China Ghosts : My Daughter's Journey to America, My Passage to Fatherhood

Aching to expand from a couple to a family, Jeff Gammage--a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer --and his wife, Christine, embarked upon a journey that would carry them across a shifting landscape of emotion and through miles of red tape and bureaucratic protocol. On the other side of the world--in the smog-choked city of Changsha in Hunan Province--a silent, stoic little girl was waiting for them: Jin Yu, their new daughter. Now they would have to learn how to fully embrace a life altered beyond recognition by new concerns and responsibilities--and by a love unlike any they'd ever felt before. Alive with insight and feeling, China Ghosts is an eye-opening depiction of the foreign adoption process and a remarkable glimpse into a different culture. Most important, it is a poignant, heartfelt, and intensely intimate chronicle of the making of a family. "After eighteen years together, Christine and I are down to our last hour as a couple. By dinner we will be a threesome. It seems strange to stand so firmly atop a generational fault line, to know that in an hour you'll be a parent, to understand that your old life is disappearing before your eyes, that a new one is about to begin. . . ."Aching to expand from a couple to a family, Jeff Gammage and his wife, Christine, embarked upon a journey that would carry them across a shifting landscape of emotion—excitement, exhilaration, fear, apprehension—and through miles of red tape and bureaucratic protocol, to a breathtaking land on the other side of the world where a little girl waited. When they met Jin Yu, a silent, stoic two-year-old, in the smog-choked city of Changsha in Hunan Province, they realized that every frustrating moment of their two-year struggle was worth it. But they also realized that another journey had only begun. Now there was much to experience and learn. How do you comfort a crying toddler when you and she speak different languages? How do you fully embrace a life altered beyond recognition by new concerns, responsibilities—and a love unlike any you've felt before?Alive with insight and feeling, China Ghosts is a journalist's eye-opening depiction of the foreign adoption process and a remarkable glimpse into a different culture. Most important, it is a poignant, heartfelt, and intensely intimate chronicle of the making of a family.