A Strong Will

by Robin Munro, senior writer

Meihekou, China – At the end of a winding dirt road in Meihekou – a city in Northern China’s Jilin Province – behind a green door decorated in red for luck, a teenage girl spends her days engaged in the usual teenage activities. She text messages her friends on her cell phone. Chats online. Listens to music. Paints her long, manicured fingernails in sparkly purple polish. And dreams of her future.

At 19, she should be preparing to leave her childhood home – to pursue her goals, and explore the world. But for Jie Lin (name changed), dreams remain just dreams. And independence a fantasy. Born with a condition that causes severe muscle atrophy, Jie Lin is, essentially, paralyzed in her arms and legs – they are thin as reeds, skin to bone, and folded beneath her like marionette sticks. As her body grew, it became too heavy for her to move from laying to sitting on her own. Her foster mother carries her to the bathroom. To leave the house, she must be pushed in a stroller.

“Sometimes I feel like I have no future,” she tells Sue Liu, who has known Jie Lin since 2000, shortly after Sue joined the Holt China staff in Meihekou.

Jie Lin has soulful, sad eyes, but her expression is often overtaken by laughter. Her hair is short and shag-cut, her face lovely and wise.

Holt has sponsored Jie Lin’s care since 1999, when she was 8-years-old. That year, as the Meihekou Ministry of Civil Affairs struggled to meet rising expenses, Holt took over funding for the local foster care program. To date, Holt and sponsors have invested more than 3 million Chinese Renminbi, or nearly a half million dollars, into local foster care, which has provided for as many as 60 children at once. At present, Holt sponsors care for 38 children in Meihekou and 22 in neighboring Tonghua. Sponsorship covers basic necessities, including food, shelter and clothing, and is often the only source of income for foster families.

When children turn 18, sponsorship ends. But special needs are common, and many children continue to depend on their foster families – and Holt – for care and support beyond the age of 18.

“What can we do?” Sue asks, worried about what will become of the children who “age out” of sponsorship.

Many would like to work, but their physical disabilities limit them. Jie Lin wants to open a small shop selling jewelry or clothes. She says she wishes her life had some meaning. It’s so boring, she tells us, to stay home all the time.

But limitations, including the start-up funds to open a stall, keep her from realizing this dream. Jie Lin needs help moving her own body. To accomplish the constant tasks – and constant movement – required of such work would also require extraordinary will.

But will, Jie Lin possesses. In spades.

She feeds herself and drinks from a cup without using her hands. Her calligraphy is astonishing. She fills pages and pages of notebook paper with elaborate Chinese characters, holding a pen between her teeth. To type text messages, she uses her chin.

When Jie Lin first came into care, Holt wanted to buy her a wheelchair so that she could attend school. But roads in her neighborhood are unpaved, and difficult to maneuver even in a car. Instead, Holt provided a tutor, who came to her home to give her lessons in Chinese, Math and English. Brought her outside to the see ice, for the first time, in winter. Posted maps on her walls so she could study the world.

“I have a strong will,” she types, when asked by Sue to demonstrate how she texts. “I never give up.”

Jie Lin chats with her foster mother through a window in her room, which opens onto a small kitchen. Given the resources, her foster parents will continue to care for her for the rest of her life. To feed her, clothe her, and carry her to their outdoor toilet – on dirt, on ice, in rain, in the middle of the night. But her parents’ health is deteriorating. Her foster mother has chronic bronchitis and a heart condition, her foster father diabetes.

Despite poor physical health, Jie Lin’s foster mother is cheerful and boisterous, laughs easily and welcomes us warmly. Although mostly confined to a small room – with a television, a stack of magazines to read, and a big picture window with a view of the brick porch out front – Jie Lin has constant visitors, and is surrounded by activity.

Her friends, of whom she has many, often tell her to think of happy things.

She realizes that many people care for and love her, and visit her often. But still, it’s hard not to feel as though she’s missing out.

Sue tells us no program exists for people with disabilities in Meihekou – no skills training for income generation, no way to become self-sufficient. I think of Ilsan, Holt’s historic care center for orphaned and abandoned children in Korea, where no child ever “ages out.” Those not adopted grow to adulthood in care, often living out their whole lives with the people who raised them. The Holt School was founded there in 1964 to teach children with mental disabilities, which opened the door for special education throughout Korea. Ilsan also provides a workshop for the residents, many of them severely disabled, to learn crafts to sell to visitors, giving them a sense of accomplishment and purpose.

Holt has already applied a similar model in three Chinese provinces, where children with special needs participate in knitting groups to learn vocational skills and enhance self-esteem. But like most programs in China, Holt partnered with the local orphanages to create these knitting groups. Meihekou has no orphanage.

And unlike Ilsan, Holt’s China programs are relatively new; only within the last two years, as sponsored children come of age, has Holt confronted the need for continued support.

“We should keep helping kids who were sponsored,” comments Jessica Palmer, Holt’s Waiting Child program manager, as we drive away from Jie Lin’s home. Jessica finds families for children who often wait longer to be adopted – because of a special need, or because they are older. Some end up waiting too long. When children turn 14, they are no longer eligible for adoption from China.

“We have so many of these children in Meihekou,” Sue says of Jie Lin – and of children who age out of sponsored care but continue to depend on their foster families.

In the afternoon, we visit another boy in Holt-sponsored foster care – a boy with dwarfism, who still depends on his foster mother for many of his basic physical needs. Like Jie Lin, he is also 19. He is also a typical teenager in so many ways – he poses for the camera with his hand on his chin, has stylishly cut hair, teases and jokes with his foster sister, and desperately wants a laptop. Over and over, he tells us he wants a laptop. Sue explains to him that sponsorship can only cover basic needs – that so many children need to be fed, to be clothed, to be given the love and support of a family. He acknowledges this with a smile, but still won’t let up about the laptop – amusingly, as he stands beside a giant computer monitor on the desk in the front room.

Like Jie Lin, this boy – Bai Ze (name changed) – will always depend on his foster mother, who never remarried after her husband died, seven years ago, because she feared a new husband wouldn’t accept her foster children. She is utterly devoted to the two children in her care – a sweet 17-year-old girl who hopes to become a nurse, and Bai Ze. The house smells of popcorn when we enter, and activity fills the front room, where the foster mother’s elderly father sits, smiling, on the bed. A neighbor girl has come to play, and others walk by the open door, saying greetings in Mandarin. It is a cheerful home – with posters for good fortune, family portraits and an aquarium full of huge, colorful fish. I’m so glad that Holt sponsors this family – and that the only thing Bai Ze lacks in life is a laptop.