My Studious Spouse, the one with the job doing the home studies, recently pointed me toward a bulletin she'd received from the agency with which she contracts. It's about adoptions from Taiwan, which apparently are getting more popular (as previously alluded to in this space). If you'd like to be adopting from Taiwan, you should definitely include some descriptions of your exposure to and familiarity with the culture, and your... more

Item 1: Is Chinese business success based on lucky numbers?

That's what the Wall Street Journal seems to be asking up there. Actually that particular story is mostly about how individual investors make up the bulk of Chinese stock trading, rather than in America, where conglomerates and brokerages take up the biggest slice of the pie.

But it's got a nice chart of Chinese numbers in it, and a nice overview of why it's a good practice to give somebody you like eight of something, and why you won't find a fourth or 14th floor in a lot of tall buildings,... more

Daughter, whose umbilical hernia starred in one or two old entries now has a new navel. There's a scar on it, and it doesn't stick out like it used to. She was not, technically, a "special needs" or "waiting" child, but there are things that are not like other children - the scar on her abdomen is already fading, but there are other, less obvious things. Being raised... more

Do you remember the time not so very long ago when I got all het up over Vladimir Putin offering citizens money to make more Russians the old-fashioned way, by putting babies in Russian mommies' tummies?

As opposed to, oh, maybe taking babies out of social welfare institutions?

Well, apparently, the Russians aren't the only one of China's neighbors to offer money to people to create... more

Once again, Brian Stuy is stirring things up with a new contentious contention -- that Fuling SWI (from whence came Daughter) serves as a funnel for other social welfare institutions in the area.

Specifically, he brings up evidence (circumstantial but persuasive) that babies officially reported as being "found at the orphanage gates" of Fuling actually came from Youyang SWI, a small but well-functioning institution not far from Fuling. Though it seemed to be doing good work, the institution was suddenly closed in May 2006.

...[I]n the early morning,... more

The Taipei Times seems to be suggesting a rather odd thing.

They seem to be saying that Taiwan, a little island off the coast of the People's Republic of China, could be replacing China as the source for internationally adopted infants in the US. This is something like suggesting Newfoundland could replace the canned fish production of the United States and territories (including Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands).... more

Just heard through the official grapevine (what is an official grapevine? the unofficial source for news from officials, of course) about a new policy from the CCAA.

It is a policy designed not to test the patience of prospective parents, but to eliminate thems what don't have it.

This is the policy: if you're LID -- your paperwork is logged in with China -- and you get fed up with the wait times stretching out to a year or more before your dossier gets sent to the magic matching room, and you decide to yank your file... more

The Economist, of all publications, has a fascinating story on names in Chinese orphanages, what they're likely to mean and where some of them come from.

And, incidentally, just how very strange some of them are.

Common choices are Dang meaning “party” (the Communist one, naturally), or Guo meaning “country” or “state”. Those saddled with these names face a lifetime of funny looks, or a bureaucratic quagmire trying to change them.

In February... more

There's nothing about this yet on The Rumor Queen, but I've been hearing whispers about there only being two days (or, on the more optimistic end, six days) of referrals in the latest batch from the CCAA.

You can compare that with the more usual span of referral dates included in a single batch on this waiting parent's site.

I say "span of referral dates" because as yet, we have no way of knowing how many actual dossiers this span includes -- it might well be... more

There's been, of course, lots and lots of press about the new regulations for adopting from China. But not a lot of it comes from Singapore.

Peculiar. I've talked about attitudes... more