Newest ride at Hong Kong Disneyland
This is the newest ride at Hong Kong Disneyland.
Fewer kids available for adoption by foreigners
Fewer Chinese children are available for adoption by foreigners because more affluent families at home have started adopting them, the Ministry of Civil Affairs (MCA) said on Tuesday.
“The number of Chinese couples applying to adopt children has risen substantially in recent years,” said Wang Suying, a division chief of MCA’s social welfare and social affairs department, which oversees adoption.
About 52,500 children were registered for adoption in 2004, with foreigners adopting 12,500 of them, according to MCA figures. But last year, the numbers fell to about 46,000 and 10,000.
“Our policy is in line with the international practice of encouraging adoption by families within the country,” Wang said, because that way the kids can grow up in their own culture, which is good for them.
“But that does not mean we have any prejudice against foreign adoptions.”
More families in the country are adopting kids because Chinese people’s attitude toward adoption has changed, Wang said.
A lot of Chinese used to adopt kids to ensure someone was there to take care of them during their retired life, and hence they preferred boys to girls, she said.
“Now more and more Chinese people are adopting kids simply because they love children and are proud to become foster parents.”
Ji Gang, director of domestic adoptions, China Center of Adoption Affairs, said Chinese families’ newly acquired affluence too was responsible for the change in attitude.
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences figures show China has 30 million middle-class people, or those who earn between $10,000 and $50,000 a year.
Wang, however, said foreign families are still more willing to adopt disabled children.
US families adopted the highest number of Chinese children, followed by the Spanish.
Since 1992, when China’s Adoption Law was implemented, US families have adopted more than 55,000 Chinese kids.
From May 2007, China tightened the rules for foreigners who wanted to adopt Chinese children.
To qualify as an eligible family, couples now need to have a stable marriage, comfortable income, and sound physical and mental health.
According to China’s Adoption Law, people who want to adopt children must be more than 30 years old, healthy, childless and with a good and steady income to raise and educate the children.
[China Daily]
Real men eat pink
Carmi took another day off so that she and Eliana could go to Carowinds.
When they arrived home early this evening, Eliana came running through the house shouting, “Dad! Dad! I brought you something!”
“What is it?”
“I brought you some cotton candy. But it’s pink.”
The stuff barely survived their trip home. I was expecting a full bag but was lucky to get two good mouthfuls.
Pink never tasted so good.
It’s a button hole
As soon as I came home from work, I planted myself in the recliner and Karys came right over to crawl into my lap.
On the way up, her little hand stopped at my shirt pocket and she looked inquisitively at the button hole.
“What’s that?”, she asked.
“It’s the hole that the button goes through.”
“It’s what?”
“It’s a button hole.”
“Ohhh”, she said when the light bulb a-l-m-o-s-t clicked on. “It’s a butt hole?”
The Chinese adoption effect
Since 1991, American families have adopted more than 60,000 Chinese babies, almost all of them girls. But as the Olympics introduce the world to a modern, telegenic Beijing, one adoptive mother reflects on the grim realities of her daughter’s birthplace and copes with the knowledge that her own happiness came at the cost of another mother’s loss.
This web exclusive for Vanity Fair was written by Diane Clehane, a New York Times best-selling author and journalist.
The high price of China’s one-child policy
National History Day is a highly regarded academic organization for elementary and secondary school students.
Each year, more than half a million students participate in the National History Day contest. Students choose historical topics related to a theme and conduct extensive research through libraries, archives, museums, oral history interviews and historic sites. After analyzing and interpreting their sources and drawing conclusions about their topics’ significance in history, students present their work in original papers, exhibits, performances and documentaries. These products are entered into competitions in the spring at local and state levels where they are evaluated by professional historians and educators. The program culminates in a national competition each June held at the University of Maryland at College Park.
In 2007, the event’s theme was “Triumph and Tragedy in History”. Two 10th graders from Shoreline High School in Washington state - Wilfred Chan and Tim Tan - took 4th place in the nation for Senior Level Group Documentary with this documentary entitled “The High Price of a Lower Population: The Triumph and Tragedy of China’s One-Child Policy”.
2008 Beijing opening ceremony DVD
I was super happy to see this DVD available.
From the NBC Olympics website:
“This 2-volume set is your opportunity to once again witness the most memorable Opening Ceremony in Olympic history...the complete 4-hour extravaganza from beginning to end. A special index allows you to easily navigate throughout the entire ceremony. Own the celebration that people will be talking about forever.”
You can own one for $29.99 and the expected ship date is September 15th.
This is the way we wash our clothes
An Olympic Village replica created with 140,000 playing cards
This Olympics Village model created by an expert card-stacker makes the Lego Olympics pale in comparison. I mean, that lego model is just a lot of plastic parts snapped together: This guy had to avoid shaky hands, sneezing and stepping carelessly for a whole 20 days while he put the card model together, detailing even the woven-girder shapes of the Bird’s Nest. Yep - that’s 20 days, 140,000 cards and a whole lot of craziness.
Eliana practices for the 2020 Olympics
Eliana went to a pool party this afternoon for rising 1st, 2nd and 3rd graders at our church.
I dropped her off at 2:45 and all of us went together to get her at 6:00. The hostess just raved about Eliana’s fearlessness and how well she did in the water.
It’s good that Eliana doesn’t fear the water but she needs to have a cautious respect for the water also. She likes to think she can do everything that more seasoned older children can do.
