Wuhu Diary: On Taking My Adopted Daughter Back to Her Hometown in China

Four years after she adopted a daughter in China, author Emily Prager took her almost-five-year-old daughter for an extended stay in China to learn about her roots. Lulu and several other girls who had been adopted by Americans on the same day were from an orphanage in Wuhu. Prager and Lulu hoped to visit the orphanage where Lulu spent the first months of her life. The visit didn’t work out exactly as planned, partly because the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade shortly after their arrival in China drew attention to Prager as one of the few Westerners in the area. After that, Prager and her daughter didn’t venture far from their hotel and the preschool where Lulu was enrolled. Even under these limitations, Lulu, and by show more extension her adoptive mother, made friends everywhere she went, from hotel employees to local shopkeepers.

Prager and Lulu’s return visit to China came at a time when China was rapidly modernizing its infrastructure. In the 4 ½ years since Lulu’s adoption, the orphanage had moved into a new building, and the hotel where Prager had stayed and where she first met Lulu had been completely remodeled. Wuhu was a city in transition, with old buildings and communities being razed to make way for new, more modern construction. Families who have adopted children from China will be interested in this narrative of one family’s attempt to assimilate their child’s Chinese heritage into her sense of identity. Other readers may be more intrigued by this snapshot of China in transition. show less

The title sums it up. This is a DIARY of an extended vacation in China. The US author adopts a Chinese girl - one of the first Chinese adoptions. Now that Lulu is 4, the author takes her back to her birth area, which she believes is Wuhu (Lulu was abandoned near a police station in Wuhu and taken to the orphanage there). Daily account of what they saw and did. Interesting point for the author - for the first time, SHE is the minority and her daughter fits in. And she calls out that turn of events in her story.

The story of a woman and her adopted child returning to the childs roots. This mother returns to the town her baby is from when the child is almost 5. They stay in China for about 2 months. To complicate matters, this is in the time frame when the USA bombs the Chinese Embassy. A very heart warming story full of ups and downs as the mother tries to gain access to the orphanage and her child's file. How I envy this mother the ability to go to China for such an extended stay and search. Worth buying.

I enjoyed reading about this little family's journey to the adopted child's place of birth.The child was a delight, a truely trusting, loving soul.