"The girl, about five or six years old, is speechless and was found at the train station in Panlong District..."
Kunming Children's Welfare Home A dusty file records the life experience of an orphan. The Welfare Court gave her a name - Pan Zhanhua.
Shortly after I arrived at the welfare home, the little girl's fate turned around. Accompanied by the welfare school teacher, she came to a small mountain village. As soon as she got off the car, a strange aunt with bangs and a smile as warm as the sunlight hugged her tightly in her arms and said to her, "From now, I will be your mother."
Panzhanhua took the child back to her mother's house to celebrate Abin's birthday. The scene of
became the starting point for Panzhanhua's childhood memory. On June 13, 2001, the little girl who was separated from her family at the train station had a new home.
27-year-old Pan Zhanhua now has his own family and has a two-year-old son. "Without parents, there would be no me today." She said, "My parents, brothers, and sisters, all of them have type A blood. It seems that we are destined to be a family."
Panzhanhua's "hometown", Wangjiatan Village, Anning City, is a simple and quiet mountain village about 50 kilometers away from Kunming's urban area. Since 2000, as one of the pilot villages for foster care for orphans and disabled children in Kunming, this small village with only more than 1,300 people has raised more than 1,560 orphans, and many villagers have accumulated 20 orphans.
Time flies. The once young and strong "dads" and "mothers" are now gray-haired. They devote the best time of their lives to orphans who have suffered discrete trauma, and have supported a warm home for the children...
A Bin (first from right) When Abin (first from right) Cao Liqiong and her husband took their son (top left) and daughter (top right) to take photos with Abin and three other foster children at home.
"At that moment, I made up my mind to
give these dolls a home"
Wangjiatan fostered orphans and disabled children, which began by accident 22 years ago.
On November 2000, after listening to his friend Zhang Fuqiang, then secretary of the Party Committee of Caopu Town, Anning City, that there was a village in the town with beautiful mountains and rivers and simple folk customs, which was very suitable for foster care for orphans and disabled children. Cao Guozheng, then secretary of the Party Branch of Kunming Children's Welfare Home, couldn't wait to arrive at Wangjiatan.
As soon as he arrived in the village, Cao Guozheng was straight to the point and asked if he could pilot the foster care of orphans and disabled children in the village. Wang Bingneng, former deputy director of the village committee and current secretary of the village party branch, was confused.
"What does foster care mean?" Wang Bingneng wondered. After listening to the detailed introduction of the welfare home cadres, he realized that foster care is to send the children of the welfare home to rural families, and the villagers are responsible for raising them. The welfare home pays the orphans' living expenses to the villagers.
"At first, I thought he was a liar, so I left the child behind, what if I do?" Wang Bingneng said. After learning that an orphan's monthly living expenses were only 216 yuan and the villager's labor expenses were only 100 yuan, he felt that this could not be done.
Although Wangjiatan is not rich, it is close to the industrial park and there are many factories nearby. At that time, villagers also earned 100 yuan for small workers for two days. "Who would be willing to do this?" Wang Bingneng refused.
But for children's welfare homes, it is very urgent to find a village that is willing to accept orphans and disabled children as soon as possible. Wu Fashun, head of the Foster Care Section of Kunming Children's Welfare Home, recalled that at that time, there were at most seven or eight hundred orphans in Kunming Children's Welfare Home, and the work pressure was huge.
A Bin and her mother exercise in the small square in the village.
"The welfare home has twenty or thirty children in one class, and only five or six teachers, and it is impossible to take care of one-on-one." Wu Fashun said that he and his colleagues often have to go to school as "parents". Because there are too many children in the same school, Wu Fashun often sits in one class for a few minutes, and then has to hurry to another class to attend parent meetings of more than a dozen children a day.
"I was in my early twenties at that time. When the parent-teacher meeting, the teacher asked me, are you brother or father, which made me and my children very embarrassed." Wu Fashun said that most children in welfare homes are very sensitive because they have no parents, and they will feel inferior in front of teachers and classmates.
In 2000, the Ministry of Civil Affairs proposed that household foster care should become an important way to socialize the child welfare undertaking."Then we began to look for villages suitable for family foster care." Wu Fashun said that family foster care can relieve the pressure of welfare homes, and more importantly, it is completely different for children to have a home. In addition, because of the ample housing and sufficient labor force, rural areas are more suitable for foster care than cities.
Photography of parents and A Bin (top left) and A Xia.
After being rejected for the first time, the cadres of the Welfare Academy visited Wangjiatan several times and invited the town party secretary Zhang Fuqiang to persuade Wang Bingneng.
"This is a good thing to accumulate virtue and do good deeds. I hope your village can take this matter up." Zhang Fuqiang said.
Wang Bingneng had no choice but to bite the bullet and promise to give it a try.
He asked more than a dozen companies in the village, and as expected, the villagers had the same concerns as him.
"Does the welfare home want to get rid of the burden?"
"If we get disabled babies, do we have the ability to take care of them?"
There is really no way, Wang Bingneng can only work with his own relatives and party members in the village. In the end, only six families agreed to go to the welfare home first before making a decision, including his wife and parents.
Liao Xuexian is one of the six mothers in Wangjiatan who participated in foster care. At that time, she was 46 years old, and her children had grown up and got married. She and her husband were just a little harder, so she thought she could try to participate in foster care. But she was also worried that the family was not well-off and the welfare home would leave the child alone.
A Bin was particularly happy on his birthday.
The first time I went to the welfare home, Liao Xuexian visited and listened to the teacher's life experiences of orphans and disabled children, and couldn't help but wipe away tears.
After hearing the welfare home teacher said that he would come to the village to see the children every week and provide training for villagers, Liao Xuexian began to believe that the welfare home is not to get rid of the burden, but to really want to do good things with the villagers.
"Everyone in the village said I am brave." Deng Ziying, who is also the first group of foster mothers, said that when she visited the welfare home, she had no idea at all, but as soon as she walked into the room, there was a boy about four or five years old. He looked at her with big eyes and kept holding her hand and refused to let go. It was this moment that made her muster up the courage.
A Bin and her mother exercise in the small square in the village.
"My heart suddenly became soft." Deng Ziying said, "At that moment, I made up my mind to give these babies a home no matter how difficult it is."
Just like that, at the end of 2000, the first batch of 12 orphans and disabled children came to Wangjiatan.
Wang Bingneng said that after the first batch of orphans and disabled children came to the village, the foster parents treated them like their biological children. My parents take them out to visit every day, and when relatives gather on holidays, they will also take these orphans with them.
"Everyone has found that these orphans and disabled children are no different from their own children. Some of them are very smart and cute, and they are liked." Wang Bingneng said that after the villagers gave up their concerns, more and more families signed up for foster care for orphans and disabled children. Soon, the second and third batches of children came to the village...
1 mothers, 21 years, 31 babies,
4 April 1, it was cold, and Axia untied her urine on the bed at noon.
htmlOn April 9, Axia would take the initiative to hand over the headband when combing her hair in the morning. htmlOn April 15, Axia will take the initiative to collect the quilt when it rains.On May 24, Abin will put an umbrella for his mother when it rains.
…
A Bin helps his mother Cao Liqiong wash clothes at home.
Writing a growth diary for Abin (pseudonym) and Axia (pseudonym) is something that 54-year-old foster mother Cao Liqiong has to do every day. Two thick growth diaries record the daily growth and changes of Abin and Axia, and also record the little things Cao Liqiong has made to the children.
Cao Liqiong is one of the third batch of villagers participating in the foster care of orphans and disabled children in Wangjiatan Village. The first orphan in her foster care is Panzhanhua. People in the village are used to calling this woman who speaks loudly and has a carefree personality "Lao Cao". Since 2001, Cao Liqiong's family has adopted 31 orphans and disabled children, making it one of the families with the largest number of orphans and disabled children in the village.
Abin took a photo with his mother at home when he was a child.
"A healthy and younger children usually take them away after a few months of raising them."Cao Liqiong said that Abin and Axia have lived with her for many years because of their natural disability.
19-year-old Abin is born with intellectual disabilities. When he came to Cao Liqiong's house at the age of 6, he didn't even wear clothes and often wet the bed at night. 14-year-old Axia has intelligence and vision disorders, and can hear a little sound, but he can't speak since he was a child.
In order to cultivate Abin's ability to take care of himself, Cao Liqiong had to wake him up to go to the toilet every night. After two or three years, Abin slowly stopped wetting the bed. "I have been learning to wear clothes for four or five years, and now he can basically take care of himself. "Cao Liqiong said.
Cao Liqiong has to put in more effort to take care of disabled children like A Bin and A Xia. If you are negligent, you may have an accident.
A Bin helps her mother pick corn in the field.
One day in 2017, 14-year-old A Bin suddenly lost. Cao Liqiong still feels scared. That day, she asked A Bin to go outside the gate to send the car keys to her brother. It was only a few dozen meters away. A Bin didn't come back for a few minutes after going out.
"I shouted several times but no one agreed, and my whole body suddenly became cold from head to his heel. "Cao Liqiong said that she quickly mobilized the villagers to go out to search, but from the evening, I found it after searching the whole village houses and the houses, but I still couldn't find it. After calling the police that night, Cao Liqiong didn't close her eyes all night. She sat in the yard and stared blankly at the gate.
"I opened the door, but I was worried that he would knock on the door when he came back. I couldn't hear it. "She said.
It was not until 2:30 p.m. the next day that the villagers found Abin by a pond in a bay of the back mountain of the village. It turned out that he was playing with piles of stones by the pond and played all night.
stayed on the mountain for a night, and Abin was trembling with cold. Cao Liqiong quickly cooked a large bowl of brown sugar eggs for him. After he finished eating, he held him in the bed and slowly coaxed him to sleep. "From then, I never dared to let him go out alone again. "Cao Liqiong said.
Wu Fashun said that now, most of the orphans in foster care in Wangjiatan are disabled children with severe diseases such as cerebral palsy, epilepsy, and Down syndrome, and the care of foster care families is getting more and more difficult.
A Bin followed his mother to the field to pick vegetables.
In order to better take care of these special children, Kunming Children's Welfare Home will regularly train foster parents to teach them how to make nutritious meals, daily care, rehabilitation exercises for their children, and invest hundreds of thousands of yuan to transform the original village primary school into a rehabilitation center. Foster parents have to take their children to exercise at a designated location every day.
39-year-old Li Chunmei is the youngest foster mother in Wangjiatan. Her parents started foster care in 2004 After getting married, Li Chunmei quit her job at the front desk of the hotel and went back to her hometown to take care of foster children with her parents. So far, Li Chunmei and her parents have fostered more than 50 orphans and disabled children in total.
Li Chunmei's family currently has two girls in foster care. 17-year-old daughter Xiaomin (pseudonym) has Down syndrome and 9-year-old daughter Xiaoyu (pseudonym) has congenital cerebral palsy.
Xiaoyu, who suffers from cerebral palsy, cannot even move her tongue, and it is very difficult to eat and swallow. Every time she makes a nutritious meal for Xiaoyu, Li Chunmei has to chop the vegetables fine, but even so, she has to feed them at least thirty or forty minutes each time. "Feed, spit out, feed them again, and vomit them out again, repeat several times before she can eat a spoonful of rice. "
" sometimes feels very tired, but after getting along for a long time, I feel that these dolls are actually very cute. "Li Chunmei said that when she was doing housework, Xiaoyu was sitting in a wheelchair and would try hard to look at her and smile at her.
"She can't speak, and I feel very satisfied with a smile. "Li Chunmei said.
Abin followed his mother to the field to dig potato .
"Why do my family have to raise so many children? ”
23-year-old Yang Tian is Cao Liqiong’s biological daughter. She has a question hidden in her heart since she was a child: “Why do my family have to raise so many children? "
Cao Liqiong and her husband Yang Zhifu have a son and a daughter. When the family first started to do foster care for orphanage children, Yang Tian was only two years old. As a daughter, Yang Tian should have been the "pearl in the palm of her family."But since she can remember, there have been children sent from welfare homes at home, and she has never been the focus of her parents' attention.
Because Cao Liqiong often has to take care of the baby at night, Yang Tian has been accustomed to sleeping alone since she was 4 years old. My mother didn’t have much time to take care of her. On the other hand, every day after school, she had to help her mother watch the child, feed and wash dishes.
"Since I went to elementary school, I had to wash dishes every day when I came back because my mother was holding the child and had no time to do housework." Yang Tian said that her brother, who was in junior high school at that time, had to help see the child when he came back on weekends.
The most helpless thing made Yang Tian feel the most. She was in high school and went home during the summer vacation. At that time, there was a baby over one year old at home. Her mother asked her to help take care of her, but the baby kept crying, and no matter how she coaxed her, it didn't work.
"In the end, I really had no choice, so I cried with him." Yang Tian said. Later, when his father Yang Zhifu went home and saw his daughter sitting on the sofa crying, he quickly took the baby away. "My dad coaxed the baby and came to coax me again. Now I still feel amused and laughed."
What made Yang Tian "rung" for a long time is that from childhood to adulthood, his mother sometimes doesn't attend the parent-teacher meeting. But she has never missed the parent meeting for fostering children at home.
A Bin takes his sister Panzhanhua’s children to play at home.
Cao Liqiong always remembers his daughter's grievances and feels very guilty. "I really spend more time on these foster dolls than my own children." She said, "Because teachers and classmates know that they are orphans, if I don't go to a parent-teacher meeting and don't give more love, they will be looked down upon by my classmates."
"The focus of parents is on us, so my younger sister will feel that we have separated a lot of fatherly and motherly love that originally belonged to her." Pan Zhanhua said that from childhood to adulthood, her younger sister Yang Tian has always been wearing old clothes. "Sometimes my father brings back delicious food, and is afraid that my sister will snatch my part away from me, so she will quietly tell me to hide it quickly and not let A Tian discover it."
In Pan Zhanhua's memory, from childhood to adulthood, whenever she encounters difficulties, her parents will stand in front of her as soon as possible.
When I was in elementary school, there was a boy in the class who was very naughty and scratched Pan Zhanhua's face. After school, Cao Liqiong took her to the boy's house without saying a word, and must let the little boy apologize to Pan Zhanhua in person.
Foster mother Li Chunmei accompanied her two daughters to bask in the sun and play in the yard.
After joining the work, Pan Zhanhua broke up with her first love boyfriend. Cao Liqiong immediately called to comfort her when she learned about it. "How can life be smooth sailing? If you are sad, go home. I'll kill a chicken for you." My mother's simple words made her get out of the haze of broken heart.
In 2019, Pan Zhanhua was preparing to marry her boyfriend, and Cao Liqiong asked that the man’s parents must come to the house to propose marriage in person. "Let his parents know that you have a father and a mother, and this is your home," said Cao Liqiong.
Before getting married, Cao Liqiong prepared a four-piece bed set for Pan Zhanhua for dowry. She spent two months embroidering a large cross stitch according to Pan Zhanhua’s wedding photos and her lover. When meeting with her in-laws, Cao Liqiong kept reminding: "This is my daughter's life experience, I'll be nice to her in the future."
Yang Tian, who was very rebellious when she was in junior high school, gradually understood the difficulty of her mother when she grew up. "Every time I go home, I feel that my mother is getting older again. She is really too tired. If it were me, I would definitely not be able to do it." She said.
Panzhan Hua and Yang Tian, two girls who have been accused of since childhood, have now become sisters who can say everything. In 2017, Yang Tian went to Zhejiang to attend university. Pan Zhanhua, who was already working, insisted on accompanying her to register until she was sent to the school dormitory and had all the daily necessities purchased before she came back.
"When I was a child, my mother didn't have time to attend my younger sister's parent-teacher meeting. This was her first time going far away. I must send her to her for my parents." Pan Zhanhua said.
Abin’s photo with his parents.
Separate from children again and again
has become a "compulsory course" for every foster family
In the past 22 years, the total number of orphans and disabled children in Wangjiatan has reached more than 1,560.Some children are adopted by kind-hearted people after foster care for a period of time. Even if they are not adopted, according to the regulations of the welfare home, they must leave the foster care family after they are over 18 years old and gradually live independently.
Separating from your child again and again has become a "compulsory course" for every foster family.
Wang Bingneng's sister Wang Bingxiu has participated in foster care for orphans and disabled children since 2015. The first child she brought with her was Acheng (pseudonym). She was only 10 months old when the welfare home was sent to her and weighed only 6 kilograms. Ah Cheng had a disabled leg because his legs hurt and often cried and didn't sleep at night. Wang Bingxiu could only carry him back and forth in the living room. "I have to coax the whole night and cry if I put it down." Wang Bingxiu said that in the more than a year he had been taking care of this child, he could only sleep for an hour or two almost every night. Due to long-term lack of sleep, she also suffered from the problem of hypertension and , and she still has to take antihypertensive medicine every day.
After more than a year of careful care, Ah, who was 2 years old, grew to 13 kilograms, with a chubby face and her originally disabled legs could walk slowly. At this moment, the Welfare Home informed Wang Bingxiu that a family wanted to adopt Acheng and would take the child away in a few days.
"I was sad for a year after Acheng left, and I miss him until now." Wang Bingxiu said that Acheng was taking a nap when she was picked up. She couldn't bear to wake up the child, but she turned around and cried into tears.
A foster mother did rehabilitation exercises for her daughter with cerebral palsy in the village rehabilitation center.
The next day, Wang Bingxiu really wanted her child, so she asked her husband to drive her to the welfare home. The couple spent another night with the child in the welfare home. "That's the last side." Wang Bingxiu said, "The dean told me that the doll was adopted by a good family and enjoyed it. I think so, it's good for the doll."
"Every time a doll is sent away in the village, a mother will cry." Cao Liqiong, who raised 31 orphans, has experienced this many times. Cao Liqiong's family has a large photo album, which contains photos of her and the foster orphan. She remembers each child's name clearly. "No matter where the babies go, they are our children and our lifelong concern."
A few years ago, a charity organization called "Baby Go Home" found Pan Zhanhua and told her that she could help her find her biological parents through DNA comparison. Pan Zhanhua thought for a long time and said, "It's been so many years, I don't want to look for it anymore."
"Don't be stupid. You should try your best to find it if you can." Cao Liqiong advised her.
"You are my parents." Pan Zhanhua still refused.
"One code is the same as one code. The one who raises you is the parents, and the one who gave birth to you is also the parents." Finally, under Cao Liqiong's persuasion, Pan Zhanhua went to make a DNA comparison, but he has not found his biological parents yet.
Abin and his mother took a photo after picking vegetables in the field.
"There are so many babies calling me mother, I'm content."
19-year-old Abin, after he turned 18 last year, was originally going to be picked up by the welfare home and sent to a farm in the western suburbs of Kunming to start adapting to his independent life. However, due to the impact of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, his separation from his parents was also postponed until the end of this year.
"A Bin has never left me for more than 10 years. People in the village say he is my guard." When talking about his son who has been raising him for 13 years, Cao Liqiong was reluctant to leave.
A Bin, who has an intellectual disability, is now basically able to take care of himself under the education of his parents and can also do some not-so-hard housework and farming work. When he went to the field to pick vegetables with his mother, he never let his mother carry vegetables, and always rushed to carry the basket on his body.
A Bin likes to sing. Although he may not understand the meaning of the lyrics, his favorite song is "Mother". "I believe that he can feel the warmth of home." Cao Liqiong said that Abin was outside and he would not follow him if someone gave him food.
"He knows that this is his home." Cao Liqiong said.
On the day of Abin's birthday, my mother looked at Abin who was eating cakes, her eyes full of love and reluctance.
May 20 this year is Abin’s 19th birthday. This may be Abin’s last birthday at home before he lived independently. On this day, Cao Liqiong called all his children working in Kunming home and asked Panzhanhua to buy a big birthday cake .
In the evening, the birthday candles lit up, and the whole family gathered in a circle to sing a happy birthday song for Abin. After singing, Cao Liqiong asked Abin to make a wish. Although Abin didn't understand what wish meant, he couldn't stop smiling and blew out the candle in one breath.
"I made a wish for Abin, hoping that he will be healthy and happy all his life." Cao Liqiong said.
Founder mother Li Chunmei is feeding her daughter who suffers from cerebral palsy.
According to data released by the Ministry of Civil Affairs in May 2021, the total number of orphans in my country has decreased from 570,000 in 2012 to 190,000, a decrease of about 66%. At present, the number of orphans and disabled children in Wangjiatan has decreased from more than 300 at the most, accounting for nearly one-quarter of the village's population to about 90.
"It is a good thing if there are fewer dolls, which means that fewer dolls are trafficked and abandoned now." Wang Bingneng said.
Like Panzhanhua, many orphans and disabled children have grown up now, and most of the parents who raise them are nearly 60 years old and have hair full of hair.
Because her husband Yang Zhifu used to be a contractor, Cao Liqiong's family built a two-story building as early as 1995. But since participating in foster care for orphans and disabled children, the couple has devoted almost all their energy to taking care of these children. The small building that once envied the villagers has become an old house for nearly 30 years and has never been renovated. But Cao Liqiong never envies other people's big houses.
"I am content with so many dolls calling me mom," she said.
Reprinted from: Xinhua Daily Telegraph
Author: Li Yin, Pang Mingguang, Zhou Lei
Source: Xinhua News Agency
