Family Found in China

By JL Bowman

Just as China is beginning to emerge from the clutches of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, a little girl is born. But Ling Choy Chung does not bring joy to her peasant family. The family needs boys who will grow up to be strong men to work on the farm. Grandpa shows his disappointment by torturing the little girl. Ling Choys mother can no longer accept this abuse and leaves her at the Ping Chow Welfare Center, hoping the child can survive and maybe even thrive.

Growing up in an orphanage presents a dark, miserable life for Ling, but she eventually learns that beauty and love can be found hidden in the nearby beautiful Tein Shen Mountains.

Family Found in China follows Ling Choy from a toddler to a young adult as she finds a new home through the good graces of missionaries and gains a surrogate family, a future, and God.

She didnt think she would get into much trouble for not answering when being called. But one older nurse lay in wait for her to emerge from hiding. She had been waiting just inside the bathroom, thinking that eventually Ling Choy would need to relieve herself. Upon entering the bathroom the woman made one quick grab and had Ling Choy by the arm and was dragging her back out the door toward a dirty pail of brown stuff. Naughty children always had to take their punishment from the dirty water pail

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491743584

JL Bowman

JL Bowman studied desktop publishing at the College of Southern Idaho. She later taught secretarial classes at same institution. She is now retired and spends her time writing short stories. In 2013, Bowman won two first- place awards with the Idaho Writers League. This is her fourth book.

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Copyright © 2014 JL Bowman.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-4357-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-4358-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014914636

iUniverse rev. date: 11/22/2014

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

A Girl is Born

CHAPTER II

Ping Chow Welfare Center

CHAPTER III

First Winter

CHAPTER IV

Journey Forward

CHAPTER V

Xian Zhou

CHAPTER VI

Friendship Shop

CHAPTER VII

God’s Purpose

CHAPTER VIII

Found

CHAPTER IX

Homeward Bound

CHAPTER X

Governor Li

CHAPTER XI

Village That Loves

In memory of my own little China Doll, Ni Suihong (Sarah). With the help of God I have been able to be a mother, even though I never bore a child of my own.

Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord.

Isaiah 54:1(KJV)

I would like to

acknowledge all the students that I was privileged to know in China. Through their constant encouragement and asking to go places, I learned the ups and downs of the local mountain sites close to home. They thought it very funny to see this fat teacher huffing and puffing as she slowly climbed the next hill or mountainous number of stair steps. I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to see the countryside of China without their help.

Most of the places in this story are figments of my imagination. The people’s names and the minor names of towns are fictitious. I have used the imaginative aspect of writing to invent people, places and cities.

Chapter I

A Girl is Born

In 1976, China began emerging from the clutches of the Cultural Revolution. In January of that year, near the city of Shache in Xinjiang Province, a girl child joined the Chung family. Momma named her Ling Choy. Life as peasants caused much difficulty for the Chung family, and a girl baby born third in line did not bring joy to her parents. They needed strong healthy boy babies who would grow up to help on the 20-acre farm that the Chung family depended upon for food.

When the memory of his daughter’s raped, beaten and bruised body lying at his door crept into Grandfather Chung’s mind, his anger pushed him to drink more alcohol. His heart hardened toward anyone who hadn’t been born in the Tien Shan Mountains. He stumbled home and glared down at the infant, struck a match to a wrinkled cigarette and sucked in hard to make a very hot fire. He showed his disappointment with the half-breed girl child by repeatedly shoving the burning cigarette against the pale skin of the infant’s shoulder. Smelling the stench of searing flesh made him feel he had burned some of the awful foreign blood out of the child.

You bring bad luck to family. You no good. Now die! he slurred as he ground the cigarette against the skin again.

Chung Gi couldn’t stand to listen to her child’s screams any longer. She decided to send her little girl to the Ping Chow Welfare Center several miles north of Shache.

My lovely baby, you live long life. You show God has plan for you, my love. Remember Momma loves you, my little Ling Choy, Gi quietly spoke.

The night air felt cold to Gi as she laid her bundle at the foot of the stairs. She had traveled many hours on foot to privately place her baby girl at the children’s home in Ping Chow.

The oasis of Shache, located in the Tien Shan Mountains on the northwest edge of China, is known for the rich soil where much wheat, beans and fruit grow for export to the nearby countries of India, Kazakhstan, and Afghanistan. Shache had long been one of the main stopovers for travelers along the Silk Road. Marco Polo brought Europe and the East together by traveling to China through the passageway.

The Chinese call the mountains around Ping Chow Heavenly Mountains because of their enormous height and beauty. On some of the highest peaks, glaciers can be found winding down into the valleys.

Soon after her birth, the tiny village of Ping Chow acquired a new resident—Ling Choy— who joined the group of unwanted children in the far away Tien Shan Mountains.

Life in Ping Chow continued as it had for hundreds of years. Even though the Welfare Center had been built there, villagers lived in huts built from stones pulled from the fields. The farmers plowed fields with oxen and hand-held tools. Many families still cooked over an open pit.

The Hao Chee tribe, a combination of Chinese and Kazakh nationalities, made up the population of Ping Chow. These people migrated into the mountains in the late 1700’s, escaping the Russian and Hun armies. The valley is surrounded on all four sides by high mountains, the only entrance lying at the western end where the mountains separate slightly to make a narrow path called the Mowling Pass. The Chinese government built the welfare center in the village to house the many unwanted children from the busy cities. After arriving at the Welfare Center, a child’s life expectancy wasn’t expected to be more than a couple of years: they were worthless children. Those who did survive to reach the age of eight were taken to a work farm in another part of the province.

Ling Choy lived through nearly eight years at the Center, surviving purely out of spite.

* * * *

The bump of the plane wheels touching ground revived Ling Chow from her peaceful reflections. She could hardly believe the many changes that had taken place during her life. In her present happiness, she had a hard time recalling those first eight years she had lived in such a different kind of world. When she’d left Ping Chow in 1994, five years earlier, she vowed to return to China and help other children forced to live in the awful conditions as she had.

That day had finally arrived. Having missed the mountains and all the wonderful sights and smells associated with them, she anxiously peered out the window of the Continental Airlines 747 as it made the descent toward the Urumqi Airport, located in the Xinjiang Province of northwest China. She could see the lights of the tall tower flicker through the ice-frosted glass. Her breath fogged the window, blocking the fainter lights and allowing only the single beacon to penetrate. The glow of the light caused her to remember the yellow flame of a small candle in the corner of a large room. A tear dropped, as she thought of the empty loneliness she had felt as a child.

* * * *

In the reflection of the plane window, Ling Choy pictured the sad, hollow eyes of a thin eight-year-old girl hiding in the dark corner of a large, dreary room. Insect bites covered her olive-colored skin and her ebony hair had been shaved from her head, exposing sores from infected bites. Small, frightened oval eyes peered from behind a large bundle of dirty laundry, watching the movements of the people in the room. Inching out a bit, she stood to her full height of 32 inches. Her lack of nutritious food and human affection had hindered her growth. She survived the freezing 30-degree nights mainly out of spite toward her caregivers.

Staff members swelled with resentment, anger and frustration, openly showing their feelings toward the children. The nurses and doctors were not the best qualified in their fields of study and had been transferred as a disciplinary measure to spend two years in the country. The staff members who had been assigned to care for the children could seldom be found after sundown. To pass the time, they gambled and drank. During the evenings, they went into the village and gathered at the one large building which had electricity and a telephone.

China required every person to spend at least two years in the countryside doing some kind of labor for the government. There was no such thing as the privileged rich. If you were rich, you spent more time in the country

Ling Choy and fifty-nine other children lived at the Ping Chow Welfare Center. The Chinese population had grown to over one billion people, so a law had been passed which required the Chinese people to have no more than one child. If the firstborn were a girl, then she could be cast out and displaced by the rules of the government. Traditionally, the firstborn son should carry on the family name and care for the parents when they retired.

Chapter II

Ping Chow Welfare Center

Ling Choy learned early in her young life not to try and make friends. She had become friendly with a few of the older children but, invariably, she’d been left behind when the older child climbed in a van and was driven out of sight.

She could see herself looking between iron bars at a large, open room filled with rusty, rickety cribs. She hadn’t been able to count all the beds, but she could number the rows yut, yi, sam, shi (shur), and woo. The large room always seemed dark because the trees along the exterior walls had grown so tall they blocked all rays of the sun. Each interior wall stood covered with years of dirty, black soot from coal smoke. The kerosene lamps, which hung from long cords, created eerie shadows. The only decorations were the designs drawn by the children on dust-covered walls. Cockroaches and large gray rats, the other occupants of the large room, hid in the black corners and came out to eat small scraps of food.

Children learned early to fight for every bite of food. Usually, the older children stole the younger children’s dishes and ran. Ling Choy became a good fighter and bit, scratched, and wriggled out of the hands of the older children.

Days passed slowly, and seasons changed seven times before Ling Choy became old enough to be useful to the staff members. When she turned six, she learned to help bathe and feed the smaller children, but sometimes the babies started crying and wouldn’t stop. Ling Choy became frustrated because she didn’t know what to do.

One day while she changed a dirty diaper, the baby started to cry. She hurried to put the dry cloth on the tiny, scarred bottom, but even then, it wouldn’t stop crying. For a long time, the baby continued to cry and squirm until it yanked its arm out of the shirtsleeve that Ling Choy had just pulled over the tight little fist. Ling Choy felt angry, frustrated, and helpless. Exasperated with the child, she stepped back while covering her ears with her hands and watched the squalling child.

She noticed movement across the room and saw Miss Tong, one of the nurses, working with another child. Miss Tong was having the same difficulties. Ling Choy watched for a moment to see how the nurse would handle the problem. Before long, Miss Tong slapped the child across the face. The action stunned the baby, and the noise ceased.

Ling Choy decided to try this method. She raised her hand and struck the infant across the face. But the baby didn’t stop crying; it just got worse. Ling Choy thought for a moment. Her frustration had ebbed a little, making her feel better. She tried again to silence the crying. Each time she struck the child, her anger lessened. She continued striking the child until it lay very quiet and still. Good,