Know what you're doing with the kids this Saturday? April 28 is World Tai Chi Qigong Day, and there's a good chance there's something going on near you.

I've been to one of these events in Ft. Lauderdale, and it was pretty fun. Tai chi people tend to be pretty easygoing, you know. They're professionally relaxed.

And if you were ever curious... more

Beijing has long arms. Capital cities do. But I don't think the Beijing movers and shakers ever really expected the One-Child Policy to affect Canadian children.

Yet here we are -- Hong Zhang is a Chinese citizen, and her year-old daughter, Sherry, was born in Canada to a Canadian father. The daughter's a citizen, the mother isn't and is being deported. The problem is, the mother's not allowed to have the daughter in China. People... more

Everybody knows Dora the Explorer, right? That Nickelodeon character who has earned bajillions by endearing her animated self to pre-schoolers and coaxed them into using a few words of Spanish as well as English?

She's big in our house, you know. She's big *everywhere*. She's not just on television.

Maybe by this time next year (or the year after), everybody will know ... 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

I'm still thinking about heritage, and still (as ever) reading the news.

There's that iconic figure that pops up in writings on transracial adoption -- the rainbow. It's a symbol of differences (racial, cultural, ethnic, whatever) coming together seamlessly. My anxiety, of course, is that it's nothing more than sunlight passing through... more

One year ago today.

He seemed so *polite* when he was sleeping.

Detail of an 18th century fresco by Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo

I've been thinking lately about the idea of maintaining my kids' heritage, and what "heritage" means, and the extent to which an American of recent Euro-African descent can actually somehow embody Chinese culture. My conclusion: I can't. I can only embody international adoption as its own culture within America, and... more

Because we within the adoption community (inasmuch as there is such a thing as one adoption community) can't get enough of celebrity adopters either (not least because whatever they do in public changes the way people look at us in the supermarket checkout lines), it's probably time for a check-in.

Madonna is insisting that ... more