in Nanchang – just e-mail us for his contact information.

Grain took us on a tour of a trio of ancient Chinese villages, dating back 1100 years or more.
Undoubtedly this was a bit of a preview of what was to come when we stay in Zhaji later in our trip. We saw many ancient buildings, learned a lot about Chinese respect for their ancestors, and even got to touch the “Grandmother tree” which was an ancient tree reputed to bestow good luck on the first touch, and long life on the second. (We all got in a double touch.)

Lunch was in one of the village “restaurants”. There was no menu, one ordered by looking at the produce arranged in baskets, and specifying the meat one wanted. We decided to avoid the little finned eels swimming in a bucket and selected pork, chicken, and several vegetable dishes. The pork was outstanding, served in a garlicky, gingered soy vinegar sauce, with the richness of a lot of rendered pork fat. Not healthy, but certainly tasty. At one point our guide apologized that the chicken dish was taking a while to come, but they had a bit of trouble catching the chicken we were going to eat. We didn’t have much longer to wait until the freshly deceased and stewed chicken appeared at the table, with the head s proudly floating on top of the bowl. The chicken tasted good, if a little tough in texture. When we indicated we’d not be eating the head and feet, our guide happily devoured them.

After lunch we toured around a bit more, than returned for a quick shopping trip to Wal-Mart to purchase some formula to donate to the orphanage (oh, and some beer for dad and wine for mom)

Our second day in Nanchang was the orphanage day. Things started to get interesting when our guide announced we had arrived, much sooner than I expected given the length of the trip some of the other dads and I took to what we thought was our daughter’s orphanage when we were originally in Nanchang. Sure enough, the place we had arrived at had no resemblance to the place we had once photographed from outside the closed and locked gate. Was this really Ciana’s orphanage? Where were we taken 11 years ago? There were more surprises to follow.

We had originally been told that Ciana had been abandoned on the steps of the Nanchang Steel factory before a shift change. This time, when we enquired about the circumstances of Ciana’s abandonment, the new orphanage director (Mme. Tan) told us she had been left at a police station in Luo Jia Ji. 12 years ago, this was a smallish village near Nanchang. Now it was essentially a suburb. So between a switch in both orphanage and “finding place” two of the very few things we though we knew about Ciana’s history were thrown into significant uncertainty.

Upon further questioning, Mme. Tan informed us that the orphanage we had been take to on our original adoption trip was a facility primarily for special needs children, and that Ciana had definitely been at the orphanage we visited this time. The story about being abandoned at the police station also had more apparent truth to it than the original steel factory story. Ciana’s original Chinese name, Chen Luo Ying, includes the name Luo, which was the predominate family name in the village where we now were being told she was found. The police station at the time was on the road leading into town from the countryside – a likely route for a rural family to take if they came in to leave a child where they would certainly be found. This, and the orphanage change, both had the ring of truth to them. So while it opened new questions, we think we are now closer to the truth.

And that was it. We were not able to get any more information from the Director, despite extensive questioning and the fact we know that the Nanchang orphanage is well known for excellent record keeping. Every question was met with a polite smile and the explanation that it was too long ago. Even our “look at her file” was less than we expected. Instead of seeing a file, the director had simply brought several pages from the file, all but one of which we already had copies of. We’ll get the other one translated when we get home. Perhaps it will have something new.
But the visit was not all disappointment. We had a great tour of the facility, and met many children, most of whom seemed to be doing quite well. If you ask Ciana, she will tell you that the highlight of the visit was a huge red banner, easily 20 feet long, that was suspended across the orphanage entrance reading, “Welcome back Chen Luo Ying to your “mother” home”. Chen Luo Ying being Ciana’s Chinese name. It was a really nice touch, and they gave Ciana the banner at the end of the visit.
The orphanage director (pictured with Ciana above under her banner) and 2 officials from the Jiangxi adoption department then treated us to a huge banquet lunch at a local hotel. The food was, again, fabulous, even if some of the guests found it visually less appetizing due to the reappearance of fish heads. But the highlight was that there were twin girls from a family in Carolina who were also visiting the orphanage. Our two girls and the twins sat together chatting and laughing their way through lunch. Kailyn and Ciana really enjoyed the chance just to spend time and have fun with other kids.

After lunch, we went out in search of Ciana’s finding spot. Fortunately our driver knew the outskirts of Nanchang well, and we were able to find not only Luo Jia Ji, but also the police station where Ciana was apparently found. The actual police station had moved over a year ago to a much more modern facility but we were able to find the original location. Our guide and driver spoke briefly to several people at the site, but learned nothing of value. Still it was a neat expereince, and better than not ever visiting the finding place. Here are Maureen and Ciana at the place where it all began for our family.


Our driver thought it was worth stopping in at the new police station, just in case we could find some records or the police man who actually found Ciana. Neither proved out. The people at the station told us that many of their records were unavailable following the move to their new facility. We did learn that it was a much smaller police station when Ciana was found, with only 2 officers, but our attempts to get names and contact details for the officers met with the same “it was too long ago, we no longer have records” response that was the recurring theme in our day.

So in the end, we didn’t learn much, but we did have some likely past inaccuracies corrected, and Ciana got to see where she was likely found. And that is better than nothing. As Ciana said, she had hoped to learn more, but the finding place, the banner, and talking with 2 other Nanchang adoptees at lunch, was really fun and made it all worthwhile.