Our Ningdu Letter

In a few hours, a friend and his family from Texas will jet back to China for an extended trip that will hopefully include a visit to Ningdu. These folks will be carrying two photo albums we assembled, along with a personal letter in each. One will go to the Director and staff at the Ningdu CWI and the other, to the woman who found our daughter. Each will be translated in China, with one being hand delivered and the other, mailed to an unsuspecting recipient. The following is an exerpt from one of those letters.

Dear Comrade:

You may remember finding a baby girl on November 3, 2003 at the gate of 63 Dakaochang, Ningdu County. My wife and I traveled from the United States to China in September 2004 to adopt this little girl. She is now our daughter.

We are sending you this picture book so you can see the little girl you found abandoned nearly 3 years ago. The Chinese name given to her at the Ningdu Children’s Welfare Institute was Ning Yuqing. She now has the American name.

Our family lives in Southern California close to San Diego, California. Our home is only a few kilometers from the Pacific Ocean.

We were hoping that after seeing these pictures, you might know who our daughter’s birth mother is. Yuqing is a very beautiful little girl, and she has a small dimple below the right side of her mouth. She also has double eyelids and very large eyes. We believe that her birth mother is also a very beautiful woman.

Please, Comrade, if you should happen to know who Yuqing's birth mother is, we hope that you will give her this picture book as our gift to her. We would like for her to see what a wonderful little girl she has become. From many of these pictures, all you can see is the face of a very happy girl. Even though she has brought us much happiness, we never stop thinking about her birth mother and father, and how they must think of their little baby every day.

We would like for Yuqing's birth parents to know that their daughter lives in a home that is filled with love. She is hugged and kissed every day and, the words, “I love you,” are said many, many times throughout the day. We love her dearly. We also tell Yuqing that she has a mommy and daddy in China who also love her very much, and we believe that for the rest of our lives, we will never stop telling her about the family she still has in China. We know that she has a mommy and daddy, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins and even a sibling. Unfortunately, even as she grows older, she will want to know more about where she came from and we will not be able to tell her much more than we already know.

Yuqing attends a pre-school and is very smart. Her mother is Japanese and Yuqing can speak both English and Japanese. When she has her fifth birthday, we will send her to Chinese school on the weekend. She also likes to play in the park every day. She loves to swing, go down the slide and play in the sand. Also, going to the beach is one of her favorite activities. We live in a very safe community and feel that we have a very good home for Yuqing.

Should you be able to locate Yuqing's birth parents, please make sure they know that we will send pictures to them every year so they can also see their little girl grow up. They can send us a letter with their address and we can have it translated into English.

Lastly, we have included with this letter and picture book a gift for you in the red envelope. We believe that you are an important part of our family's history. You found this little girl and made sure she was taken to people who would care for her. We hope that you can use this gift for something special.

Thank you so much for accepting our letter and the picture book. You will always be in our prayers.

Obviously, we are quite realistic that nothing will probably ever come of this effort to reach out to "touch" our daughter's birth parents. However, some do believe that the person who "finds" an abandoned child may actually be the birth parent. Regardless, we felt that this might be our only opportunity to reach out in this way so that when our daughter asks, "Did you ever try to find my birth parents?" we can say, "Yes, sweetie, we did."