Nanchang Social Welfare Institute

The group home apartments on the orphanage grounds.

Alana with her foster parents.

The families with the foster parents.

The deputy director on the left and the two ladies were teachers.
They recognized Alana right away.

Besides Alana (in brown shirt), one was from Virginia, Canada, and Wales,
and three were from Holland.

These girls were very interested in seeing Alana again. They were really sweet.

Front of the main facility. The stairs lead up to her school, but we were not allowed to go inside.

This is the place Alana called home, though she lived with foster families some of the time. As we pulled up in our tour bus, firecrackers were set off and a small crowd of staff had formed. Each girl had their own welcome home banner. Some fosterparents were there but none of Alana's. A girl her age spotted her and pretty soon there were more. She did not seem to remember them. The older girl who had acted like a big sister to Alana had already left the facility that day, so apparently she lives elsewhere now, but they did say she attends High school. So we asked them to let her know Alana said "Hi". She was disappointed about not seeing her.

This was a long and full day for us. We toured the newborn nursery (so many babies), the toddler and preschool classes, the Family Group homes, visited a room for disabled adults who knit sweaters, make quilts, and handicrafts, had a flag raising ceremony and tried to sing the Chinese national anthem, listened to some speeches, played with the girls Alana's age, watched the girls make dumplings (potstickers), and met fosterparents. One pair of Alana's came and were happy to see her again. They gave her a huge stuffed Snoopy which, unfortunately, we had to leave behind, but she thought it was pretty cool. They also gave her a bag of snacks which they remembered that she liked. She was impressed by their thoughtfulness. At one point in the day, the girls were asked to go to the front and introduce themselves. Alana volunteered first and talked about taking Chinese dance class and described some of the dances.

After the dinner, we took the tour bus across the Gan River to the what is referred to as the "New City''. It has been developed over the past five years and includes skyscraper office buildings and apartments. We watched a very nice water and light show that had a huge crowd. Then, we were driven to a beach on the river. The girls were given a candle inside an artificial lotus flower and were asked to make a wish while placing the lotus in the river. This is a local tradition. Then, it was time for lots of sparklers, firecrackers and fireworks. We were all reminded of the saying: They don't do anything small in China! By now it was close to 10 PM, so we wearily piled back into the bus for the ride back to our hotel.

Grapefruit trees grow in Nanchang as it has a mild climate.

Alana celebrated her birthday on our last day in Nanchang.

In the afternoon we were taken to her finding location. We saw the street where Alana was found but the building numbers had changed so we did not have an exact location. But we visited the police station where she was first taken and spoke with an officer who recalled the finding. He said the officer who dealt with her was now was at a different location but would pass on our message of thanks to him.