Hundred Family Jacket

In the countryside in a far corner of China, time stands still & traditions remain unchanged. In early summer the pears grow white & crisp, in July the first of the watermelons the juiciest anywhere sprout from their tangled vines. In late summer it is the time of the grapes the sweetest & muskiest you will find & startling fields of sunflowers that go on for as far as the eye can see. Only in the dead of winter do the fields lay at rest. On the muddy roads you will see lone donkey carts with their padded drivers & patient mules ride past quiet homesteads, smoke from the chimneys show that the kangs indoors are heated for the families who will sit out much of the quiet cold winter days on their toasty platforms.

At Lunar New Year red banners hail blessings for health wealth & happiness & the villages once more come back to life.

It was at this time of year that a young women prepared herself for the arrival of a daughter she would not keep as her own. This young women probably had little, she was also probably fearful of the events that lay ahead & no doubt to this day is forever changed by them.

In these remote corners of China an age old tradition still exists. When a woman is to give birth she & her own mother begin to collect 100 pieces of fabric to fashion a baby jacket called a biao jiao yi ?one hundred family jacket to bestow love & blessings on the new born child.

This young women had little to give her daughter but this humble legacy & it was this with which the child was found, prominently on the steps of a police station, thin, small but warmly wrapped in her biao jiao yi, every piece of cloth familiar to her China mummy and not least the 2nd button a half, sewn on closest to her heart, maybe to be matched one day to the half her mother kept.......

This precious little girl was united with her forever family at the age of 9 months to be not only loved & cherished by her family but to serve as witness that every child is precious & deserves a life of hope & opportunity. Welcome to the Good Rock Foundation the legacy of love for the children of China, inspired by the life of one precious child & her mother.

 Tags : children, family, support

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