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Wan LixinOpinion deputy editor of Shanghai Daily
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US couple find son’s Chinese parents
Print Edition
AN American couple who adopted a Chinese boy left at a hospital when he was just 2 months old have found his birth parents.
The Eckels were in China recently with their two adopted children looking to answer questions about their backgrounds.
Responding to media reports, the parents of 17-year-old Joshua Eckel have now been in touch with the family from Texas expressing their astonishment and delight that the boy is alive.
They had left Li Wenfu, his Chinese name, at a hospital in Hefei in east China’s Anhui Province after he suffered severe burns in an accident.
They were told there was little hope of his survival and any treatment for his injuries would be beyond their means.
They weren’t to know that Wu Lihua, a doctor at the No. 105 Hospital of the People’s Liberation Army was to take a special interest in the case.
“He was in very poor situation due to serious burns and malnutrition,” Wu said.
The doctor performed 13 surgeries over the next 14 months and saved the boy’s life, although one of his legs had to be amputated.
Li was sent to the Hefei Children’s Welfare Service Center when he was 2 years old and taken to the United States for treatment by the Eckels, who then adopted him when he was 5.
They brought him back to China last month, along with his sister Marinna, who had also been left at a hospital as a baby, in a search for their birth parents.
Joshua said he understood why he had been left at the Hefei hospital.
“I don’t hate my birth parents because I think they had no choice,” he said.
His adopted mother, Brenda Eckel, said Joshua was “very happy and a little bit nervous” to learn his birth parents had been found, although the Eckels were back in the US when they heard the news.
She said Joshua’s birth parents and older brother and sister in China all wept after learning that he was alive.
“They were so happy to know that Joshua is alive and doing well,” she said.
The search for Marinna’s birth family continues. There have been no clues so far as to who left the now 20-year-old woman at Zhabei District Central Hospital in Shanghai days after she was born.
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