Children the Most Precious Gift for Adopting Parents

When a family finally stands in front of their long-awaited child, the moment is magic for the parents because their "long suffering vacancy is fulfilled," says the head of the French Parents Association of Chinese Children Adoption.

So far, as many as 150 French families have registered as candidate families, chairwoman Donia Muller told Xinhua, adding that the association was the only one in France that managed adoption of Chinese children.

Muller said those families all cherished their adopted child because they considered him or her as a "most precious gift" that helped them complete a family.

She has the right to know her past

Ten-year-old Alice, an adopted Chinese kid, now lives with a teacher mother and a doctor father in Paris. She sat, listening quietly, beside her adoptive mother, Demerliac, as she outlined the adoption story to Xinhua.

Demerliac said she and her husband had waited for three years after they submitted their application for a Chinese child. They finally met Alice in Shanghai and brought her to Paris.

"It was worth waiting that long. The little angel has brought us endless happiness," she said, showing Xinhua a big album of photos documenting Alice's early life in a Shanghai orphanage.

Demerliac said she frequently leafed through the photos with Alice, because she believes it is necessary for the child to fully understand herself.

"She has the right to know her past," he said.

"Eight years passed and Alice has grown up to be a total French girl. She has the best performance in all lessons. She learns the guitar, swimming and she loves traveling and reading," Demerliac said with pride.

She said she was expecting to adopt another three-year-old Chinese girl at the end of October.

No longer "abandon", but "Don"

Three-year-old Abigail was regarded as Amelie's daughter even before they first met. Amelie has written blogs about the child since the adoption center informed her of the adoption in July 2008.

Abigail was abandoned at birth due to her harelip; however, Amelie and her husband accepted her with warm hearts from an orphanage in Taiyuan, capital of China's northwestern Shanxi province.

Apart from looking for ways to cure her, the couple did their best to cultivate and educate the little girl in the hope of building in her a strong character.

"When Abigail grows up, she may ask us why she was abandoned," Amelie said. "We prepared an answer like this: abandon includes a don", which in French means gift, so the child is "our gift from God."

Don’ts forget where you came from

"I waited seven years for Lucie Xuan, my first Chinese child," Simon, 38, started her story with a slight sigh. She met Lucie in Hengshan, in south China's Hunan province, in 2003, when the girl was just eight months old.

"Lucie seemed to have sensed her departure from her motherland and cried a lot," Simon recalled. "But when I embraced her in my arms, she stopped crying at once. I was fulfilled with motherly happiness at that moment."

The mother bought plenty of Chinese things to France for the new family member. In order to ward off the child's loneliness, she has slept beside Lucie every night since the adoption. It was not in the French tradition that families usually let a baby sleep alone, she said.

Simon kept Lucie's Chinese name Xuan, because she said, "I hope my Chinese child will be proud of their birthplace in the future. I want to tell them: don't forget where you came from."

(Xinhua News Agency November 17, 2009)