China 2003 Adopt a Kid - See the World / The Sequel

China 2003

Adopt a Kid – See the World Part II

Introduction from August 2026

You probably all know someone, or you may be that someone, who plans for a certain size family, then gets a surprise addition. That is how it was with the Shufflers. We had Rachel when we were pretty young (I think I was 6 or 7), then went through some difficult financial times and put off additional kids. But Rachel didn’t like being an only child and we always wanted another kid, so in 2000, we adopted Jade from China. Our family was now complete with two daughters. Except one night, Dana looks at me with “those eyes” and next thing you know, we find ourselves unexpectedly with completed adoption forms and a surprise referral from China announcing we have been approved as parents for little Xuan Xian. Wow! We were elated, but surprised. How did this happen? I mean, yeah, we were looking at some Immigration and Naturalization forms online and talking to some social workers and an adoption agency, but we thought we had been careful. Nevertheless, we were jubilant when we got the referral and the first photos! In the orphanages, they keep all the kids hair cut very short for hygienic reasons. Four-year-old Jade, who was beside herself with the excitement of getting a new sister, took one look at the photo and exclaimed with disappointment, that’s not a girl, that’s a boy!

Then SARS hit. Does anyone remember SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) from early ‘oughts? Pre-COVID, this was a potential global pandemic that was controlled and never expanded beyond China and Southeast Asia. Travel to countries with infections was severely limited and as a result, all adoptions were suspended. So the trip to get little Mayli would was put on indefinite hold. Who is little Mayli? Well, that was the name I had decided on while my Bride wanted Lily. So it was put to a vote and my two current minions (daughters) turned on me and as a result, Xuan - who was supposed to be Mayli - became Lily.

SARS delays caused problems. Along with all the documents we filed and interviews with social workers we endured, our fingerprints on file with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) expired after 12 months on file. I was unaware fingerprints came with an expiration date like milk, but the US Government, as usual, was on top of it. So we had to revisit an INS office and get re-fingerprinted. I had been working on cars, sprinklers, lawn equipment or general mischievousness and had got something on my hands that had caused some minor skin peeling. (That was actually minor – most of my projects end up with a trip to the emergency room!) The INS officer taking my prints had a hard time getting a good print. Finally I ended up with five or six officers standing around examining my hands and fingers and one accused me of intentionally messing with my fingerprints. In the INS crowd surrounding me, I appeared to be the only native English-speaker. I am far from anti-immigration when done right, but kinda peeved me that I was probably the only native-born person in the group and I was the one being accused of an immigration violation. Someone finally managed to get a good set of prints. I guess it went through the system OK since it’s been 23 years as I type this and I haven’t heard back. Although, it is the Federal Government and they’re not the fastest…wait…is that someone knocking at the door?

Below are the two original emails I sent home to friends and family from Changsha and Guangzhou, China during our trip to get Lily. This trip had two major differences from our first trip to adopt. Jade was a 15-month-old infant who could barely walk and wasn’t talking; Lily was 2 ½-years-old, could run like she was qualifying for the Olympics and would talk in Chinese to strangers, probably about us. The trip to get Jade was just the three of us (Dana, Rachel, and Me) meeting and traveling with a facilitator until the last few days in Guangzhou waiting on sealed papers from the US Consulate. The trip to get Lily was with six other families from various points in the USA. That enabled us to make several great friends to this day. Including my BFAM (Brother–From-Another-Mother), shout out to Kevin!

One final note: although we were elated at getting Lily, my Bride had her INS forms tied after this trip, just to be certain this was our last adoption and no future accidents.

First email from China

Changsha China

August 2003

Chow Mein from Changsha!

Well, the last 24 hours have been…eventful (We'll leave it at that since there might be little eyes reading!) The first six or so hours we had Lily, there was nothing but screaming, yelling, crying and trying to get out the door to our hotel room. But Dana finally got me to stop screaming, yelling, crying, and trying to leave and we were also able to get Lily calm. We all went to Peter's (our Chinese facilitator) room about 3:30 p.m. Sunday afternoon, where each couple was handed a stunned kid and told to go back to our room and wait for the orphanage entourage to come to our room. The kids, all babies about a year old except for Lily who is 2 1/2, had just been on their first trip ever outside the orphanage since shortly after birth. And that was on a mountainous three hour drive from You Xian with a psychotic suicidal driver. I didn't meet their driver, but if you'd ever been to China, you understand how you can safely assume that any driver is psychotic and suicidal. Probably Lily’s first car ride ever and she threw up. And then she is abducted. By us. From the way she acted once she got to our room, you could tell it wasn't a good day.

After 20-30 minutes alone with us in the room, Lily finally calmed down, but was still terrified. Then the orphanage director, whom I wouldn't want to embarrass, so I refer to him as Chairman Mao, marches in with his troops. Lily rushes to him with relief spilling out of all openings and gushing throughout the room. She looks back at us with a glare and Chairman Mao is thoughtful enough to support her retreat by picking her up and holding her the whole time they are in the room. When they finally left, we found out that the fit Lily threw before their visit compared to the one after was the same as the difference between a three-year-old slightly damp Black Cat firecracker and the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. We finally made contact with Lily by ordering a traditional Chinese Hunan dish to make her feel at home - spaghetti and watermelon. If you go into any Chinese restaurant that does not serve such a basic Hunan dish, leave at once. It can only mean the chef is a fake and obviously from Costa Rica or Milwaukee. Lily actually smiled and opened up a little during dinner.

That is why we were so concerned with our trip to the CAB (Civil Affairs Bureau). And yes, we took a BUS (bus) to the CAB. The CAB is where we process the adoption and get a passport. Chairman Mao and his troops would be there to sign papers and to activate any anti-adoption brainwash programming resident in the children. I was unbelievably relieved when Lily fell asleep. Not only because she would never know how close to death she came like those of us on the bus awake were aware (ie, it was normal traffic in Changsha), but I hoped she would sleep through the Chairman Mao invasion. I was very disappointed when the first thing we had to do was have the passport picture taken. Unfortunately all the kids had to be awake. We roused Lily just in time for the flash, then I jumped up and began to do the go-to-sleep-boogie. For non-parents, that is where you jump around like a Cherokee at a war dance humming loudly trying to jostle any consciousness out of your kid. Lily fell back asleep. I was so relieved coming out of the picture room that I almost ran into Chairman Mao who snatched Lily away from me, woke her up and got her excited thinking she was being sprung. The first thing Lily did was yank up her dress and pat a Huggie Pull-Up on her bottom. She was housebroken, but we weren't sure how dependable that was, the availability of toilets, and Lily’s ability to let us know if she needed to go. She was not happy at wearing a pull-up when we put it on. She rattled off something in Chinese to Chairman Mao while glaring at me. He just clicked his tongue, shook his head, and glared at me also. Throughout our three hour torture session, when we would get Lily calmed down, Chairman Mao or one of his generals would literally rush into the room, remind Lily of all the fun they had had for the last 2 1/2 years, point out that we looked like brain-sucking aliens from the planet Wacko, then leave when Lily became all worked up. Toward the end, their attempts to upset all the children became comical. I think Lily even caught on that these guys were playing army without any bullets. Finally by lunch today, August 31, 2003, Lily was officially Lily Xuan Shuffler and the official third daughter of Keith and Dana Shuffler!

In spite of everything, Lily has grown much more comfortable with us. She was loud in a restaurant tonight and had to chatter happily with everyone that approached the table plus the table directly behind her. It was just like eating out with Jade. She giggles frequently at various things now and when she chatters in Chinese, she usually has enough body language to get the message across. I think a Gallop pole would find we have a 50% approval rating at the moment. While that's considerably below our approval rating with five-year-old Jade, it is actually considerably higher than our current approval rating with eighteen-year-old Rachel. Lily has started calling Dana "Mama", me "Baba" (Chinese for Daddy…or at least that’s what I hope it means!), and is starting to answer to Lily. She walks everywhere with us and wants to hold our hand unless she is playing in which she will run ahead giggling and yell something back at us in Chinese that probably means "Last one there is a rotten dim-sum!" She seems to have an abundance of humor, so I'm not sure how well she'll fit in with us. I think she'll end up keeping us, but realizes there will be a lot of retraining of Mama and Baba along the way!

Some pictures are attached. And yes, there is a Walmart in Changsha and, duh, we have been to it!

Sweet and Sour from China,

Keith

Second email from China

Guangzhou China

September 2003

Should I be concerned that every hotel we have stayed at in China has one or two gas masks in the closet? Both that they’re there and that there are three of us?

We left Changsha Friday heading to Guangzhou. The one hour flight took over four hours. We left on time and kept flying and flying. Finally they came on with an announcement in Chinese. Everyone who understood Chinese on the plane groaned loudly. Then they announced in English that we were preparing to land. In Guilin. Now our tickets said Guangzhou for the destination. They explained that there was a thunderstorm in Guangzhou, so we had to divert. However, the Chinese passengers on the plane reported that Guilin was 300-500 miles from Guangzhou. This is a good time to say that the China Southern 737 jets are configured for little Chinese passengers. The seats only have about 8 inches between the seat cushion and the back of the seat in front. And there were about 16 adopted kids that had never been outside the orphanage until a few days before. And now they were in a very crowded tube. With strangers. Lily refused to be buckled in to her seat. When we landed in Guilin, the plan bounced so hard on the runway that any kids not screaming were jolted into doing so. Carol, one of the new Mom’s in our group, asked if we had been shot down. We finally made it later to Guangzhou, but it appeared we had went through a time warp: all adults that disembarked the plane appeared twenty years older than when they went on the plane four hours earlier.

Our Chinese facilitator, Peter, treated us to a traditional lunch at a typical Cantonese restaurant in Guangzhou. Guangzhou was previously called Canton, but changed the name because everyone else was changing the name of their cities. The restaurant was huge, but when we walked in, we walked by the food they will prepare. Now all Americans have walked by a lobster tank, and the rich among us (not me!) have picked out a live lobster and sentenced it to death by boiling. But we walked through a half-acre of produce in tanks including innumerable variety of fish swimming in tanks, frogs hopping, turtles crawling, snakes slithering, worms (many varieties) squirming and so on. I haven't said so previously, but actually the "produce" section of Walmart in Changsha also had the previous selections. The coup d’grande (or is that coup de grace? Or, Cruella de Ville? My French is lacking.) at the restaurant was the tray of insect larva wriggling on a huge cookie sheet type tray. I don't know what type of larva they were, but they looked like a one inch long maggots. For lunch! Oh the horror - maggots are clearly a dinner item! This could actually be very cost effective. The fresh fruit and veggies that go bad, eventually become maggot infested. Then, instead of throwing it away, the restaurateur then just moves it from the original section to the maggot section. Fortunately, Peter ordered a bunch of dead stuff that wasn't recognizable from the front tanks except for a fully intact fish with steam pouring out from around the eyeballs when it was plopped down in the middle of our table. We were given a coconut that had the top cut off with "soup" on the inside. The "soup" contained an entire featherless pigeon including the head that looked up at me out of the top of the coconut. I generally like my food unrecognizable to its animated form. I also didn't eat the jellyfish rolls placed on the table. Again, new Mom Carol had the quote of the day when she commented “I can’t wait to get home to New York and some real Chinese food!”

The parks are plentiful in both Guangzhou and Changsha. There are lots of outdoor all-weather exercise sets and they were always being used. Lots of people were in the parks playing Mahjong. The players can get quite animated, slapping the tiles down with a loud click and then standing with a smug satisfied look when they have made a good move. Or maybe when it is an average move, but they are tying to convince the other player all hope is over. China’s culture was more continuous for thousands of years, unlike Europe that constantly invaded each other, burned everything to the ground and introduced new religion or culture and tried to wipe out all evidence of the previous. Europe has a lot of buildings or sites that are hundreds of years old. China has a lot of sites that are thousands of years old. One site we had never heard of, but saw on a walk one day in central Changsha was the Mawangdui Han Dynasty Tombs. These are estimated to be over 2,100 years old and just discovered in the 1970’s. We walked through part of the tombs not currently being excavated and toured the onsite museum packed with recovered artifacts..

Lily is fun. She still has her spells in which she gets really upset and refuses to let anyone near her. But those are getting shorter and the laughing is getting longer. We did both the zoo and a museum today and she was a trooper through both. She understands about 50% or more of what we tell her or ask her. That is way higher than both our other daughters, ages 5 and 18! She repeats some English back to us, but we still get "xie-xie" when we tell her to say thank you and toilet paper (she can't reach it) is always the same, but something that I can't pronounce. She sings a couple of Chinese drinking tunes and is always jabbering when she is playing. She loves to put on Dana's shoes and sunglasses, then tell us "bye-bye" and pretend to leave out the door. Fortunately, this is followed by her giggling with her hand over her mouth and not screaming at the top of her lungs like last week. At least I think that's what she's doing - I lost all hearing last week and have to read lips now.

Lily is always hungry and can really put away the food. We split off from our group who all stayed at the famous White Swan Hotel (often referred to as the White Stork because of all the adoptive families staying there waiting on the US Consulate next door) in Guangzhou to stay at the Marriott where I could redeem some of my bounty of Marriott points and stay for free. I enjoyed treating Lily to the buffet and seeing her response to new foods. One breakfast I had three strawberries on my plate and paused to look out the window at something. When I turned back, there were two strawberries and Lily had a huge bulge in her cheek, and looking everywhere except toward me. So I waited until the bulge disappeared and looked out the window again while watching a little hand creep toward my strawberries. I moved quick and grabbed her hand. She went pale with surprise, but then I put the strawberry in her hand and the last one I moved to her plate. She hesitated a second, then started laughing. Lily had been eating traditional Chinese prepared food her whole life. She would chew up fish or chicken carefully, searching for bones. Chinese chefs carefully cut up chicken with about 50 hacks of a meat cleaver. Bones are in almost every piece of meat. I gave Lily some soft serve ice cream with chocolate sprinkles on it. She ate it carefully and spit out all the “bones”, aka chocolate sprinkles!

One sad note in our trip. Bullet (our beagle of 8 years) was bitten by a snake in our backyard while we were gone and died on Sunday. Bullet and I never saw eye-to-eye on many items. One of his first transgressions as a puppy was to chew on my pet turtles in the backyard and was responsible for the death of one. Speedy, Curley and Larry all have Bullet's teeth marks on their shells. Moe managed to escape Bullet and has no scars. Hope and Grady came after the turtles were moved exclusively to the Bullet-proof garden. In later years, however, Bullet never did more than just sniff the turtles. He sniffed everything. He was probably sniffing the snake when he got bit. He wasn't the brightest crayon in the pack. Beagles were originally bred to hunt rabbits.  However, I have seen a rabbit eating grass in our backyard within five feet of Bullet while he lay facing the opposite direction completely unaware. He was good company when I was working or relaxing in the yard, never carried a grudge when I punished him for eating tomatoes from my garden or bothering the turtles and will be missed.

I hope you all get to meet Lily soon. I have attached a couple of photos.

Take Care,

Keith

2026 side note: I still have Speedy the turtle. He has been with me for 35 years. We no longer have Lily. She has graduated from Texas State, moved to Austin, got married to Zach and bought a house, but still checks in with Mom and Dad regularly. Speedy, however, has escaped twice from the turtle pen in the backyard. The first was when we still lived in Rowlett. I had no idea a hole had been knocked in the fence by workers next door, but went to get the mail and Speedy was on the front porch looking up at me to see if I had any tomatoes, a favorite treat. Then two years ago, a tree limb fell on the border of the current turtle pen and all the turtles escaped. I didn’t realize it until I came across a turtle while mowing. I was mowing, not the turtle. I have never trained them to do helpful chores. Our house is in a rural community on two acres with only a picket fence the turtles can easily transgress once outside the pen. I found all the turtles except Speedy and one other. Then one morning this past spring, 18 months after his escape, I looked out from the breakfast table and see Speedy trying to get into the turtle pen! Life on the outside without tomatoes, tuna fish, and earthworms from the bait shop is no picnic!