Orphaned, but not alone

Adopting a Chinese baby changed Jenny Bowen's life, and prompted the former Hollywood scriptwriter to found a charity dedicated to providing care for abandoned children in China, as Zhao Xu reports.

For Jenny Bowen, the distance between herself and her newly adopted daughter began to close when the child, barely 2, slowly began edging nearer on the hotel bed. "She didn't dare to look at me, but as I felt the warmth of her back inching closer to me, I also felt her courage," Bowen recalled in an e-mail exchange with China Daily.

Bowen had met her new daughter a few days before, at an orphanage in Guangzhou, Guangdong province. "Her face was splotched with sores and she was clutching a dried lichee nut in each hand that had been placed there to keep her from scratching her scores. Tired and confused, she was so beautiful and so sad," said the 60-something mother of four, looking back to that hot afternoon in summer 1997. "A smiling woman in a white uniform lifted her up to me, but she arched her back when I tried to hold her. She wanted nothing to do with me."