Girl adopted from China plans return visit经济英语阅读.doc

/news/local/la-me-chinachoir25-2008jun25,0,3941418.story From the Los Angeles Times Girl adopted from China plans return visit The Pasadena teen will perform with the L.A. Childrens Chorus at a Beijing arts festival before heading to the orphanage where she had been abandoned. By Molly Hennessy-FiskeLos Angeles Times Staff Writer11:09 PM PDT, June 24, 2008Each year on the anniversary of her adoption from China, Gianna Mei Li Horak composed a letter to her birth parents. She taped it to a helium balloon and released it into the sky -- sending it back, her mom and dad told her, to the place of her birth.At age 4, Gianna dictated: I go to school. I am the farrest reader. Do you miss me? I miss you. I like Cat in the Hat stories. Sometimes I am very silly.By age 7, Gianna wrote in block letters: Dear Chinese-Mother and Chinese-Father. I hope it is going okay in China. I miss you. Sincerely, Gianna Horak.The next year Gianna, who had been studying Mandarin at home in Pasadena, sent a fullletter, single spaced, in Chinese. At 9, she wrote a longer letter in English listing her hobbies: Chinese dance, piano lessons and the Los Angeles Childrens Chorus.Last fall, Giannas choir director announced they were going on a two-week overseas tour in June. Their destination: China.Gianna, then 13, had to decide if she was ready to return.The phone rang after lunch on the afternoon of Dec. 12, 1994, just as Mindy Schirn, 42, and Jan-Christopher Chris Horak, 43, returned to their hotel room in Hefei, a Chinese city about 600 miles south of Beijing.Your baby is here, a Chinese woman said and hung up.They had not been allowed to visit the government orphanage in Tongling, about 75 miles away.The couple spent months arranging the adoption. Schirn wanted to adopt from China after reading a news story about officials there straining to care for thousands of abandoned girls in a country that limited families to one child and had a traditional preference for sons.The