"The government welcomes children adopted by foreign families to visit China and gain a better understanding of the culture of their birthplace," MCA Vice-Minister Dou Yupei said yesterday.

"Thanks to the CCAA's invitation, our daughter enjoyed her first birthday celebration in China. We adopted her when she was just an 11-month-old baby," Cindy Anderson told China Daily.

Chay Hai-tian Anderson, who was adopted by a couple from Philadelphia in 2000, celebrated her ninth birthday on Saturday in Beijing.

The American couple have also been learning Chinese with Chay and brought her to China five times to help her "understand her culture and her roots better".

Gemma V. Laarhoven and her daughter Milou, 8, traveled from the Netherlands to join the Yangzhou trip.

"When we first had Milou, she was a bit afraid of my husband, because of his big build and blue eyes. Although she couldn't understand us initially, she could point to the candy jar and her mouth to communicate with us. She started speaking Dutch in just a few weeks," Laarhoven said.

Li Juan, a professor at the institute of psychology affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said children less than three years old adapt more easily to foreign families.

Children will seek the cultural identity within their memories when they realize that they live in a new environment with people who have a different outward appearance and language, she said.

"Most of the Chinese children that the foreign families adopted are girls," Guo Jiamin, the assistant director of the Bridge of Love Adoption Service program at the CCAA, said yesterday.

The number of girls abandoned in China is higher than boys, and Chinese families in the country prefer to adopt boys, he said.

The families told China Daily the trip was just one of many ways the children stay in touch with the land of their birth.

"My daughters will have a much better knowledge of China after this trip," Marleen Moffitt said.

"And we will surely come back for more."

(China Daily March 18, 2009)