Finding Day

July 23rd, 2009... Fifteen years ago.

Neither I nor any of my blood relatives were present (in fact, we were located roughly half a planet away). There wa23s, as best I can tell, no fanfare or major drama.

In fact, it's been a couple of years since I can find the town on Google maps; it seems to have either been renamed or swallowed up whole by another town (I found a LOT of pictures of road & business construction there back in the early 20-teens, but now just information about similarly-named towns in other provinces.)

Whatever the case, on 23 July 2009, a baby was abandoned at the Wushi Town hospital.

Was she left at the entrance? Was she born there and then left behind? We don't (can't) know for sure, but we were told that she had been found at the building entrance in the morning.  As was common practice, a local newspaper published a finding ad for the baby, printing her photo alongside the photos of three other abandoned baby girls.

At the time, the hospital was located in a market town surrounded by 11 smaller farming villages (the primary crop being rice) in a rural area.. so there is a 1-in-12 chance of her actual birthplace ever being known by anyone aside from the woman who birthed her (and possibly that woman's immediate family, and maybe -- albeit slightly less likely -- some hospital staff).

One thing that is certain is that this particular baby girl was smaller than average (maybe even a little bit sickly) and born in an area still dealing with poverty and minimal social services, in a rural culture that strongly favored boys over girls, all during a time when China's one child policy was still strongly enforced. The fact that she was abandoned at a medical center where she would be guaranteed proper care indicates that her biological family cared about her well-being and wanted her to have a chance at a better life than it was likely they could even dream of giving her.[1]

Being a rural area, there wasn't much the hospital could do for the baby, so she was sent to the Luchuan County Social Welfare Institute. Once registered there, she was given the name Lu Ming Tong -- "Lu" for the county, "Ming" for the year, and "Tong" as her given name (facts we would learn some years later).

So here we are now, one and a half decades after that day. That little baby is still a bit shorter than her classmates, but she casts a long shadow as a prize-winning competitive dancer, an accomplished member of a Chinese folk dance performing group, an acclaimed performer in two high school productions, a member of the school band, a member of the school pep band, part of more committees and clubs than you can shake a stick at.. and at the end of the year, she became one of just a handful of students nominated and accepted for a position on a Leadership Committee that will be meeting with the county school board over the summer to provide guidance on future programs and budgets.

That scrawny little baby abandoned at a rural medical center fifteen years ago has learned to fly.

Happy Finding Day, Pipsqueak -- and thank you for still letting me call you that (in private, of course) now that you're looking to begin your sophomore year of high school. :-) Love you to the moon and back!

[1] I say this with surety because I know people whose Chinese-born daughters were found under the bench at a bus stop, in a cardboard box in an alley, in a drainage culvert, in a park's public restroom, and near the edge of an agricultural field. I am not judging the biological parents of these children -- I can't imagine how difficult their lives may have been, or the cultural pressures on them to have a son at a time they could have exactly one child and no more -- but the fact that Miriam's bio family made a point of abandoning here where she was guaranteed a safe recovery speaks volumes to me about how much they cared about this tiny little baby.