Saturday, October 14:
This morning I volunteered at an orphanage located on the outskirts of Beijing. My friend from Tsinghua University and her mom invited me and another classmate to come along. At 8am we left on the subway and after several stops we crammed into a dirty, old taxi for another 45 min to the orphanage. Outside the taxi window I could see that the sceneray had changed. I saw rural Beijing where trees and dirt roads had replaced crowded streets and high-rise buildings. We turned down a small street to the gates of the small orphanage. The gates pulled open and we stopped on the empty lot between a long, flat building on the left and an old, junky playground on the right. About 15-20 little children were running around the lot and playing on the old playset in the dirt. As soon as we stepped out of the taxi the children came to us shouting “Ni Hao! Ni Hao!” The children were all about 4-8 years old and grabbed ahold of us wanting to play. We crouched down and greeted them with a smile. “Ni hao! Xiao peng you, ni hao!” we said. They wanted to just jump right onto our laps and play!
We went inside the old orphanage building and the overwhelming smell of dirty soiled clothes, toilets and a damp, unclean kitchen was shocking to me. I did not want to breathe. The orphanage was a flat building with a row of rooms all along one side of a main hall way and windows opposite facing the playground. We put our bags down and came into a room full of cribs and sleeping babies. In this room alone there were about 12 babies. Naturally we all split up to greet them one by one and hold each of them. I fell in love with the first little baby I met. I peeped over the crib and saw his two big, black, twinkling eyes looking up at me! He was about 10 months old and his puffy cheeks and teeny-tiny hands were so soft! As soon as I touched him a big smile grew across his face and he even gave a little giggle! He had a very serious cleft palate which split a gap down the middle of his top lip and a large growth obscured half of his tiny, little nose. I wondered how he could breathe. I picked him up and held him close and we just smiled at each other. I wished I could just take him home with me.
Outside the children were playing with old toys and strollers. Sadly some had been playing with old tiles, metal chair legs or trash found on the empty lot. On my way outside a little boy about 1 1/2 years old was strapped into a stroller crying his little heart out. I went over to him and saw his eyes swelling up with tears. I picked him up in my arms and we went outside to walk around and meet the other children. He had stopped crying. I held him with me all the rest of the morning and we played with all the kids and made many new friends. The children were always saying “Bao wo! Bao wo!” (Hold me! Hold me!) and calling us Mama or Baba. The children came from all sorts of different circumstances and ages; from little babies to some kids 12 years of age. Some loved to talk and some would only cry. Several children suffered from physical or mental disabilities and some were confined to wheelchairs.
After playing with the children all morning, we helped spoon feed the babies and those who could not feed themselves. Then just before noon we helped put the children to sleep for their afternoon nap. As we put them to bed they were still telling us “Bao wo! Bao wo!”and wanting us to pick them up and hold them. It was very sad to leave the orphanage this afternoon because we had met so many beautiful, sweet, little children. They do not have much of anything and all they wanted from us was to have someone to hold them, play with them and love them. This was an experience that I will never forget.
