COUPLE WITH CAPE TIES ADOPT INFANT FROM CHINA

A lot of couples go to great lengths to have babies. A former Cape Girardeau man and his wife went all the way to China.

Ralph Flori Jr., his wife, Beverly, and their daughter, Aleisha Shiaomei, recently returned to their home in Rolla. Flori's father, Ralph Sr., is the owner of Flori Sales and Service in Cape Girardeau. Ralph Jr. graduated from Cape Central High School in 1975 and is now an assistant professor at the University of Missouri-Rolla.

"She's doing great," Ralph Flori Jr said of his 9-month-old daughter, Aleisha Shiaomei. "She's not quite on Missouri time yet, though. There's about 13 hours' difference. We're trying to convince her to sleep through the night. We haven't quite learned the trick yet."

The Floris adopted Aleisha from an orphanage in Guangzhou, formerly known as Canton, where she had been abandoned.

"She has an estimated birthdate of Jan. 5," her father said. "She had been brought to the orphanage on Jan. 20, or something like that. I think she was found in a hospital and then taken to the police station and then the orphanage."

The Floris have an older son, Andrew, now 3 1/2, whom they adopted in Rolla. The couple signed up with Love Basket, a Christian adoption agency based in Hillsboro, but were able to adopt Andrew when a doctor they knew informed them his birth mother wanted to give the baby up for adoption.

"That was a miracle adoption, too," Ralph Flori Sr. said of his grandson.

The Floris only learned of Love Basket's China program in March. They finished the paperwork in June and were matched with Aleisha Shiaomei in mid-July. "Then it was just simply waiting for the time the government wanted us to come over," Ralph Flori Jr. said.

The six-month period was "very good," he said.

"It's not easy to adopt a healthy infant domestically these days," he said. "The China program intrigued us for a couple of reasons."

Most Chinese children available for adoption are girls, and they wanted Andrew to have a sister, he said, and most of the children available are infants, which was also important.

Kate Powers, the adoption coordinator for Love Basket's foreign program, said the agency specializes in placing children from India, Russia and China.

In 1992, China revised its adoption laws, "and that really opened the doors wide" for adoptions by foreigners, Powers said. Couples have to be between 35 and 50 years old, Powers said. "They prefer childless couples, but will place relatively healthy infants with couples who have one child."

Most of the children available for adoption from India and China are female, she said.

"In most Third World nations, the male child is the prize," Powers said. "The female children are often abandoned. There's just a need for families to adopt female children from those countries."

Socio-economic and political factors play a big part in which countries allow foreign adoptions, she said, adding that with the upset in the Soviet-Russian state, there's a big Russian program. Domestic upheaval in Haiti means children are also available from that nation.

The Floris kept friends and families informed of their progress in China with bulletins faxed regularly to the United States. One of the bulletins says Aleisha Shiaomei is "charming, loves to smile and has happy eyes."

Ralph Flori Jr. said he and wife have been very lucky in their adoption efforts.

"We've been married 16 years," he said, and "I think most people just expect to get married and have their own children and go on from there. We haven't been able to."

He said adopting Andrew was an unbelievably good experience, adding: "God just uniquely provided him for us, and he's just a wonderful little guy. I guess our experience with adopting him was so good that the idea of adopting again was much easier."

Flori was pleasantly surprised at the receptive attitude of the Chinese toward foreign adoptions.

"We were a little bit concerned about what the Chinese might think of us adopting a Chinese baby, but from what we heard from the people we saw in restaurants or in the community, the word that several of them used basically said, she's lucky," he said.

Powers said the "vast majority" of their clients are looking for healthy, white infants, who are not always available.

"People are going outside of the country mainly because the time frames here in the United States are very long," she said. Abortion, the foster care system and higher tolerance for single mothers also are factors limiting adoption options, Powers said.

"People want a child," she said. "If they don't have any resources and they don't want to wait for the healthy, white infant, transracial or overseas adoption is the answer."

Flori said Andrew already knows he's adopted. When Aleisha Shiaomei gets older, he and his wife will tell her about her adoption as well. The Floris have photos of the orphanage and the area of China where Aleisha Shiaomei was adopted and will show her those. Some day, the family may return for a visit to let Aleisha Shiaomei get to know her roots.