After receiving Su Xiaowen's call, I had inexplicable mixed emotions in my heart. Pen Fun Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

On the one hand, I was indescribably touched by the fact that I was able to meet a playmate who had lived together in a children's welfare home, but on the other hand, I was a little uneasy. Because I didn't want to recall my experience of living in a children's institution, and I didn't want to be known or talked about.

I can't imagine that the world is so small, and after 20 years, she and I can meet again, and we may become colleagues in the future!

Hua Xiaoyue - No, she has changed her name to Su Xiaowen now, what does she look like?

I can't really imagine what she looks like now. Because even what she used to look like, I have a vague memory. Although I still remember her as a person, and even the scene of leaving the Hwaseong Children's Welfare Home together that day, I still have a very vague impression of her appearance.

I remember that at that time, although she was in the same grade as me, she felt that she was taller than me, and she was more mature and sensible. She is a little skinny, a little pale, and a little fond of dresses.

Although I have been away from the children's welfare home for 20 years, I am usually very secretive about my background, and no one even my classmates know that I am not the biological son of my current parents, but they adopted me from the orphanage. But sometimes when I go online, I secretly search for information about children's welfare homes. So although I have never been to any welfare homes again, I am not ignorant of them.

I have learned from a lot of pictures and video materials on the Internet that the children's welfare homes now, whether in terms of hardware or software, are dozens of times better than those of the past! Most of the children's welfare homes today look like a children's palace -- at least in terms of the buildings and equipment. There are even a lot of children's homes that have started to live a real "family life":

The Children's Welfare Institute openly recruits some caring people from the society to live in the suites assigned to them by the Children's Welfare Institute (even some are villa-style houses with independent courtyards), and each caring person acts as a "loving father" or "caring mother" for several children, and they live in the suites assigned to them with the children they are responsible for taking care of, and live a family-style life: play with the children, cook for the children, and even act as the children's tutors.

These "families", except that they are not related to each other by blood, or may not be as happy as society expects in terms of emotion, but at least in terms of material aspects, such as housing conditions, such as furniture or school supplies, and even food and clothing, etc., are quite good, and even better than many children from ordinary families whose economic conditions are not ideal.

Although some children's welfare homes do not practice this kind of "family-style" life, they still arrange for the children to live in different large bedrooms according to their age, physical and intellectual conditions, but the material conditions are also not bad.

In short, the children in the children's welfare center have changed a lot compared to when I used to live in the orphanage.

I remember that the Hwaseong Welfare House where I lived was also a large courtyard, surrounded by high walls on all sides, and only a large iron gate in front of it was connected to the outside world.

Although there are gates to enter and exit, most of the other children are cerebral palsy (also known as cerebral palsy), or those with organic injuries, autism, congenital stupidity, dwarfism and other diseases, except for a few orphans who have been left helpless, homeless, and have no source of livelihood because their relatives have died, disappeared, or have no relatives willing to adopt. In short, it is because of some incurable diseases that are born that the children are abandoned by their relatives, and the welfare institute will not let the children easily step out of the iron door for safety reasons.

Therefore, although most of the children's welfare homes are built in places with convenient transportation in the city, because these children are separated from society by an iron gate and four high walls for a long time, and live a life of almost isolation from the world, even when they grow up, it is difficult for many of them to integrate into a normal society.

Only a small number of children who reach school age and are intellectually normal, or who can take care of themselves through treatment, are sent to a nearby school by the children's welfare home.

-- The important duty of the welfare institute is to take in orphans who are helpless, homeless, and have no source of livelihood and train them to become talents. At different stages of orphans' growth, the focus of the work of the orphanage is different. For preschool orphans before the age of seven, the work of the welfare home focuses on "nurturing", and the main task is to manage food, clothing, and housing, so as to meet the living needs of the orphans and enable them to grow up healthily. For young orphans between the ages of 7 and 16, the focus of the work of the welfare institute is on "education", and the main task is to solve the problems of orphans' life and education, and to promote their all-round development in terms of morality, intelligence, and physique, so that they can truly grow up and become useful talents in society.

I remember that the Hwaseong Welfare Home where I lived was small, with only about 40 children, most of whom were children who could not take care of themselves and needed rehabilitation, and only six children were eligible to go to school nearby. And Hua Xiaoyue and I are two of these six lucky winners!

My name was Hua Xiaoming at that time, and the reason why we both had the surname Hua was not because we really had the surname Hua, but because the welfare institute gave us the name. Because most of the children in the orphanage are abandoned babies, and a considerable number of them belong to children of unknown origin, their names can only be chosen by the Social Welfare Institute. Because there is no name and no surname, and the name of that city is Hwaseong, the Hwaseong Welfare Institute gave us "Hua" as the surname.

For as long as I can remember, I've been living at the Hwaseong Children's Welfare Home. Hua Xiaoyue's situation is different from mine: she actually has relatives, but because her father died of illness, her mother ran away from home, and her whereabouts are unknown, although there are several relatives, none of them are willing to adopt, so she was sent to our welfare home by the public security organs in accordance with policies and regulations.

I don't know how old Hua Xiaoyue was when she entered the welfare home, and I didn't ask, but it is estimated that she should be about five or six years old, because I happened to be in school when she entered the welfare home. I was in the first grade of primary school, and she, like me, was sent to the nearest elementary school by the orphanage, and she was also in the first grade, so we should be the same age, or about a year apart.

Because she didn't live in our welfare home for a long time, only about half a year, she and I were adopted on the same day and left the welfare home, so I don't remember her appearance deeply.

But it's just the appearance, but I've always remembered her as a person. Because we have so many similarities: we are a group of children who are unable to take care of themselves due to various diseases, we are children with normal intelligence, and we go to the same elementary school, in the same grade, although we are in different classes, but our two classes are next to each other, so we often meet in school.

Originally, we were all children of the welfare home, and we went to the same elementary school and the same grade, so we could go to school and leave school together, but in our era, especially the primary school students, we all inexplicably adhered to the "male and female defense line", and we didn't want to be known by the other students in the class, we were different from them, we were children of the welfare home, so we seemed to have reached some kind of tacit understanding between us. Even though we go out together every day at school, as soon as we leave the orphanage and go out on the street, we are separated. At school, we also pretend not to know each other, and we don't greet each other when we meet. After school, I don't care if the other party is out of school, so I go back alone. Even if you meet on the way, you will deliberately keep a distance.

If the aunt at the orphanage asked us why we didn't always come back from school together, our answer was basically the same: because of the different classes, the school hours were different. At first, the aunt in the welfare home said that you can wait for each other to come back together, but after asking a few times, she stopped asking.