爲中國棄嬰尋親的故事 One little boy's journey from a Chinese street to Seattle and bac

“Hello kind people! When you see this child, you will doubtless criticise the parents for being immoral. But we have no way out — please help us, we don’t know what to do.”

“好心人您好！當你們看到這個小孩的時候肯定會罵他的父母不道德。我們也是實在沒有辦法——請幫幫我們，我們也是不知道怎麼辦。”

Thus begins that very rare thing: a letter from a father, forced to abandon his disabled infant on the streets of Ningbo — a city near Shanghai that is one of the richest in China — explaining why he did it. And, no, he had not lost a packet in the stock market slump that has rattled the rest of the world. The financial calamity that befell this father was to bear two sons, both of them deaf. Raising one son had taught him how hard it is to care for a disabled child, even today, in the age of the Chinese dream. Raising a second deaf child was simply out of the question.

這是一件稀罕事的開頭：一位父親迫不得已，將身有殘疾的孩子遺棄在寧波（離上海很近，是中國最富裕的城市之一）街頭，並留下一封信，解釋自己這麼做的原因。哦，不，他並不是在令全世界驚慌失措的中國股災中遭受了損失。降臨在這位父親頭上的經濟災難是撫養兩個失聰的兒子。撫養一個兒子已經讓他明白照顧殘疾兒童有多麼艱難，即使是在追尋中國夢的今天。根本談不上撫養第二個失聰的孩子。

So the father abandoned his six-week-old son — for his own good. And, remarkably, he felt moved to explain his reasons. “We don’t own a house, or even a place to live. I thought I could make life gradually better by being diligent: but God has had no mercy on us,” the father wrote in May 2012. “In 2004 my wife gave birth to a boy, but when he was two years old we found he couldn’t hear or talk.”

於是，這位父親遺棄了出生6周的兒子——爲了他好。不同尋常的是，他覺得有必要解釋自己這樣做的原因。“家裏連老房子也沒有，連住的地方也沒有。本以爲靠自己勤勞的雙手可以讓日子慢慢地好過一點。可是老天太作弄人了，”這位父親在2012年5月寫道，“2004年我老婆生下了一個男孩，在兩歲的時候才發現耳朵聽不到、不會講話。”

The family could not afford proper treatment so by the age of nine the child was still mute. “This year we had another child — but God is so unfair, he has the same condition as my elder boy,” the father wrote. “We beg you to save this poor thing.”

這個家庭無力讓孩子接受妥當的治療，所以大兒子9歲時仍然不會說話。“今年又生了一個——可是老天太不公平了，他居然跟我大兒子一樣，“這位父親寫道，“求求你們救救這可憐的小生命吧。”

So far, so sad. But this is not a sob story. It is the tale of Bennett Sano, now aged nearly four, adopted by an American family and living in Seattle. He was recently diagnosed with Usher syndrome — a genetic disorder that will leave him not just deaf, but blind as well by adulthood.

到這裏，這個故事還是悲傷的。但這並不是一個悲劇。這是如今快滿4歲的貝內特薩諾(Bennett Sano，中文名龍淼——譯者注)的故事，他被一個美國家庭收養，如今住在西雅圖。他最近被診斷出患有烏謝爾綜合症(Usher)——這種遺傳病不僅會使他耳聾，而且會使他在成年後失明。

It may not sound like it, but Bennett is lucky. First, it’s rare in cases such as this for a birth parent to leave a note at all, and far rarer for the note to include anything but time and date of birth. The note was preserved in Bennett’s orphanage file (another rarity). And last week fate conspired to deliver another remarkably joyful twist to the story, when Bennett’s adoptive mother managed to find the father who wrote that letter.

貝內特是幸運的，儘管聽起來不太像。第一，在類似情況中，很少有親生父母會留下信，而信中除了準確出生日期以外所有信息都有的情況更是少之又少。這封信被保存在貝內特在孤兒院的檔案裏（另一件罕見事）。命運再次給這個故事帶來了一個非常令人歡喜的轉折，貝內特的養母成功找到了寫這封信的那位父親。

Molly Sano, a Seattle sign language interpreter, appeared on local television in Ningbo, and scarcely three days later she’d met the boy’s mother, father, brother, six-year-old sister and a healthy boy born after Bennett was abandoned (proving yet again that China’s one-child policy is often a misnomer).

莫莉薩諾(Molly Sano)是西雅圖一名手語翻譯，她上了寧波當地的電視臺，三天後，她就見到了貝內特的親生父母、哥哥、6歲的姐姐以及一個在貝內特被遺棄後出生的健康的弟弟（再次證明中國的獨生子女政策往往形同虛設）。

“So many things had to go just right for this to happen,” Ms Sano said: the doctor who diagnosed Bennett as a baby saw the TV report, the parents had not changed their phone number and they resisted the urge to ignore a call from one they didn’t know.

“太多的巧合促成了這個結果，”莫莉稱。這些巧合包括：在貝內特還是嬰兒時給他看過病的醫生看到了電視報道、貝內特的親生父母沒有更換手機號、他們沒有忽視那通陌生來電。

Frightened that she might be in trouble, the mother at first denied who she was. But she quickly had second thoughts and called back. Within hours, this extraordinary extended family was united — and Bennett’s two mothers could hardly stop hugging and crying. They did have one touchy subject to tackle: the birth father’s letter makes clear that he abandoned the baby because a doctor told him the child needed a cochlear implant and the birth family could not afford one.

因爲擔心會惹上麻煩，那位母親起初否認了自己的身份。但是她轉念一想，又把電話打了過來。數小時後，這個特別的大家庭聚在一起——貝內特的兩位媽媽情不自禁地擁抱在一起，痛哭不止。他們需要處理一個敏感問題：親生父親的信清楚地表明，他遺棄了這個孩子，因爲醫生告訴他孩子需要植入人工耳蝸，而他們一家無力承擔。

But Ms Sano and her husband, Chris — who is deaf — plan to let Bennett decide later if he wants an implant. They have taught him to sign. “To us, he is perfect,” says Ms Sano. “This isn’t a sad story of a deaf boy who will lose his vision, it’s a joyful, powerful story of a boy who happened to land in a family and a location that are a perfect fit for him,” she says. “There is no limit to our dreams for our son.”

但是，莫莉和她的丈夫克里斯(Chris)——他也是失聰人士——計劃以後讓貝內特自己決定是否想要植入人工耳蝸。他們已經教會他打手語。“對我們來說，他是完美的，”莫莉稱，“這並不是一個終將失明的失聰男孩的悲慘故事，而是一個快樂、感人的故事，一個男孩碰巧進入了一個非常適合他的家庭和地方，”她說，“我們對兒子的夢想沒有任何界限。”

Back in China, the birth family’s financial situation has improved; the father now has an iPhone 6s. But they think Bennett is lucky, too. “The birth mother said, over and over, now that we have seen your family, we can see that he has a better life there than here,” Ms Sano says.

貝內特親生父母的經濟狀況有所改善：這位父親如今用的手機是iPhone 6s。但是他們也認爲貝內特是幸運的。“他親生媽媽反覆說，既然我們已經見過你們一家了，我們看得出他在那裏生活得更好，”莫莉說。

So Bennett is where he needs to be. But as the adoptive mother of two abandoned Chinese daughters myself, I can’t wait for the day when birth parents can nurture dreams for their deaf toddlers without having to discard them in the street to make that happen. Gross domestic product is one thing, but I’ll be looking for a different measure of Chinese success: the day the last father writes a letter like that before leaving his disabled baby in the shadow of skyscrapers.

因此，貝內特就在他應該呆的地方。但是作爲一名收養了兩個被遺棄的中國女孩的媽媽，我期待有一天失聰兒童的親生父母可以親自爲孩子培育夢想，而不需要把孩子遺棄在街頭。GDP是一回事，但是我期待看到另外一種衡量中國成功的方式：有那麼一天，再也沒有一位父親會寫下這樣一封信，然後把身有殘疾的孩子遺棄在摩天大樓的陰影之下。