The Aussie, the abandoned boy, and China's one-child policy

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Linda Shum's life changed 20 years ago when she read an article about the plight of unwanted babies in China.

The country's one-child policy had created a population of abandoned, often-disabled children.

Within a year, Linda — from Gympie in regional Queensland — visited an orphanage in the small Chinese city of Jiaozuo. By 2004 she had established her own special needs school and later a series of foster homes for orphans in dire need.

ABC presenter and former China correspondent Jane Hutcheon has written a book on Linda's work, titled China Baby Love, which reveals the struggles she has gone through and shows another side to China's economic transformation.

Amid the stories of heartache there are also surprising tales of survival and hope.

The following is an edited extract from the book.

Abandoned. Alone. Alive.

One summer evening when a gentle breeze caressed the corn in the nearby fields, Fu Yang's father woke him and told him to put on his shoes.

The young boy, who was deaf, did exactly what his father told him.

His father led him into a forest far away from the house. They walked and walked with only the moonlight to guide their way.

Fu Yang never questioned anything, he just followed his father. He didn't know why they were walking all this way in the dark.

When they reached a clearing, Fu Yang's father stopped and bent down low so he could speak to his son using hand signals.

"'I am going away," his father told him.

"You are staying here. Never tell anyone where you came from."

Then he shooed him away.

The boy walked all night, without any money, any food, water or a last glance from a man he loved.

Even though he had been abandoned, Fu Yang didn't cry. He felt relief to be away from his abusive mother and curled up near a tree and slept.

The boy wandered on his own for several years. He scoured the towns for his livelihood and wondered whether he would ever see his parents again.

One day he started begging in the market and managed to steal a warm bun for his breakfast. He noticed a police car driving by and started to run. The police got out and gave chase.

When they caught up with him, he was bundled roughly into the van. After driving for about an hour, the van stopped outside the gates of a government building.

It was the orphanage.

With its odd collection of children with disabilities, babies, the elderly and intellectually impaired — the orphanage felt a little bit like the circus Fu Yang had come to know so well in the first five years of his life.

Orphanage shock

At the orphanage, Linda Shum noticed the boy immediately.

Fu Yang's eyes seemed to have melted over his cheekbones. He was deaf and mute but despite his appearance, he was energetic, always cheerful and willing to help.

Like the other kids, Fu Yang knew to avoid the toilet block.

The toilet consisted of an open sewer a metre below the concrete pavers. The pavers were badly broken so that smaller children were always at risk of falling into the channel.

Out in the courtyard there were washing lines and two disused bathtubs propped against the brick wall. In the centre of the courtyard was a rusty child's roundabout which no longer went around.

There were no washing machines in the orphanage until the foreigner volunteers came in the late 1990s.

In the orphanage, cement walls had holes big enough to fit fists through. Gaps were stuffed with rubbish.

The walls had been whitewashed once, but were covered in black coal dust as well as children's scribbles with crayons given to them by the foreigners.

Was the writing on the wall a sign of rebellion or a cry for help? Nobody knew for sure.

Linda had seen poverty like this in the Queensland towns where she and her husband Greg had worked during the '70s and '80s. But back then the poverty had been restricted to one or two families.

This was one orphanage in one city in one province of modern China. Linda wondered what the other orphanages must be like.

"Someone said that the orphanage was built in 1979," Linda said.

"I just couldn't believe that. It looked 400 years old."

A new beginning

A decade after his adoption in 2005, I meet Fu Yang DeLuca via Skype from Dallas, Texas.

He's now a broad-shouldered young man, sitting next to Dinah, his adoptive mother, a native Texan.

At times I can hear his adoptive Dad, Louis, in the background. Louis is a veteran photojournalist with the Dallas Morning News.

In 2003, Louis visited the Jiaozuo orphanage and photographed some of the children.

He seemed particularly intrigued by Fu Yang's unusual face and he forwarded his images to The Grace Children's Foundation which provides free medical help to Chinese orphans.

A proposal was drawn-up offering Fu Yang an opportunity to go to the US.

"I didn't even know America existed," Fu said, talking and signing.

"I had no idea what was happening."

In those early days Louis found himself wanting to go to the hospital and just "hang out" with Fu. He decided to discuss the idea of adoption with Dinah. In her practical, Texan way she had already reached a conclusion.

"You know there is no way we can let that little boy go back to China, don't you?" she said.

Since coming to the US, Fu Yang has undergone many rounds of surgery and he now has a hearing aid. He turns 27 this year and is due to graduate from Texas State Technical College.

Like his dad, is a gifted photographer.

"He's a Chinese Huck Finn," his mum Dinah said.

"He doesn't back down from a challenge, he has drive and a determination that is rare and self-confidence that is hard to explain."

Topics: community-and-society, family-and-children, foreign-affairs, gympie-4570, china, united-states