Editor’s note: In his new book “Ambivalent Love,” Qian Linliang, an associate professor of anthropology at China’s Southwest University, shares his findings from extensive field research at an orphanage in the eastern Zhejiang province, which he identifies as Yongjiang Orphanage, a false name to protect the privacy of his interviewees. In addition to the complexities of managing an orphanage, Qian explores how children in care develop self-awareness and an understanding of society. The following are excerpts from two chapters in the book.

“Adopt the mindset of ‘treating abandoned infants as your own children,’ and dedicate yourself to their healthy development. Do not hit, scold, or abuse children, and do not discriminate against children with disabilities.”
— Caregivers’ manual, Yongjiang Orphanage

I arrived at Yongjiang Orphanage in April 2011, earlier than expected, as a child named Jun was about to be adopted by an international family. When I walked in, I found Jun with his caregiver, Fu. The atmosphere felt solemn, and Fu didn’t say anything when she saw me arrive. Jun was wearing a new coat that Fu had picked out for him.

It wasn’t yet time for breakfast, but Jun was already holding a biscuit. I asked Fu if she would be accompanying Jun to join his new parents, but she said that she needed to be on duty that day, so another caregiver, Fang, would take him.

At around 7 a.m., everyone headed for the main entrance to wait for the orphanage administrators. Worried that Jun might get hungry on his journey, Fu went to the cafeteria to grab a few steamed buns, and she handed Fang a bag filled with snacks.

While waiting for the administrators, the caregivers chatted among themselves. In their experience, most of the children sent abroad for adoption don’t cry much, because they don’t really understand what is happening. Jun seemed to be the same — he appeared dazed, and he had not yet taken a bite of the biscuit in his hand. The caregivers also said that, although many children were 3 or 4 years old by the time they went abroad, that didn’t necessarily mean they had developed strong bonds with the staff at the orphanage.

“These kids know you because you’re with them every day, but if you disappear for a week, they probably won’t recognize you anymore,” one of them joked. The staff played with Jun for a while, and once all the administrators arrived, they set off together.

Zhang Ning, a long-term volunteer at Yongjiang Orphanage, arrived at 9 a.m. Seeing Fu, she struck up a conversation and asked whether she had felt reluctant to part with Jun. Fu replied that earlier, while in the nursery, she’d heard a child outside calling for Jun and, just for a moment, she had forgotten he was gone.

Hearing this, Zhang was almost moved to tears. Fu then began recounting Jun’s story. He had been admitted to the orphanage as a newborn. He was in poor health, and had a severe cleft lip and palate that required three surgeries to correct. For several days before and after each operation, Fu stayed at the hospital day and night to look after him. Jun couldn’t eat solid food for two days after surgery, so Fu would cook rice porridge and feed him one tiny spoonful at a time.

After Jun returned from the hospital, Fu would regularly stay late into the night, often facing the ire of her husband when she finally did return home. She said that Jun had been difficult to care for when he was younger due to his fragile health. “I didn’t work this hard to care for my own child,” she said with a sigh. But over time, Jun gradually improved to the point where he could play on his own all day without getting tired.

Fu is the most senior of the six caregivers at Yongjiang Orphanage, having worked there for more than a decade. She cares deeply for the children but rarely expresses affection like her younger colleagues, who will hug or kiss the children. Initially, I thought her emotional restraint stemmed from a traditional Chinese elder’s approach — being strict with children to instill self-discipline. However, I later got to understand the real reasons behind her emotional restraint, which changed my perspective.

On one occasion, Fu was invited by a foreign family visiting the orphanage to take a photo with them at the entrance. The family had adopted a baby girl she had cared for 10 years earlier. Fu told me that many adoptive families from overseas who came back to visit would invite the caregivers to dinner. But she felt such gestures were meaningless because, by then, neither the caregivers nor the adopted children recognized each other.

She also believed that caregivers should not hold emotional attachments to children after they have been adopted. “Even if it’s a child you personally took care of, if you’re still pining for them after all this time, you’re only causing yourself unnecessary pain,” she said. “They’ve long since forgotten about you.”

Yet, a boy named Hai stands out as the exception for Fu. According to other caregivers, and by her own admission, Hai was the child Fu developed the closest bond with. She would often bring him home, and even took him to visit her friends and relatives.

Fu has cried only once while seeing off a child for adoption, and that was the day Hai left. That morning, she had packed his belongings and prepared a supply of snacks in a plastic bag. Then she went home to fetch a school bag she had bought for him, taking the time to pack more of his clothes. She was still at home when her daughter ran in to tell her that Hai was about to leave.

By the time she had gotten outside, the car had already driven away. At that moment she burst into tears. The next day, Hai’s adoptive parents brought him back to visit. Carrying a school bag that his new family had given him, Hai ran, panting, toward the children’s department of the orphanage, calling out “Mama, Mama” as he ran up the stairs. But reunions such as these are always fleeting. When it was time to leave, Hai cried and refused to get in the car, until he was finally picked up and carried to the backseat.

Other caregivers vividly remembered the scene, describing it as a heart-rending separation. A staff member called Yu recalled that, after Hai went abroad, the adoptive family called the orphanage a few months later, but then never contacted them again.

“Being a caregiver is an emotionally difficult job,” said Fu in reflection. “When you care for these children, it’s inevitable that you’ll form bonds with them. But once they’re a little older they get adopted — sometimes to another country — and you lose contact, which is always a little sad. When Hai left, I felt an emptiness in my heart for days. But for the children, you’re only familiar when you’re right there with them. Once you’re gone, they forget you in a matter of days. The adoptive parents who care for them become their real family.”

The government and media tend to portray orphanage workers as selfless caregivers dedicated to showing love to poor, abandoned children. At Yongjiang Orphanage, official documents describe caregivers as “always fulfilling their duties with dedication and patience, unconditionally taking on the responsibility of caring for these fragile lives with a mother’s heart, quietly offering their maternal love day and night.”

In stark contrast, some foreign media and human rights organizations disparage these same workers as people lacking compassion and morality, blaming them for acts of child abuse. As a result, due to a lack of academic research, the perception of Chinese orphanages among the academic community and general public in the West has long been influenced by this stigmatizing narrative. Caught between these two extreme and politicized portrayals, the real experiences, daily lives, and emotions of the caregivers have been overlooked.

Fear of the unfamiliar

In July 2011, Guofang, known as “Little Troublemaker” among those at Yongjiang Orphanage for her naughty behavior, was to be sent into foster care in the countryside, as her primary caregiver, Zhang, was diagnosed with a hemangioma, a type of non-cancerous tumor.

A few days before her scheduled departure, the caregivers were chatting in the nursery after lunch. A few of the children were playing, and before long Guofang began kicking up a fuss. She was fighting with a boy over a toy, and when she lost, she threw herself to the floor in a tantrum. Zhang scolded the girl, telling her to get up, but Guofang ignored her.

Observing the scene, Fu went to the storage room, grabbed an empty cardboard box, and put it in front of Guofang. The girl immediately stopped her tantrum, stared at the box for a moment, then stood up and stepped back.

This strange reaction piqued the curiosity of the other caregivers. They asked Fu why Guofang was afraid of the cardboard box. Fu wasn’t sure, but it wasn’t the first time she had noticed it. Several days earlier, while organizing things in the storage room, Guofang and a few other children had been playing nearby. Fu had emptied a cardboard box of its contents and casually tossed it aside when she suddenly heard Guofang crying.

The caregivers engaged in a lengthy discussion on the reason behind Guofang’s fear of the cardboard box. In the end, they decided Zhang’s explanation was the most probable — she believed the child’s phobia stemmed from the orphanage’s method of transporting the bodies of deceased children. In recent years, most of the infants institutionalized at the orphanage suffered from disabilities or diseases, and were in poor physical condition to begin with. Although the orphanage’s medical team tried its best to treat sick infants, some of them still passed away.

According to the orphanage’s protocols for handling child deaths, if a child dies at the orphanage, the attending doctor records his or her medical history and files it with the orphanage’s administration office; the office director then issues the death certificate, and the orphanage’s porter will transport the body to the crematorium.

The orphanage does have a vehicle, but it’s primarily used for official duties, so the porter, Ding, usually has to transport the remains by public bus. To avoid distressing the driver and other passengers, he will wrap the body in the child’s clothes and a blanket, then place it in a cardboard box, which he seals with tape. Zhang believed that Guofang was afraid of the cardboard box because she had seen Ding use a cardboard box to transport a deceased child, so she now associated them with death.

Zhang’s explanation seemed reasonable to the other caregivers. However, when I heard this explanation, I felt a sense of doubt: Does a 4-year-old child understand what death is? Even if she does, does her understanding of death hold the same meaning as an adult’s?

When I raised these questions, the caregivers fell into deep contemplation. One of them, Zhu, believed that a few of the older children might understand, as she had occasionally seen sadness on their faces when Ding came to collect a body. However, she wasn’t sure if Guofang understood the meaning of death. Guofang didn’t show any reaction to seeing Ding, and sometimes she would even play with the tape used to seal the cardboard boxes carrying the bodies. Zhang also began to question her own theory. After all, Guofang was only young and had cerebral palsy, a condition that they believed could impair her cognitive development. The caregivers’ discussion was inconclusive, and all that afternoon I couldn’t stop thinking about the issue.

From conventional social science research methods to scientific experiments, our technological capabilities and existing knowledge base are insufficient to fully discover the “true” feelings and experiences of children. I attempted to use ethnographic imagination, establishing a framework of interpretation that aligns with the local social and cultural context, as my method to seek an explanation for why Guofang might be afraid of the box.

I took Zhang’s explanation as the starting point for reasoning, as she knew Guofang best and was familiar with the operations of the orphanage. Cardboard boxes were common items in the orphanage, mostly used to pack snacks and daily necessities, the only exception was that Ding occasionally used them to transport children’s remains to the crematorium. If Guofang didn’t understand what death was, or if she didn’t know that the child being placed in the box was already dead, the distinguishing detail for her would have been that Ding put a child into a cardboard box, and then took the box, with the child inside, away from the orphanage (she might also have realized that the child never returned).

If this assumption holds, Guofang’s fear of the box is not because it is a tool for disposing of deceased children, but rather because it is a tool for taking someone away. That someone could be another child, or it could be Guofang herself. In other words, what she fears is being put into a cardboard box and taken away from the orphanage.

Fear of leaving the orphanage, of leaving familiar people and places, is a common psychological trait in children. This principle reminded me of something that happened with another child in the orphanage that could serve as supporting evidence for this reasoning.

Guozhen was a girl about Guofang’s age who also had cerebral palsy. She was fond of two volunteers, He and his girlfriend, who often visited to entertain the children. The couple frequently brought Guozhen snacks and played games with her, and Guozhen clearly trusted them; she would follow them wherever they went.

However, on one occasion, He and his girlfriend took Guozhen on an outing to an amusement park and then to McDonald’s for lunch, after which the caregivers and I noticed that Guozhen suddenly began to show fear and rejection toward them. She refused to play with them for a long time.

The couple said that as soon as they left the orphanage on that outing, Guozhen was completely unlike her usual lively self. She had seemed terrified at the amusement park, refusing to play any games. At McDonald’s, she would not eat anything. The explanation from both the volunteers and the caregivers was that Guozhen was just nervous around strangers and felt insecure in an unfamiliar environment.

According to them, even children in family settings often experience this kind of anxiety. Zhu shared that when her family went on trips when her son was little, he would cry at night and demand to go home to sleep, only feeling at ease once he was back in a familiar place.

Guozhen showed fear of unfamiliar places only after leaving the orphanage, but Chenxiao, a 6-year-old with cerebral palsy, exhibited this fear before even setting foot off the grounds.

In June 2011, the number of abandoned infants being admitted to the orphanage was growing, and the caregivers were overworked. To deal with the demand, the administrators decided to send a group of older children with cognitive disabilities to foster homes in the countryside. Chenxiao was among them.

In the days leading up to the move, the caregivers and I noticed that her mood seemed off; she would cry frequently and scream for no apparent reason. The caregivers believed she had realized she was being sent to a foster home in the countryside. Still, they were puzzled. Chenxiao had never experienced foster care before — how could she be afraid if she had no way of knowing whether it would be good or bad?

However, when viewed alongside Guofang and Guozhen’s situations, it seemed we might not need to overcomplicate our understanding of her reaction. In reality, Chenxiao most likely just didn’t want to leave the only environment she was familiar with.

It was only after revisiting my field notes that I placed the examples of the three children in the same context for explanation, using ethnographic imagination to connect them. Guozhen’s case shows that leaving a familiar environment can have a negative psychological impact on children in orphanages, while Chenxiao’s example reveals that children in orphanages are capable of anticipating the fear they might feel after leaving their familiar surroundings. The inference drawn from both cases is that Guofang’s fear of the cardboard box stemmed from her worry about being taken away from the familiar space of the orphanage.

This connection does not overestimate the abilities of these young children to understand the world (such as comprehending the implications of death and foster care), but it also does not underestimate their basic need for a sense of security in life, which is just like any other child’s.

This article, translated by Carrie Davies, is an excerpt from “Ambivalent Love,” published by Social Sciences Academic Press (China) in May. It is republished here with permission.

Editors: Wang Juyi and Hao Qibao.

(Header image: A caregiver looks after infants at an orphanage in Zhengzhou, Henan province, 2010. Sha Lang/VCG)