Spring Festival Travel Season Kicks Off In China (Photo : Getty Images)
It is a common soap opera theme that parents of adopted children who eventually want to find their biological parents are hesitant for fear the child would choose to return to his birth family. Then, it often turns out the adopted child's resentment at being given away becomes a stronger motivation for the child, usually already approaching adulthood, to choose his adoptive over biological family.
But it was not the case for 17-year-old Joshua Eckel from Texas who was actually born as Li Wenfu in Anhui Province, China. When he was two months old, Li suffered severe burns because of an accident that doctors told his parent to just leave him in No. 105 Hospital of the People's Liberation Army in Anhui because he had slim chances of surviving his injuries and they could not afford the treatment, reports Shanghaidaily.
However, it turns out that Wu Lihua, a doctor at the Hefei-based hospital, noticed the infant's serious burns and malnutrition. He had Wenfu undergo 13 surgeries over 14 months and saved the boy from death. But Wu was not able to save the infant's legs which were amputated.
At age 2, Wenfu was well enough to be sent to Hefei Children's Welfare Service Center where the Eckles, an American couple, adopted him, brought him to the US and raised him as Jonathan Eckle. Besides Jonathan, the couple also adopted a Chinese girl they named Marinna, now 20, who was abandoned as a baby in a hospital.
The couple brought with them Jonathan and Marinna to China in December for Jonathan to meet his biological family. Happy, but nervous, at finding his Chinese roots, Jonathan shares, "I don't hate my birth parents because I think they had no choice."
The Lis were glad to learn that Wenfu survived the burns and is alive, doing well and they had the opportunity to see him personally without leaving China.
The next step is finding Marinna's Chinese origins. A key to finding biological parents of adopted children is unsealing of adoption records as what Ohio legislators did in 2015 that resulted in adoption files - closed for 32 years from 1983 to 2015 - being opened. The move affected 400,000 families in Ohio, reports Cincinnati.com.
In the first seven months, the state fielded more than 7,200 file requests and officials expect the number to increase as more adoptive families learn of the change in law.
