The Boy by the Bus
In September of last year, my wife Nancy and I travelled to China to bring home our daughter Nina. What an amazing experience. What a vast country China is and what incredible people. We truly fell in love with them. Our heart also went out to them. While we were there Nancy and I had opportunity to visit Nina’s orphanage. We met some amazing women working there; long days for an average of 86 cents per day. While Nina was able to leave that place, most children are not so fortunate.
It has been estimated that the world has more than 143 million true orphans. A staggering number. In China alone, there are now almost two millions abandonments happening every year (mostly girls). Several times over during our visit, a Chinese national would come up to Nancy and I, look at Nina and say in broken english, “lucky baby.” There’s good reason for that. Of those two million abandonments, many will die. Left out in the barren wilderness, a dumpster or gutter . . . some of these babies are even physically killed by family members. The survivors will end up in an orphanage, with the vast majority of them never being adopted; staying there until they are barely old enough to work and fend for themselves.
Because of China’s “one child per family” laws that levies a heavy fine and tax burden on families that choose to have more than one child and the fact that the average annual income in China is hovering just above $3000 per year (USD), most families simply can’t afford two children. Traditional Chinese values place heavy dominance on having boys because they grow up to be men who stay close to the parents, watching after them in their old age.
There is an alternative to life in the orphanage or being adopted for orphans in China. It’s not a pleasant one.
On our last day in Beijing, our adoption travel group had just finished a small shopping time that afternoon. As we were climbing onto the bus, several poor and street vendors began to approach the bus. Just as quickly as they came, they started moving on to another bus as we boarded. Right as we were boarding, we heard some terrible screaming.
It was gut wrenching what we saw.
A little boy, no older that six. Dirty from head to toe and dressed in rags. The woman yelling at him was ripping a small deck of playing cards out of his hand and verbally lashing out at him in an extreme way. Then I remembered the boy. He had been on the street a few minutes earlier playing with his cards as we went by. He was crying in despair and getting a severe emotional beating a few feet away for failing to “produce” enough when we walked by. He had nowhere to turn. It was almost unbearable to watch. The boy reminded me so much of our middle son Clay.
You’re probably thinking what Nancy and I did, “just give the lady 10 Yuan so she’ll lay off.” Tried to, but Rosa (our Chinese guide) physically held me back stopped me. She said it would solve the immediate need but add to the longer term problem. At that point I’m thinking, “Rosa, I’m into immediate needs.” Moments later the police showed up to break up the crowd, but they did nothing about the child’s plight.
Just as love knows no boarders, neither do the depths of human fallibility. In China, many orphans are created when children like this little boy are exploited. A person like the woman with him comes to the rural village where he lives and promises the parents that if they let her take him to the city, she will give him a better life. After a few years of exploitation and abuse, the child is discarded and picked up by an orphanage, if lucky.
No happy ending on this one. We pulled away watching the boy in incredible emotional and physical suffering. We prayed together on the bus for this child and for the woman. They are both somewhere at this very moment. Please pray for them as well.
“Jesus turn a light on in their life. Break the cycle. Help them come to know the freedom and hope that exists in you.”
