Children of the quake: single kids and orphans

Posted Tuesday, May 27, 2008 2:19 PM

Melinda Liu

The loss of so many children in the May 12 earthquake -- estimates range from 5,500 to 10,000 or more -- has prompted the Chinese government to announce a new exception to its "one-child" family planning policy. Applied mainly among urban couples, the three-decade-old "one-child" regulation has meant that many parents who lost sons and daughters in the quake became childless overnight.

(Rural Chinese families typically are allowed to have two kids if the first-born is a daughter, and families of non-Han Chinese ethnic origin are allowed two ore more kids. Therefore larger families are not uncommon among families of the Tibetan and Qiang ethnic minority group -- of which there are many near the quake epicenter, which took place in the Aba Autonomous Tibetan and Qiang Prefecture.)

Now, urban couples whose single children died young are being told that each can get a certificate allowing a second birth. Of course, this policy relaxation won't bring back loved ones who are lost forever. But the idea could help comfort some distraught parents in Sichuan and dull growing grassroots anger over shoddy construction standards that apparently allowed so many schools to come tumbling down, during peak classroom hours no less.

Visiting the ruins of the devastated Juyuan School in Dujiangyan recently, I saw a number of parents haranguing a government delegation about the so-called doufucha gongcheng or "bean-curd engineering" (meaning substandard building) of the collapsed school. The disturbance ultimately escalated into an emotional grassroots riot.

The quake could also create an increase in the numbers of Chinese couples looking to adopt kids and orphans available for adoption. Here is my colleague Manuela's interview with Robert Glover, head of Care for Children which  runs 180 orphanages throughout China, including nine child welfare institutions in the quake zone.

Here's an update on children of the quake: Chinese authorities revealed that thousands of kids and parents separated by the disaster have been reunited by social workers. More than 7,000 in fact.  That came from Ye Lu, director of social welfare at the provincial Civil Affairs Department. He also said "a little more than 1000 children remained unclaimed or orphaned," and that authorities have been flooded with calls from Chinese parents seeking to adopt quake orphans. “We’re still getting thousands of calls per week asking about how to adopt, but we are still hoping to find the parents of these 1,000 kids," he said.

Suffer, the children

Chinese orphanages are gearing up to take care of those who lost parents in the Sichuan quake.

By Manuela Zoninsein | Newsweek Web Exclusive

May 22, 2008 | Updated: 5:02  p.m. ET May 22, 2008

Of all the wrenching images emerging from China's devastating earthquake, those of the hundreds of children crushed in their schools are probably the most poignant. But as grieving parents mourned their children, aid workers were rushing to help another vulnerable group: those left orphaned by the disaster. Chinese authorities announced Thursday that 4,000 children lost their parents on May 12—a terrible toll in a disaster where the number of official deaths now tops 50,000.

Care for Children, a private organization that runs more than 180 orphanages in over 30 provinces as well as assisting state facilities, is one of the groups trying to help the youngest victims. NEWSWEEK's Manuela Zoninsein spoke to Robert Glover, executive director of the Beijing-based group, about what he found during his recent visit to the quake-hit Chengdu area. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: How did the earthquake affect the children in your care? Robert Glover: We know that nine child welfare institutions we work with were affected; they are in Chengdu, Deyang, Mianyang, Chongqing, Bazhong, Neijiang, Zigong, Yibin, Abazhou. On this most recent trip [to the quake zone] we were able to visit the first three; we don't know about the extent of damage to others. [At these three] all the people were fine in all of the orphanages, though some orphanage buildings and foster care families' homes collapsed. The biggest part is the psychological impact. People have never experienced anything like this. The only injury was a man with both legs bandaged with rough plaster casts. When the earthquake struck he got most of the children out of the building, but the last few were stuck so he climbed through a window and then with two children in his arms jumped out of the window and broke his legs.

Earlier this week China observed three minutes of silence at the start of a national mourning period. Can you describe what that was like?

[On Monday], when we visited the Chengdu Social Welfare Institutions, we stood with the staff to commence the three-day period of national mourning. It began at 2:28 p.m., marking the very moment the massive quake struck in Wenchuan County, Sichuan. Flags flew at half-mast; the people wore white flowers and, heads bowed, held hands. Across the country, horns and sirens wailed in grief. The staff at Chengdu were very upset, and as I held the hand of the orphanage director she started to cry.

How are people reacting to the aid you delivered?

[When] we arrived in Zitong we were met by the young [orphanage] director, who clearly was in shock. She told us that they had got all the children out of the orphanage safely. [The building suffered significant structural damage in the quake, and the children are now living in tents.] They had already received children from Anxian, close to Beichuan; it was a bit unclear if they were orphaned or still waiting to find out about their families. We spent some time with two 10-year-old girls that had been evacuated from a school in Anxian; they were clearly in shock, but I managed to get a little smile from one of them when we gave them a Mei Mei doll.

What does the structural damage look like?

On Tuesday we left Chengdu midday for the Mianyang orphanage, which is 100 miles north of Chengdu in a town called Zitong and closer to the epicenter. Over 10,000 people died in this region, with 75,000 injured and 15,000 missing. En route we saw again many ambulances, rescue teams and trucks with aid on the road. As we got closer, the terrain became more mountainous, and more and more damage could be seen to buildings. Most people had moved out into makeshift tents. As we went through Mianyang it was clear the town was hit very hard. Many people sat on the side of the road staring into space. When we arrived in Zitong I was surprised that no cleanup had taken place—lots of rubble on the streets from collapsed buildings.