Now Chosen, Chinese Girls Take to U.S.

In an Upper West Side apartment building, to the soft, angular sounds of Chinese lute music on a tape recorder, six Chinese girls, the oldest 3, stepped and turned, turned and stepped, waving long red ribbons as the rhythm required.

They were performing the Chinese ribbon dance, a wave here, a wave there, in a class taught in Mandarin. They were also being initiated into what is perhaps the littlest sisterhood in Manhattan.

The dancing girls, whose class is a cultural support group, have all been adopted by American families and brought to the United States from China, part of an exodus of orphans -- 1,313 children, 90 percent of them girls, the State Department says -- since 1992, when China enacted a law making it easier for foreigners to adopt Chinese children.

"It would not be overestimating to say there are tens of thousands of babies available for adoption," said Andrea Stawitcke, executive director of the Bay Area Adoption Services in Mountain View, Calif., near San Francisco. What also lures Americans is the relatively speedy 3- to 10-month adoption process, once papers are approved. It also helps that the adoptions are final, and that the new parents can return home, baby in tow, after only two to three weeks in China.

But how do these children fare, halfway around the world? Do they travel placidly to their new environment and fit in right away? Do they play patty-cake in English or Chinese?

On Dec. 11, Juliet Ercolano, then 6 months old, flew from Guangzhou in southern China, to Baltimore, screaming into the night. "She was the quietest baby in China," said her mother, Lisa Ercolano, a reporter at The Towson (Md.) Times. "She wasn't used to being hugged and kissed, and when I reached to cuddle her, she would arch away from me."

Like many babies who had spent most of their time lying on their backs in their cribs, swaddled in five layers of clothing, Juliet had a bald spot on the back of her head, could not sit up and had floppy legs.

"Our baby had never seen or grabbed a toy," Mrs. Ercolano said. By the fifth day, Juliet reached for a bandana. By the sixth, she smiled.

JULIET has since grown three inches and sprouted hair on the back of her head. She has gained six pounds, and has bonded not only with her mother, but also with her father, Patrick, an editorial writer at The Baltimore Sun, and the Ercolanos' biological daughter, Olivia, 5.

Juliet is, of course, too young to ask where she came from or why her parents abandoned her. The answer varies with the individual, but in general it is the outcome of Government decisions. The girls had been left by their parents in public places -- on the steps of orphanages, at police stations or railroad terminals -- where they were sure to be found.

The children embody a family-planning policy combined with a cultural preference: to control its burgeoning population, Beijing, with a few exceptions, wants each family to have only one child. Chinese families, particularly in rural areas, prefer boys, who later may work the farms and support the elderly.

Janice Neilson, executive director of the World Association for Children and Parents, in Seattle, said, "The Chinese Government recognized that there was an opportunity for children to experience family life abroad." The adoptive parents must be at least 35, but they can be single as well as married. The cost averages $15,000, including a $3,000 donation to the Chinese orphanage.

When two of these adopted girls, Aimee, 3, and her sister, MaCai, 5, asked about their origins, their new parents, Jim and Marie LaPlant of Brookfield, Conn., told them that they each once had Chinese parents who could not take care of them. Mrs. LaPlant told them, "We came to take care of them and we'd be their mommy and daddy forever."

One night, while the LaPlants and their three biological daughters -- Eryn, 19, and twins, Kelli and Kasey, 16 -- were watching a television program about adoptions in Romania, Kelli said, "Why don't we do something like this?"

In 1992, the family adopted Aimee, through Wide Horizons for Children in Waltham, Mass.

Like Juliet Ercolano, Aimee recoiled when cuddled, but in two weeks she smiled, at eight months she crawled, and at one year, she walked. "It was like a little flower emerging," her mother said. Easy.

Not so MaCai.

"MaCai is a child that one family rejected, and we adopted," Mrs. LaPlant said. Last May, China's Children, an adoption agency in St. Louis, placed MaCai, who has a cataract in her right eye, with a single woman from upstate New York.

The woman flew to Suzhou, China, and met MaCai, but the next day rejected the girl and left without telling anyone. The LaPlants heard about MaCai from eyewitnesses, including Rita Margolies, a user-education manager at Microsoft in Seattle, who was adopting a child that week in Suzhou through China's Children.

"Apparently MaCai was hysterical," Mrs. LaPlant said. "She wouldn't get out of her 'mama' clothes, the clothes the woman had given her, for three days."

In December, Mr. LaPlant, a senior territory manager for Federal Mogul, a company that makes auto parts, went to China to adopt MaCai. He showed her a photograph album of her new family, with a collage showing how she would look in her room at home.

At night, terrified, she wept. But after two days, she took his hand and smiled.

At Christmas, MaCai didn't know the gift from the wrapping paper. "Now, whenever someone gives her something, she puts it under her bed," Mrs. LaPlant said. When MaCai sorts the laundry, she is so fastidious that she folds king-size sheets to 8-by-10-inch rectangles.

"There was probably extreme rigidity and neatness in the orphanage," Mrs. LaPlant said. The family is consulting doctors about MaCai's cataract, while at the same time they teach her American etiquette.

"In China, if children have to use the bathroom, they just squat," Mrs. LaPlant said. "The other day, MaCai was outside playing in the yard, and squatted down, and my husband said, 'What are you doing?' We're breaking the habit."

The family eats Chinese food once a day, and when Mrs. LaPlant studies the Bible with a group of Chinese, MaCai and Aimee play with 10 other Chinese children. In a year, the LaPlants, like many adoptive parents of Chinese children, may enroll the girls in classes for Chinese lessons.

A universal language -- sign language -- has been the gift of John and Marian DiMaria to their five adopted daughters, two of whom are from China. None of the girls, who range in age from 19 months to 11 years, can either hear or speak.

And none knew sign language. "They'd make homemade gestures," Mrs. DiMaria said. "Brush your teeth, take a shower."

The DiMarias, who have a private income, live with the five girls on a 90-acre farm in Danville, Ky. They moved there from Philadelphia to be near the Kentucky School for the Deaf in Danville, and the Danville Deaf Baptist Mission Church.

"I wanted deaf children," said Mrs. DiMaria, who became enthralled 20 years ago when she saw a deaf woman using sign language on "Sesame Street." In 1977, when her five biological children, who have no hearing impairment, were all in school, Mrs. DiMaria enrolled at the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf in Philadelphia to study sign language, and tutored there until 1992.

When two of the adopted girls -- Olivia, 10, from China and Hannah, 11, from India -- asked about their parents, the DiMarias told them what they knew, that they had been abandoned because of their deafness. Both girls, furious, cried.

"But we have let them know that we prayed to have deaf children in our lives," Mrs. DiMaria said, "and that John and I want them, and love them, and that being deaf is fine."

As the DiMaria children explore the world through sign language, the parents of the ribbon dancers in Manhattan are concerned about the transition from Chinese to English.

Beverly Lim Hemes, who organized the preschool group, wants her daughter, Natalie, 2 1/2, to be able to sing American nursery songs like "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" in both Chinese and English.

Laura Rittenhouse, whose daughter, Lianne, 21 months, is in the group, said that when Lianne turned 3, they would study Chinese together. "But if she's not interested," she said, "maybe I'll be the Chinese-speaking person in the family." Placing Children

SINCE 1992, adoption agencies have placed more than 1,300 children from China, most of them girls, with families in the United States. Support groups and cultural programs are available for these children.

The World Association for Children and Parents and the Jewish Child Care Associates are sponsoring an information meeting on international adoptions, including China, on Monday at 7 P.M., at 575 Lexington Avenue (51st Street). It is open to the public; admission is free. Information is available from Kathy Brodsky, an adoption counselor, at (212) 303-4722. The association is holding a similar meeting on Tuesday at 7 P.M., at the Time-Life Building, 1271 Avenue of the Americas (50th Street), 14th floor. It is open to the public; admission is free, but reservations are required and can be made by calling Susan Caughman, an adoptive parent, at (212) 595-8007.