China - Part 14 The Orphanage In Changchun

Today, we're going to go on a tour of the orphanage. Unfortunately, some curious little fingers had touched the actual lens of the camera and we took a good number of photos before noticing that "enhancement".

Regardless of the cloudiness in most of the photos, there are some good shots and a particularly good memory from this tour too.

On the drive to the orphanage, we drove thru some of the poorest and run down areas that I think I have ever seen. I began noticing that the buildings were appearing more dilapidated the further we drove.  The apartment buildings were older and had broken windows. Buildings were boarded up.  Some appeared to be bombed out buildings like what you would see in movies or photos after an area gets shelled.  Roofs were caved in and buildings deserted.  The roads were full of huge pot holes and areas of pavement that had been torn up for some type of repair, were not repaved but rather just filled back in with rock.  Real close to the orphanage were people living in essentially tin sheds made up of discarded materials, possibly stripped out of some of the abandoned buildings.  There were people burning cornstalks for heat in thier little huts!

Right by the driveway entrance for the orphanage, there was an old military truck sitting nose to nose with another very old vehicle.  The military truck had been there so long that the rubber had literally rotted completely off of the rims and what remained of it was laying on the concrete.

Unfortunately, I was so taken aback by the conditions around this area that I didn't take any pictures! I was so amazed by what we were seeing that it didn't even cross my mind to snap photos!

I had a thought later on that this area was perhaps old enough to have been rendered unusable after World War II and the occupation of China by Japan, explaining both the bombed out looking buildings as well as the old military truck.  Since the orphanages there are government entities, it would also help to explain why it was built in such an area because I would guess that land would be CHEAP!!

I'm not sure, nor convinced of any of that WWII stuff, but it is logical to me and I think it would be to you too if you saw the area.

So as we turned into the driveway just past the old truck, we drove down this cattle path...  okay, it really wasn't a cattle path but it wasn't much better than one either. It was a long dirt path that was incredibly bumpy. Then when you finally hit pavement, there is about the most hi-tech security gate that I've encountered. It's an accordion style metal folding gate with digital displays/sensors on the side opposite of the guards shack.  There is a photo of it at the Changchun Child Welfare Institute webpage.

Once we went thru that gate, we were in the parking lot shown in this first photo.

So why are we parked so far away from the building on a cold morning when there were no other vehicles in the lot? Who knows...  This building is HUGE and we saw only a little bit of it so that fact has caused me great wonder of just how many kids are in there!?!?

That's the orphanage director who was also at the federal building on the day we got Mr. Caleb.  That's our guide Echo to his right.  We gave them our gifts that we had purchased for them at this point.

A wide view of the main entry way/atrium area.  Our tour started with us going down that hallway to the left of the elevators.

Another shot of the atrium area and you can see the larger playground thru the windows and can also get a glimpse of how far back the building goes with the blue wall on the left of the photograph.

Obviously the playground but you can see the building on both sides of this photo. I'm guessing our tour covered about 3% of the overall building. It can get a little overwhelming when you think of the kiddos that are still in there waiting for a family.

Our first stop on the tour was simply a play room.  Looks pretty much like a day-care center in the U.S.A., does it not?!

Same room...

I believe that this was an actual exercise room for the kiddos.  I think they said something about doing physical therapy for certain types of kids too.

Same room...

I had originally wrote in a post here, that Caleb got a little clingy and didn't want me to put him down. I present this photograph as exhibit A. :-)  That is a HAPPY daddy in this picture!

 

This is obviously one of many bedrooms.  There were beds on the other side of the room too.  That door behind the woman there is a big bathroom that had both squatty potties and regular toilets as well.

This was the view out of the East facing window of the bedroom above and below this shot.  I had to take this photo of the big bad nuclear plant.  Changchun is home to several nuclear plants and we drove by a few of them on our way to the hotel from the airport.

This a shot of the beds on the other side of that same bedroom.  When we left this room, we walked through that bathroom that I described above and went through a smaller room where the keep the kiddos with cerebal palsey (I haven't a clue how to spell that nor the desire to look it up... deal with it.).  Immediately upon entering that room, I glanced down and there was this crippled little girl laying there in a somewhat contorted position.  I said to her, "Ni hao." and she flashed me the biggest and brightest smile that you can imagine.  It broke my heart to leave her there knowing that she'll likely never get family hugs like little Caleb now enjoys so much.  I will not/cannot forget that little face...

This photo and the next one are of some art that the kids had done.  One of their students won some awards for their drawings, which were quite good.

Perhaps the ones on the blue?

Finally!  The music room. Shakers, tamborines, bongos, triangles and a xylophone.  The usual suspects.

Mic stand, pa speaker, stereo and computer.  Sounds like a recording studio!

That guitar in the corner is the ONLY axe that I saw for 19 days!!  I went  over to fondle it only to discover that the strings were about 3/4 inch off of the neck.  Very unplayable and I was tempted to go buy them a new one that the kids could actually play.  Oh sure, I had not seen any guitars to buy for myself much less anybody else, but I did have the thought... that's what counts, right?  RIGHT?

This here fancy contraption is a zither, as I had written about previously here. Not sure about tuning this beast but I liked the sound of these bad boys, especially paired up with a piano!

Here's some little kiddos having their lunch.  They saw us and got all excited and started saying something to their teachers/lunch handlers.  Echo told us that they were asking for chocolate in Chinese since they saw the Americans on the tour!  That's golden!  There were some older handicapped kids that were eating at a different table.  Sad to watch, sad to remember.

This photo made it onto the blog in a previous post, but it's going to make it again because I like it!  This was the final stop on our tour of the orphanage.  They had these big chairs around the outside of the room and they led us into this room to ask any questions we might have and to give us a gift.  That gift is the last photo in this post.

This is another shot of that same room.

This is the gift that they gave us. It's our little monster-dude with his name in Chinese, his birthdate, and photo in front of the orphanage.  Oddly enough, the metal gate that I was raving about earlier in this post is what is right behind his head on this. That big thing off to the left side of his head is part of the security gate.  Another thing that I just noticed about this is all of the greenery immediately behind him is not real. That's where the dirt road leading up to this place is.  Oh well, I still like this gift and it sits out in the main area of our house so people can ask about it.

That's about all for this post.

As always, thanks for reading!