I have been working on gathering information about the area/town where L was found in China.
I started out searching on on Google searching in English, then moved on to Baidu cutting and pasting some characters sent to me by a friend. Baidu requires extensive use of Google Translator. Last night, I also learned how to type in characters, so now I have a little more freedom to specialize my searches. Somewhat pathetically, I can eat up hours and hours in front of the computer doing this.
Randomly, I found a forum where several people from L’s finding town were posting. I asked a friend to translate a quick note from me explaining our situation and asking if they would be willing to answer some questions about the town for me. Last night, I sent it to two people. I didn’t really expect they would answer.
To my shock, I just recieved a message from one of them offering to email with me (I think, based on an internet translator). I am not quite sure what to ask.
To be honest, my real questions are about the one child policy and how it is enforced in this area. The person also mentioned they have a 5 year old son and a 3 year old daughter, so that in itself raises all kinds of questions for me.
I am thinking the one child policy questions should probably wait until we build some kind of rapport, right? Maybe I will ask about the industry in the area, farming, and education costs.
The world is a very small place.
Wow – that’s great!!! Any info you’ll get will be more than you have. Congrats!!
I think you can be upfront. ask away. Ask a ton of questions but preface by saying that you are very curious for L’s sake and that you appriciate anything they feel like sharing and respect if there is anything they don’t feel comfortable. you might be surprised by the answers you get!
That’s wonderful that you made this connection! I think that you should keep your initial questions at the level of what you said in your request-about the town. But you can still give an indication of what you’re thinking in the way you ask the questions (yes, I realize this is complicated with a translator) and provide an opening for them to elaborate-just by emphasizing in each question how important it might be to L as she grows up to have an understanding of her early life and how she got to the US, etc. Good luck-I guess I am suggesting a line between being honest about your motives while still giving them an out so you don’t just lose the contact all together. Btw, I have a friend who is a (Mandarin speaking) research fellow in Hunan, and planning to meet me in Beijing to travel together for my adoption-if this is in any way helpful, let me know. ~lmc
How cool!!
Wow! That’s really exciting. Hope the rapport builds nicely in spite of translation.
Oh cool! I’ve started trying to gather information again. Must learn to use Baidu. Could be very helpful. There isn’t a lot of info on LSP’s county – I once found the name of a professor who was from there – am trying to find that info again to contact him and ask some general questions about the area. I don’t know why I didn’t save it at the time. I’m fascinated that you found a discussion board. Definitely take some time to get to know the people on the board first. But wow. That’s very, very cool.