The red thread of Chinese legend extends to Maine

The professors who planned and led L-A College’s “China’s Orphans” program, the focus of recent 10-part series in this newspaper, would like to express their sincere appreciation to their students, those with whom they work in China, and those among the Sun Journal’s readership who have opened their hearts to the children in China.

The course is built upon the idea that deep and valuable learning happens when we engage in efforts to address complex, real-world needs. It is a service-learning course, which implies creating reciprocal relationships between learners and the recipients of the service offered. The students find in the process of offering their hands and hearts to the orphans, they also gain friends and colleagues among the staff and caretakers of these children, all of whom have the children’s best interests in mind. With open minds and hearts, we all teach and learn from one another.

As professors, we admire our students for the way they face the stark inequities of life apparent in the lives of orphans, and how they embrace the children, eager to give all they have. In such moments, students say, their worlds turn upside down. They transform. They see and appreciate more fully the previously taken-for-granted abundance in their own lives, and experience a profound sense of privilege to serve the needs of these children.

Students are stunned by the caring gestures orphans show toward each another; they are taken aback by the kindnesses shown them as strangers in this faraway land. They frequently write about new and different understandings of what having “family” might mean – they seem to suddenly see more clearly how we all depend upon relationships in order to survive and thrive. In their own more vulnerable state as visitors in China, they seem to embrace their interdependence more fully, as well as the obligations and responsibilities that go with it.

While conditions may vary, what is consistent is that the men and women in China who care for orphans, care deeply. Without spoken language, but with clear gestures, the only caretaker of 14 Chinese orphaned infants showed how she managed to feed an infant with the worst cleft palate many of us had ever seen. (The caretaker didn’t have access to a cleft palate nipple.) She reached into her drawer and brought out an eye dropper. She fed this infant with drop-by-drop patience – even though she had 13 other infants to feed.

The director of an orphanage shared his plans for how he was going to provide wedding ceremonies when the orphans under his care were old enough to marry. Program partners, Migyeong Kang and Elaine Hennessy of the “Dream Home” in Shenyang, dream not only of a future home for “their children,” they already provide the real heart of any home with their attentive care.

The Chinese are a proud people with a long and rich history. The one-child policy was set into motion so the world’s largest population wouldn’t use up all of its resources. The Chinese love their children. Because of long-standing cultural expectations and current economic necessities, peasants who make up 70 percent of the population need a healthy son to care for them in their old age.

Without Social Security or social services, people sometimes abandon their female or handicapped children. They leave them in public places, wrapped in blankets. They wait and watch to see that someone will take them to an orphanage. They grieve. They do not forget.

The conditions in China’s orphanages are improving. Doors are opening. We go to China hoping to establish relationships and to help the children left behind. Any of those children could have been one of ours. Any of those children could be as special as our own. Any of those children can be wonderful human beings, making their own unique contributions to our world.

Imagine the ancient Chinese legend that sees an invisible red thread connecting those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but it never breaks.

We see this red thread circling the globe, running to those readers of the Sun Journal who have responded so kindly to the stories of these orphans.

Thank you.

Dr. Rose Cleary, Ph.D., of Portland, is director of the honors program at the University of Southern Maine, and an associate professor at L-A College. She is a co-organizer of the college’s “China’s Orphan’s” program, with Dr. Deb Como-Kepler, Ph.D., of Brunswick, and Dr. Roxie Black, Ph.D., of Cumberland.

The Sun Journal’s series is available at china.sunjournal.com.