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I was fortunate to be grazed by the burning steel soul of Dawn Gage.  Her demeanor and drive and cutting observations lead me to think of her as on fire, tough as steel and yet still in the furnace process.  She threw herself into challenges as an extension of God’s will.

In 1989 I was assigned to an Australian Government poverty alleviation project in a poor mountainous county 3 hours by road north of Nanning, capital of Guangxi, in south China.  The county was so backward and no one spoke English or understood standard accounting so we engaged the Guangxi Economic Management Cadre College as a subcontractor. Dawn taught English there, she visited our project, and also in Nanning, took me on her Sunday trips to the “Welfare Institute” opposite the local brewery where there were quarters for old people, abandoned babies, and for abandoned children aged 18 months to 15.

The One-Child Policy in 1980s-90s. China’s population was becoming unmanageable, multiplying as the mainly rural demographics wanted more children for farming life. But after 1980 there was better health and life expectancy, and it became logistically impossible to intensifying agriculture more densely than the one mu per person millennia old formula (1 mu =1/15 hectare). A One-Child Policy was increased in stages with increasing severity, culminating with horrifying cases of forced late abortions and other problems as publicized by Stanford Uni doctoral candidate Stephen Mosher after his field research. There was great pressure for the one child to be a boy

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, especially driven by the mother-in-law, with threats of “don’t make a mistake”, and “don’t break our lineage to the farmland”.  Having a girl and no son would mean the ancestral land would be lost to a husband’s family.  The pressure on pregnant women to have a son was so great that a proportion (maybe 1 in a thousand births of females) resulted in abandonment.

In the city of Nanning, the result at the Welfare Institute was about 3 baby girls a day being delivered.  Found by citizens in the street soon after birth, with the only response being to move them on.  What I saw in this place was room with a few cots and a few babies in each cot.  There were two or three nurses who sat in a staff room and watched black and white TV. They had no resources to feed the 20 to 30 babies there.  A dominant factor in this era was that assignment as a nurse to welfare duties was because of failure in the school system. They hated the stigma and just wanted to hide.  The babies were dying and could not last 3 days with zero sustenance. I never saw one disposed of but the stats must have been 3 die a day. They cried in thirst, and were ignored.

Any normal person seeing and comprehending this scene is moved to tears. I was distraught.  I stood at the main gates with racing thoughts and saw 3 adults bring another bundled baby towards me. I shouted, waving my hands and trying to stop them. They told me, “Hey, this in not ours, we found it in the street. We are just bringing it here”.  On another occasion a taxi driver who picked me to go home told me, “I know what you are thinking. I found a baby girl outside my place and my wife scolded me and said, “you already have a girl – you don’t want another. So I dressed her in some of my daughter’s clothes so she would look pretty and put her back on the street.”

Dawn came to this place every Sunday and I never saw her pay any attention or enter the room of babies. She had closed it out as too hard for her. One reality is that any hint of compassion, buying powdered milk, or somehow getting a baby adopted locally or internationally, would have become a faint justification for a mother to think she could abandon her baby “to be cared for by others”.  I heard Dawn say something like, “forget about the babies”, which shocked me and only later could I realize the agony she would have gone through to reach that point.

The abandoned children.  Sharing the same courtyard as the dying babies were other rooms with children from toddlers (18 months) up to 15 years old.  About 40 kids.  They looked after themselves.  The nurses had nothing to do with them that I could see. About 70% were girls but it was hard to tell because no one taught them to distinguish boy and girl clothings. Most were under puberty and only if they were sitting with no underwear might you be shocked to see by private parts that they were wearing “wrong” clothes.

The amazing point to notice was that these kids cared for each other. No one else did. A clearly mentally retarded boy of 10 spoon feeding a toddler.  A toddler guiding a blind girl round the courtyard.  It must have been a nurse that put all the dirty clothes in a boiler to clean them, but then the kids hung out the washing, put it in a pile when dry, to chose items – any items – when they needed to change.  All done quietly with murmurs of cooperativeness.  Dawn would arrive on Sundays with bags of fruit, and bring quiet words for each individual.  How they loved her.  And she knew each as her own.  Two girls had had their faces scalded and disfigured by boiling water, done in fits of rage by some family adult because they were a girl.  Some kids had lost limbs.  The 15 year old was a lovely girl, totally blind, who somehow had learnt to dress nicely.  Lovely kid. Abandoned either because she was a girl or blind or both.  Dawns favorite (to rely on) was 12 year old boy who had “nothing wrong” and was clearly intent on protecting each member of the group.  He had a big smile and a big heart.  These were Dawn’s life.  It was an era when China pretended it was a social paradise and there was no tolerance of foreign “interference”.  So Dawn had a recognized job 6 days a week and was careful whom she shared her mission with.

Dawn Gage. Dawn had an aura about her that struck me. She was going about God’s business.  She was quietly, steely confident in that assurance.  The Chinese did not know what to make of her.  She had long flowing golden red wavy hair down to half way between her shoulders and waist. There was a large photograph of her posted on a board as part of a high scale city photographic competition. It had the sun backlighting her hair as she rode on a bicycle. Stunning effect.  Men around her made fools of themselves.  She hinted to me some of the idiotic advances she endured.  From my experience I know many Chinese men get wrong ideas from foreign movies.  She was particularly disgusted when seeking out some improvements in conditions for the kids from the silly old bureaucrats who had been so inept in government to have been demoted to welfare issues.

Dawn told me she was going to Beijing for two years of language training so she could come back and fight bureaucracy.  I lost track of her but know that is what she did.  About 10 years later and after years in north China I returned to Nanning on a short consultancy and sitting in the lobby of a five star hotel, saw Dawn come in with several  young foreign couples, obviously on a visit to adopt a baby.  She had eventually worked out a way to at least save some babies.  It was nightmare of official red tape and evil corruption (the evil strategy of charging many thousands of dollars to adopt babies into a loving home for the start of a new life when the status quo was dying when they are 2 days old!).  But Dawn was getting somewhere. And she had founded a real orphanage for her beloved kids. “Living Stones” Orphanage. With foreign funding.

That was not the end of her struggles and there were other undercurrents later on that seemed to leave out Dawn’s amazing achievements.

Through the power of the internet, I found out today of the obituary to Dawn, dying of cancer in US Easter Sunday 2017.  Only the good die young.  Here is one time we can truly say this person left the world a better place.

 

 

Other memories

Dawn was a tower of strength to anyone who would tune in. In 1992 in a Nanning hotel I got news one of my best friends, in the army together in officer and pilot training, was killed in a plane crash.  I was meeting Dawn and poured out my sadness. She told me her dad was a test pilot and killed in a crash.  So matter of fact. Her strengths radiate.

I was honored to have one of my sons (14 years old) with me and meet Dawn for a meal and talk.  I felt I could see Dawn’s calmness instilling something special in him.  So proud to have known her.

One time I inquired about her social life and any hint of romance. Seems like some guy had followed her to Nanning but he was not on the same track and had faded into dismissal.  Not sure but seemed inconsequential to her mission.

I took one of my friends, an Australian Embassy official, to see the Welfare Institute and it moved her to go through the process of adopting a baby girl.  I am still in touch with the family and know that it would not have happened without Dawn.

My son went back to his junior high school with stories and photos of the dying babies. He raised A$600 at school which was a good effort.  I sent it over.  He came with me again and found what the Welfare Institute bureaucrats had done: Installed an air conditioner so the room the babies were suffering in and dying within 2-3 days would be  cooler.  Good lesson for my son on charitable intents.

 

Follow up on One-Child Policy: The brutality of forced late abortions and terror campaigns by officials on women in second pregnancy faded with the advent of scanning to ascertain gender of the fetus.  If there was pressure not to have a girl it did not get born.  The demand was so great that supply became technologically available at 20 yuan for a scan (Though formally deemed illegal but of course widely practiced). The result of the abandonment era followed by the abortion era has left Chinese men of marrying age with a deficit of 20 million potential partners.  Many kinds of social repercussions.  Lately there has been move to allow second child.

Western readers are not well equipped to pass judgement on what they see as social problems in China. The population pressures – the “competition” to put it politely – is hard to imagine. In general Chinese are very loving to kids and to any kids.  The stories and cases of abandonment or anything negative towards children only make the news because of the huge “universe” of events in China, which has 3 times the population of US or EU.    Most bad news stats in China (orphans, domestic violence, murders, etc), if on a pro rata basis, are low compared with world averages.

 

The three photos at the top are 1) Dawn and her College Dean (on her right) visiting my project (I am wearing a cap) in 1989. 2) My second son in the room with the babies left to die. 3) My eldest son and I with some of Dawn’s dear orphans.  The sweet girl between us was twelve and quite bright but had deformed spine and was malnourished most of her life.

http://www.capecodtimes.com/obituaries/20170422/dawn-j-gage

On Youtube there is a 1995 half hour documentary “The Dying Rooms” and at 15 to 19 minutes is the orphanage Dawn attended.  She was not there at that time.

 

2017-10
27
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When I was 17 in first year college in Armidale, in the bedroom where I boarded, I faced the big question of what I am here for. At that time Albert Schweitzer was held up as a noble role model, yet I know even he had detractors.  It came to me that if God assigned a purpose, detraction was irrelevant.  The next question flooded in – what was God’s purpose for me?  And the answer was there instantaneously in one word:  China.  From then on whenever there was no question.  But no question many times meant I forget the question. But somehow I would scramble back on track.

In my PhD years I came across the line from Weber that for a truth to be truly universal it must be accepted

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, “even by a Chinese”.  That drove me.  Now I look at the way Chinese behave with unemotional intrigue.  At the age of 71 the next step is to unfathom the relationship between the human soul (“even Chinese”) and material world.

2017-10
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I was staring at fish swimming around in a small space in a glass tank as I waited for takeaway food in a small restaurant.  I don’t think they were for cooking, but aesthetics.  Some were silver, some red, and with flowing filmy trailings on their fins. Pretty.  Entrancing.  I wondered what they were doing, circling

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, suspended, searching, looking, sucking in sustenance.  I wondered, are we like that?  In our lives?  That petty?  Our lives?

Only if we set our confinements as narrow as those fish find themselves in.  We have oceans to explore.

2017-10
2

You have enjoyed a respite and refreshing in Du An, and realized the enormity of the challenge in delineating a universal objective metric for economic analysis.  And gotten insights into the way ahead (attack on oxygen). Now dive into a commonsense analysis of the Jiamusi question

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, get the best answer, and be ready for the long road back in Du An.

2017-9
15

We grow old and think we have seen the world but Kyogle had a big surprise and lesson for me when I went back in January 2015.  After reaching 65 it was hard for me to renew visas in China –  they are frightened you are gonna cark it and kept sending me back to Australia hoping I stay away but I kept coming back to Brissy and getting another visa and going back – lots of pleasant surprises and rewards of many kinds in China.  In fact on visits to Brissy I tried finding out about Centrelink and got a rude shock. Not eligible for pension cos I was “expat”.  In January 2015 after 4 rebuffs in the city over 2 years I figured go back to Kyogle where surely I am accepted as Aussie born and bred

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, Army Officer, fought in Vietnam, 20 years paying taxes in various government agencies.

Not much money so I stayed in the cheapest room at the Commercial Hotel, $36 a night.  There seemed no one else on the second floor and I was just across from the showers and toilets so that seemed a quiet set up.  I was there a few days (had to visit Casino Centrelink –good to me as a hometown boy and met up with 3 classmates – great yarns, and I climbed Fairymount ). On the second last night it was stinking hot 27 January and I had no ventilation. At midnight it poured and went out in the corridor in undies to celebrate and see if there was a window up the end. From a door 10 meters way a guy had come out stark naked. I was surprised to see anyone, and certainly not that.

I went back to bed and heard the showers going. Then stopped and footsteps and an almighty crash on my door. It was not a mistaken stumble but a huge deliberate crash. I was so concerned I barricaded my door with a full height cupboard backed with draws pulled from another cupboard. So weird.

Next morning I inquired of the guy at the bar if my neighbor was one night or regular. Did not get an answer.   The thought troubled me through the day and then I realized, I had already had an odd encounter with this guy.

I had arrived on the one train there is each day  early in the morning I had gone back to the station when people were about to see when there was a train back to Brissy.

There was nothing going on except a guy sitting on a bench with a can in a brown bag. As soon as he saw me he said rather leerily, “I like your shirt”.  In fact it was purple uni T shirt. I said, “yeah, Tsinghua Uni, China” and asked about train times and his answer was just rubbish. As I turned he yelled “I still like your shirt”.

What was the deal with the two events?  Had he checked in stalking me? I was due to catch the one train back 2.46am. No bloody shower that evening, that’s for sure. His door was ajar and maybe he che cked out but I just kept quiet. On sunset I came back to the hotel and at a door looking out from the 2nd floor was a guy enjoying the sunset. Back to me. He seemed about 40, over 6 foot. It was either the weird guy or the hotel manager (similar from the back and maybe he lived on this floor). I still had 6 hours hanging around and must check this out.

“Nice sunset” I said and he turned around. It was not the manager. He rubbed his fist and said “you nearly broke my hand last night….He went on, “you know you shouldn’t go round naked like that. You know what that can do to a man”.  Shit. We have a problem.  No point arguing who was wearing what and happy in my secret I was on the train in a few hours. I apologized for upsetting him and disappeared down the stairs and wandered my hometown till  2 am then fetched my backpack and headed for the station.

I reflect. I was being stalked by a man that could overpower me and he was lustful. It wasn’t that he was sick that haunted me, but the first ever feeling of what women might often experience.  Had to wait 70 years to get that taught to me in my hometown.

Dunno if he was a local pervert or passing through.

2017-8
26

Money is such a gamechanger invention, demonstrating an unspoken mutual agreement between users that it represents real goods or services, that we are prepared to accept it at face value even as manipulators in public and private finance siphon off profits from transactions.

Bartering limited cooperation in economic activities to very simple deals.  Once some symbols agreed as representing a good or service was introduced, the chains of supply and demand spread

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, enabling new scales  of development, and more leverage into rearranging the atoms on Earth.

 

 

2017-4
23

At church at the time when the minister invites congregation to greet those round us a lady offered blessings to me then read the Chinese characters on my shirt.  I was taken aback as no idea an elderly Aussie lady could do that.  After church out on the terrace for coffee I followed up and she has a wonderful story. During WWII Chinese sailors at the Brisbane Port could not return and were interned at a place in Bulimba near the river.  They often passed Ingrid’s house and after months set up a laundry business under the house.  At war’s end they engaged Ingrid’s parents to help them register the laundry as a business and so they could stay.  Ingrid and Peter Fong fell in love and they had 4 children. Peter was a steward at the church for decades and passed away 2007. Ingrid showed me his photo in her wallet and certainly a dignified gentleman.  She visited China with him 6 times including his ancestral home which she recalls in English as Ho Chong somewhere not too far outside the main southern city of Canton.  Her kids are apparently consumed in Western ways and not much to tie them back to China.

There is a whole book in there

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, stranger than fiction.  A lovely story. Ingrid Fong

Thrilled to see an article describing my eldest son’s contribution to professional women’s cycling sport.
https://cyclingtips.com/2017/02/meet-jono-coulter-the-man-who-joined-the-team-game-because-the-women-deserved-better/

Of course I know it is true and objective. I have followed his journey and if I wanted to be biased I would add more which is also true.  But I had to reflect on my own perspective and impact on all this. I was especially struck by the line that “my parents had land”  for him to train riding at our place.  It sounds like we were real rich with a huge expanse for a bike circuit. And maybe in his eyes as a junior maybe that was how he saw it. In reality

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, in suburban Brisbane, our whole street was half acre blocks, with a single residence leaving space for play.  Our progression of homes in Canberra, Darwin and Brisbane was a story of increased room for the kids’ development and we always had enough room to kick the footy as they grew from toddlers to teenagers.

Jono sure used our yard as a race circuit.  I was supposed to be doing my PhD write up and his mum would have been playing tennis. Jono 8 and Lee 6 were doing circuits, racing, like it was viewed by millions.  I was the only one peeking and I snuck out and changed the closest corner marker. After a couple of laps I made it more difficult and I saw his eyes flicker reckoning what’s up. Couple more laps with increasingly impossible corner and put down the bike and discovered dad’s prank.   Had to laugh.  He was learning the mysteries of being pranked.

On another occasion as dark fell I found the two chromemoly bikes out against a fence and likely to be highly prized by others. I put them in the shed than nonchalantly mentioned he had better put the bikes away. He came in like ghoststruck and I had to burst out laughing and tell him it was okay.

So “the land” his parents had, just a  good back yard, did grow to be major circuits of world cycling.  Very pleased for him and the people he works with.