Jon Chase

CHINA: CHINA ORPHANAGES

Adoptive parents wait behind a window to receive their child, in the arms of an adoption worker.
   
Shanti Fry, director of the Foundation for Chinese Orphanages, and her daughter Victoria, who herself spent her infancy here, visit with a child at the orphanage in Wuhan. Together we went to six orphanages in Hubei Province: Wuhan, Huangshi, Huanggang, Yichang, Jingzhou and Jingmen. Our purpose was to document life there, and also the impact of FCO gifts such as much-needed washers and dryers on both children and staff.
  
     
  
Foster grandmother with child.
   
These orphanage girls watch longingly as our party is entertained by dancers from the orphanage. Deemed too old to be adopted, they will get minimal schooling and will end up either working at the orphanage or at menial jobs elsewhere.
   
     
  
This older girl became an unofficial assistant to the orphanage director and helped care for some of the babies.
   
Victoria, now living in Cambridge, Mass. with her adoptive American parents, returns to the orphanage where she lived as an infant. She is welcomed with open arms by the director, and swarmed upon by curious children, anxious to see and touch a real live success story who had gone to America and come back to her place of origin.
   
Orphanage children wave good-bye to our party.
     
  
Victoria waves good-bye to children looking out the upper-story windows of the orphange at Wuhan.
   
Young children past the age when most adoptions occur, at the Children's Welfare Institute in Hefei.
   
A nurse cares for babies, two to four in a crib, at the Children's Welfare Institute in Hefei, Anhui Province.
     
  
Children's shoes line the balcony as they dry in the sun, at the Children's Welfare Institute in Hefei.
   
The 7-month-old child of a new adoptive parent is admired by orphanage workers at the Children's Welfare Institute in Hefei.
   
Young children play a game at the Children's Welfare Institute in Hefei.
     
  
Young children who are probably too old to be adopted by parents wanting infants, at the Children's Welfare Institute in Hefei.