A mother visits her adopted child's birthplace in China
By F.N. D'Alessio
Associated Press
Several years ago, New York novelist and humor columnist Emily Prager heard the question a parent dreads: "Mama, where did I come from?"
And since Prager's daughter, LuLu, had been adopted from China when she was about 7 months old, a full answer was probably more than a 4-year-old could have handled. For potential scariness, the birds and the bees have nothing on Chinese population control policies and child abandonment practices.
So Prager decided to "show, don't tell." She left their Greenwich Village home and took LuLu back to the child's birthplace, the Yangtze River port of Wuhu.
Prager's account of their journey, "Wuhu Diary: On Taking My Adopted Daughter Back to Her Hometown in China," was published earlier this month by Random House.
It's a trip many parents of adoptive Chinese children contemplate, but most usually wait until their children are old enough to understand and remember what they are seeing. LuLu wasn't quite 5 when she went with her mother to spend two months in China.
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"Wuhu Diary: On taking my adopted daughter back to her hometown in china" by Emily Prager, Random House
"I thought that she was ready," Prager said in a recent interview from her summer home in Sag Harbor, N.Y. "She was obviously curious about her origins, and I wanted her to have the experience when her senses and emotions were fresh and genuine. I also wanted to go soon because China was changing so fast."
Prager said it was to be a sort of homecoming journey for herself, too. As a child in the 1950s, she spent 2 1/2 years in Taiwan with her father, an Air Force officer posted to Taipei as an attache.
And she had another — and less attainable — goal.
Foreigners who adopt Chinese children typically learn only the birth date (often approximate) of their children and where they were found abandoned. Since child abandonment is a felony in China, it is done surreptitiously, and information about the birth parents is nonexistent. But Prager hoped that an orphanage caregiver could give her a clue as to what sort of woman LuLu's birth mother might have been. Was she a peasant? A factory worker? A Yangtze boat dweller?
So in April of 1999, Prager set out on what eventually became the quest of a Dona Quixote, tilting at the gates of the Wuhu Orphanage and Nursing Home.
Prager, 49, obviously is a free spirit. She acted in a soap opera in her teens, began a writing career with the National Lampoon, did an advice column for Penthouse magazine and has since written satiric pieces for a wide array of publications. Her short-story collection, "A Visit From the Footbinder," gained notoriety for its bizarre dust-jacket art, and her latest novel, "Roger Fishbite," is a "Lolita" story told from the nymphet's point of view.
But a free spirit may be at a disadvantage in China's regimented society.
Prager had never been in Wuhu before. Adoptions take place in Hefei, about 70 miles away. American adoptive parents have visited Wuhu facilities, but always through prior arrangement.
In the interview, Prager said she had not contacted the orphanage in advance and was not allowed in. LuLu managed to run through the gates and into a courtyard, but was shooed out by an elderly security guard. The abortive visit occurred only hours after U.S. planes bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.
Prager blames that military blunder for her continued frustration in gaining access to the orphanage.
Still, Prager feels that merely seeing the outside of the building affected LuLu: "She was amazing — absolutely bowled over."
During their 1 1/2-month stay in Wuhu, Prager enrolled LuLu in a preschool for two days a week. They explored the city, shopped, watched television and learned to roller skate.
LuLu fell ill several times during their visit and Prager injured her own foot. Her account of China's no-frills medical care system is both sympathetic and accurate.
