Back to China

In May this year we went back to China with two families from Holland. The main reason was to visit the hometowns of our adopted daughters from China, but we also brought visits to Beijing and Shanghai.

During our trip we went to Hengfeng, the former Cenyang, where both daughters were born in 2001. One family with a daughter named Cen Lang and the other family with a daughter named Cen Ni. In our thoughts Hengfeng should be a small village. This thought was totally wrong. In Holland the biggest city is Amsterdam, with approximately 850,000 citizens. Hengfeng has more than one million citizens and we learned that this is a little village in the China.

For both families it felt great to be in Hengfeng, because this is the birth town of our beautiful daughters. Now we had the chance to see it, feel it and smell it. The visit to the orphanage was very warm, but for all of us also an emotional moment. We have the privilege to have beautiful daughters, but we also understand why this is possible. The one-child policy is a difficult system for us to understand and we hope and trust that we can give our girls a loving and happy future. Because we understand and respect, we went back to China to give our girls the opportunity to have a look in “their“ China. We are convinced that this is important to them and are very willing to fulfill these needs. Of course we want them to know the Chinese culture too.

In Nanchang we had the chance to visit a primary school. This was very interesting, but the Chinese school system is very different than ours. In China the children are making very long hours at school, from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm, and then doing a lot of work at home in the evening. Also on the weekend there is a lot of attention for learning. In Holland the children are making less hours at school and they have a lot of free time. In this time they can play with friends, make music, go to sports or do nothing for a while. The school system in Holland is teaching the children how to find needed information and master basic subjects like writing and math. It seems to us that the Chinese school system is aiming at learning a lot and everything needs to be remembered in the head. Our children go to school by bicycle on their own, and the Chinese children are walking to school, accompanied by a parent or grandparent. It feels safer for us.