“My neighbour’s daughter has been living in Switzerland for 15 years. Lately, she’s started complaining to me that winter in Switzerland is so cold that it could freeze your ears off, and the social benefits aren’t nearly as nice as the rumours say, and the taxes are about as high as China’s anyways.
China was the biggest source of foreign adoptions in the US because there's a lot of Chinese people and the One Child Policy meant a lot of parents wanted to give up (or abandon) children. Especially girls. Also Christians have a religious duty to care for abandoned babies. Back in Roman times they would wait near places where people commonly abandoned babies and took them and cared for them. A disproportionate share of those babies were girls too. So there was a lot of enthusiasm for rescuing little girls in particular. Some specifically asked after girls that had been abandoned.
China and Russia decided the amount of foreign adoptions were embarrassing and cracked down on the practice. So while not banned the practice is already much rarer now. I suspect this leads to more dead babies rather than any positive social end.
Also, I've heard travel is harder for Americans too. I'm not sure if it's just inertia/lack of control or if it's a calculated lie. But Xi's been promising the American government and business community that China's going to increase the quantity and quality of exchanges for a few years now. But it appears to just be all words at the moment.
The comment section points it out accurately enough--westerners like to adopt Chinese babies because China has a lot of perfectly healthy abandoned babies. In most other countries, babies get abandoned because there's something wrong with them, but in China, babies get abandoned just because they're a girl. For people who don't mind having girls or even specifically want to have girls, I can't think of a better place to go adopt.
Travel is harder for Americans. My family is usually really eager about pressuring me to go back to China more often. But this year, when I asked about going back, my dad explicitly told me, "Nah, don't, China's too unfriendly to visitors right now."
The Alice Munro story is called "The Bear Came Over the Mountain"
Thank you!
someone down -> someone marry down
China was the biggest source of foreign adoptions in the US because there's a lot of Chinese people and the One Child Policy meant a lot of parents wanted to give up (or abandon) children. Especially girls. Also Christians have a religious duty to care for abandoned babies. Back in Roman times they would wait near places where people commonly abandoned babies and took them and cared for them. A disproportionate share of those babies were girls too. So there was a lot of enthusiasm for rescuing little girls in particular. Some specifically asked after girls that had been abandoned.
China and Russia decided the amount of foreign adoptions were embarrassing and cracked down on the practice. So while not banned the practice is already much rarer now. I suspect this leads to more dead babies rather than any positive social end.
Also, I've heard travel is harder for Americans too. I'm not sure if it's just inertia/lack of control or if it's a calculated lie. But Xi's been promising the American government and business community that China's going to increase the quantity and quality of exchanges for a few years now. But it appears to just be all words at the moment.
The comment section points it out accurately enough--westerners like to adopt Chinese babies because China has a lot of perfectly healthy abandoned babies. In most other countries, babies get abandoned because there's something wrong with them, but in China, babies get abandoned just because they're a girl. For people who don't mind having girls or even specifically want to have girls, I can't think of a better place to go adopt.
Travel is harder for Americans. My family is usually really eager about pressuring me to go back to China more often. But this year, when I asked about going back, my dad explicitly told me, "Nah, don't, China's too unfriendly to visitors right now."