Wuhu 9/21

CHICAGO -- Several years ago, New York novelist and humor columnist Emily Prager heard the question a parent dreads: "Mama, where did I come from?"

And since Prager's daughter, LuLu, had been adopted from China when she was about 7 months old, a full answer was probably more than a 4-year-old could have handled. For potential scariness, the birds and the bees have nothing on Chinese population control policies and child abandonment.

So Prager decided to "show, don't tell." She left their Greenwich Village home and took LuLu back to the child's birthplace, the Yangtze River port of Wuhu.

Prager's account of their journey, "Wuhu Diary: On Taking My Adopted Daughter Back to Her Hometown in China," was published earlier this month by Random House.

It's a trip many parents of adoptive Chinese children contemplate, but most usually wait until their children are old enough to understand and remember what they are seeing. LuLu wasn't quite 5 when she left the United States with her mother to spend two months in China.

"I thought that she was ready," Prager said in a recent interview from her summer home in Sag Harbor, N.Y. "She was obviously curious about her origins, and I wanted her to have the experience when her senses and emotions were fresh and genuine. I also wanted to go soon because China was changing so fast."

A homecoming

Prager said it was to be a sort of homecoming journey for herself, too. As a child in the 1950s, she spent 2 1/2 years in Taiwan with her father, an Air Force officer posted to Taipei as an attache. Although she had visited the People's Republic as a tourist in 1979 and had returned briefly in 1994 to adopt LuLu, the trip to Wuhu would be her first chance to spend unhurried time in provincial China and savor the sounds and smells of her childhood.

She also had a third -- and less attainable -- goal.

Foreigners who adopt Chinese children typically learn only the birth date (often approximate) of their children and where they were found abandoned. Since child abandonment is a felony in China, it is done surreptitiously and information about the birth parents is nonexistent. But Prager hoped that an orphanage caregiver could give her a clue as to what sort of woman LuLu's birthmother might have been. Was she a peasant? A factory worker? A Yangtze boat dweller?

So in April of 1999, Prager set out on what eventually became the quest of a Dona Quixote, tilting at the gates of the Wuhu Orphanage and Nursing Home.

Prager, 49, is obviously a free spirit. She acted in a soap opera in her teens, began a writing career with the National Lampoon, did an advice column for Penthouse magazine and has since written satiric pieces for a wide array of publications. Her well-received short-story collection, "A Visit From the Footbinder," gained notoriety for its bizarre dust-jacket art, and her latest novel, "Roger Fishbite," is a "Lolita" story told from the nymphet's point of view.

But a free spirit may be at a disadvantage in China's regimented society.

In her book, Prager tells of several embarrassing mistakes she made. She forgot to presign her travelers checks and she didn't prearrange travel from Shanghai to Wuhu, which cost her several days and inconvenienced a Chinese sociologist who was waiting for her in Wuhu.

Prager had never been in Wuhu before. Adoptions from Wuhu's orphanages are performed in the provincial capital, Hefei, about 70 miles away. Nonetheless, American adoptive parents have visited Wuhu facilities -- but always through prior arrangement.

In the interview, Prager said she had not contacted the orphanage in advance, but expected informal contacts to get her in, whereupon she would bring toys to the children, do volunteer work and interview the caregivers.

It didn't work out that way.

Acquaintances found the orphanage for Prager, but she was not allowed in. LuLu managed to run through the gates and into a courtyard, but was shooed out by an elderly security guard. The abortive visit occurred only hours after U.S. planes bombed the Chinese embassy during a NATO raid on Belgrade.

Prager blames that military blunder for her continued frustration in gaining access to the orphanage. "I am sure the embassy bombing was the main cause," she said.

Nonetheless, Prager feels that merely seeing the outside of the building affected LuLu.

"She was amazing -- absolutely bowled over," she said.

During their 1 1/2-month stay in Wuhu, Prager enrolled LuLu in a preschool for two days a week. When they weren't trying to get into the orphanage, they explored the city, shopped, watched television and learned to Rollerblade.

More seriously, LuLu fell ill several times during their visit and Prager injured her own foot on the hotel's running machine. Her account of China's no-frills medical care system is both sympathetic and accurate.

Prager and LuLu did get to visit an orphanage before they left China -- the modern, model orphanage in Hefei, a showplace of China's child welfare system.

Despite her frustrations, Prager said she would recommend such a trip to other adoptive parents of Chinese children.

"Don't be afraid and don't panic," she said. "And don't be surprised to discover that you've become internally Chinese yourself. Adoption is a two-way street -- we have also become members of that culture."

End Adv for Sept 20-23 and Thereafter