Chongqing

As soon as we knew what area of China Junior is from, we quickly researched to find out more about Chongqing. It is the largest and most populous of China’s 4 provincial-level municipalities and has special municipality status in the province of Sichuan (aka Szechuan).

The municipality of Chongqing has a population of 35 million (!) with most people living outside the urban area of Chongqing proper in the farmland. The population of the urban area of Chongqing proper is 12 million.

If you know Marty well, you’ll know that he likes peace and quiet and uncrowded places. (Donna is a city girl; she doesn’t mind the noise and hustle and bustle of a busy city.)

As a comparison, here's a picture of the park next to our house:




Now here is a picture of Chongqing:





That's not the only difference. There is an absence of bicycles in CQ as the hills are steep – quite the contrast to the flat topography of our city. Car horns are banned to reduce noise pollution.

One travel guide writes: “Within China, it is famous for its searing summers when temperatures can exceed 40 deg C. This lovely climate has earned the city a place among the country’s 'three furnaces', along with Wuhan and Nanjing.” Lovely?!? Furnace?!?

It is at the confluence of 2 rivers and where the Three Gorges Dam, the damming of the Yangzi River, is due to be completed in 2009.

The place where our daughter currently lives, Xiushan, is about a 10 hour bus ride from Chongqing through mountainous terrain, but there will soon be a train which will cut the travel time down to 4 hours. Xiu has many meanings including: refined, elegant, graceful. We would love to visit to see where our daughter spent the first few months of her life, but perhaps another time.

Here's a map of Xiushan in relation to CQ:

Almost ready to go

We have confirmation that we will be leaving for China soon.

As many adoptive parents before us have done, we have also sent a couple of disposable cameras to the orphanage in the hopes that they will take some photos of our daughter, her current home, friends and caregivers.

The countdown is on: a few weeks until we go - the excitement is growing at a fast pace! Meese, one of our 2 cats, senses a change is coming. As we set up Junior’s room (we’ll start calling her Katrina/Katie when we see her), Meese has decided to check out the crib as you can see in the photo.




We are not the only ones who are ‘nesting’. A mother bird (possibly a swallow) has set up a nest at our front archway. We have been told that this is good Feng Shui and we are very lucky. (I guess a vulture would not have been a sign of good fortune).


So this is a good sign.



Having one of these would not have been quite as good a sign.

A name!

“In Chinese culture, a person’s name has an important role to play in determining her destiny.”

After much discussion, we have decided on a name for our Blessed Leaf: Katrina Fu Ye Bollo. We thought of the name Katrina last summer (well before the hurricane!). Thank you to all of the family and friends who gave us suggested names - we thoroughly analyzed each of them in detail (after all, we are both engineers!) as well as other ones we came up with ourselves. In the end, we felt that “Katrina” met all of the criteria we both set for a name. Katrina Bollo – has a nice ring about it, doesn’t it? We will probably nickname her Katie.

Although we did not choose her name because of its meaning, Katrina means pure/innocent and Katie means lively – quite appropriate after we read the information in her file.

As a friend suggested, we kept her Chinese name as her middle name so that she would still have ties to her origins and heritage, and give her some sense of identity. Although we did not initially understand the deeper significance of the phrase “Blessed Leaf”, we think it is a very pretty and unusual name. Donna’s father explained that her name, Blessed Leaf, is a metaphor meaning that amongst the many leaves in a tree, she is blessed / lucky. We agree that she is and that we also are blessed to be chosen for her parents. Interestingly, in Mandarin her Chinese name is pronounced “Foo Yeah”, in Cantonese “Fook Ip” and in the dialect of Donna’s parents “Hook Ip”. Just goes to show you the diversity of the Chinese language.

We received the translation of Katie’s medical report and all sounds normal. She was born on October 7, 2005 at 3 kg and by 5 months of age, she was 6 kg (~13 lbs) and 61 cm (2 ft) high. Donna tried to measure this height against Marty’s leg and estimate that she may be just above the height of his knees! Marty’s back is going to hurt when he holds Katie’s hand when she starts walking – but he doesn’t mind. They probably won’t travel far initially! Donna probably will not have as much trouble.

Comparing her weight, height & head circumference against available data for Southern Chinese girls, Katie is in the lower 25th percentile. She is fed 6 times a day (wow, what an eater!) Personality-wise, she is an extroverted, out-going and gentle child who is not shy, and she readily laughs. She welcomes people with her big innocent eyes and sweet smile. Heart rate is normal, mental development is normal, pooping and peeing are normal … ok, I’ll stop there, too much information!

We look forward to meeting up with our little Katie and to changing her diapers (really, we are!) What was that? 7 to 9 diapers a day? So in the 2 weeks we are there, she’s going to go through around 100 diapers – did someone really suggest cloth diapers?