Geng Geng Smiles
Geng Geng (pronounced gung gung) is a happy looking boy, always smiling, and ever inquisitive. The moment he saw me taking pictures he asked Sr. Therese, the director of the Liming Family Rehabilitation Center, who I was. Sr. Therese said I was there to visit. Geng Geng refocuses on his lunch but steals momentary glances over at my direction. His obvious intelligence made me tremendously curious about the boy so I approached him and introduced myself. Smiling, he introduced himself and remarking on my light clothing in the poorly heated home, said that he found me strange. Everybody laughed at Geng Geng’s comment (me included). He told me he was 14 and, teased him, said that I was the same age. He was having none of it and he said that I was WAY older than him. He called me shu shu which means ‘uncle’ in Chinese. Geng Geng loves the camera so I took more pictures of him. He smiles.
Geng Geng never knew his birth parents. They left him in an orphanage in Hebei once they realized that their child was handicapped with multiple disabilities. This happy boy, who calls me shu shu and smiles at my camera, is an orphan. Sadly, Geng Geng’s situation is typical of many Chinese people with multiple disabilities and growth disorders. Most of them are left orphaned right after birth as, in rural China, they are considered as a heavy burden in families already struggling to get by. But the Liming Family Rehabilitation Center begs to differ. They believe that through constant therapy, children like Geng Geng are capable of doing things that go beyond their disabilities and that they can become a source of hope and happiness for their families.
Geng Geng is just but one of the 25 children needing free treatment by The Liming Family Rehabilitation Center in rural Hebei Province. Although he is an orphan, some of the children that are undergoing therapy have families that care for them. Their families took them to Liming Family Rehabilitation Center with the hopes of developing in their sons and daughters the skills that people without disabilities usually take for granted. Most of these families at the beginning start out wanting to give their children up to orphanages and institutions that take in cases with multiple disabilities and physical and mental handicaps, but LFRC encouraged these parents to work with their children and discover that they, with support, patience and love, can stand on their own. LFRC’s goal is to keep children with cognitive disorders and multiple disabilities out of institutions and orphanages and get them back into their own homes where they can be loved and accepted by their own family members.
About six percent of China’s total population has disabilities that range from visual impairment, to multiple disabilities. This counts to 83 million Chinese. Although the situation has improved greatly in terms of treatment and acceptance for disabled people in recent years, children and adults with multiple conditions such as Geng Geng are often left behind in these so called changes. Many Chinese families in farming communities still regard children like Geng Geng as a heavy burden and worse, even as a bad case of misfortune that has fallen upon the family. The children become outcasts in their own homes and are often abandoned at an early age. After abandonment, they become a common feature in orphanages and institutions where they grow old and probably die there too. Geng Geng is the smiling face of this unfortunate 6%.
There is hope, however. Sr. Therese and the 11 other sisters in LFRC provide speech, physical and occupational therapies to these children. But the more important work of the center, that often goes unnoticed by many, is their work with the parents in helping them deal with their children’s therapy. The sisters of LFRC train parents to give therapy to their children in their own homes, This encourages more time and interaction with between parent and child. For parents who are constantly haunted by their child’s limitations, just to discover that their child has potentials is enough to give them hope.
And it gives me hope to look at Geng Geng. Despite of his multiple disabilities, Geng Geng can use the computer under supervision and is currently learning to read and write Chinese characters. The care provided in LFRC goes beyond therapy. It’s the empowerment that the sisters give to these children that makes LFRC different from other centers in the province. The idea that children like Geng Geng can actually function in society despite their various limitations gives one a sense hope, not only for the children themselves but also to their parents who are thinking of abandoning them.
As I leave the center I look at the children who are now all huddled up in another room watching a Chinese soap opera. They’re eyes are all fixed on the television screen watching two Chinese lovers crying over a love lost. I look at the TV screen and try to absorb the scene with my limited knowledge of Chinese. I was never a fan of soap operas and I find them mostly amusing. The children are quietly absorbing the scene in front of them. I look at the screen and watch the plot congeal rather than thicken as the heroine rushes from her lost love to the strains of canned music. The children and even the sisters seem riveted and absorbed in the sadness of the on screen action. I search for Geng Geng’s face and I find him in the middle of the pack with eyes half closed and mouth half open. He is watching intently like the rest, but he is smiling.
If you want to know more about the Liming Family Rehabilitation Center’s “Stand Tall Program” and how you can help, click on this link.