In The Pink Pagoda, Dr. James Garrow tells two stories: his personal involvement in helping rescue more than 36,000 Chinese baby girls from death, and the tragic story of a widely used and malicious cultural practice that crosses borders and spans centuries. Transitioning from reluctant participant in an off-the-books adoption program to a visible champion for the rights of these babies whose parents wished to "set them aside," Garrow's story parallels our own. Most Westerners are only vaguely aware of the extent to which China's one-baby-per-household restriction has played out in that country and around the world and what they can do to stop it.
The Pink Pagoda: One Man's Quest to End Gendercide in China
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About the Author
Dr. James Garrow is the founder and executive director of the Bethune Institute's Pink Pagoda schools, private English-immersion schools for Chinese children. Today he runs 168 schools with nearly 6,300 employees. Garrow has spent over $25 million over the past sixteen years rescuing an estimated 40,000 baby Chinese girls from near-certain death under China's one-child-per-couple policy by facilitating international adoptions.
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76 of 102 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Jim introduces us to his story by describing his great success in all things financial, and how this success brought him to China. The book, he writes, is the story of how he came to save over 40,000 babies between 2000 and 2012. When I interviewed him in 2008, Garrow claimed to have saved 24,000. By 2009 it had apparently risen to 31,000 (p. 149), 2010 the number had climbed to 34,000 and now, in 2012, it stands at 40,000 (Pink Pagoda "Introduction"). In his introduction he also admits that many might call him a "human trafficker", an accusation he freely and enthusiastically embraces.
I read Jim's account, and while possibly true, I find the lens through which he sees the event as Western, simplified, and largely unfamiliar.
I got the same feeling while reading Jim's account of how he found a home for the unwanted baby. He met an American expat living in China whose wife lived in the United States. The man explained that they wanted to adopt, but that it seemed to take a long time to do the paperwork, etc. Jim told him he could adopt right away. Now, I'm sure that most readers familiar with the adoption might at this point be wondering how in the world this adoption could be completed.
Adoptive families from China will no doubt be interested in knowing what his book says about his work to bring unwanted babies into China's orphanages in order for them to be adopted internationally. While he is quite outspoken in private conversations and correspondence about the destination of most of the children he has supposedly rescued, the book is almost completely silent about his interactions with China's orphanages. He does recount one story involving Yoda, his protective intelligence officer, and an orphanage in Chongqing Municipality. Yoda learned that this unnamed orphanage had been accepting infant girls, only to turn around and sell them to sex traders, who would apparently raise the children for 15 years before using them in the sex trade. One can of course question the financial and logistical logic behind such scheme, but what is interesting to read in Jim's book is how Yoda handled it (remembering that Yoda is all powerful):
"Of course, I heard about it later; and once again, I did not ask for particulars. In one day, the entire orphanage was closed, and all of its people gone. When I say gone, I mean they permanently disappeared. An angry Yoda was like the sword of the Lord, smiting all who were sinners. These people were the worst of sinners, and no one, including me, ever asked what happened to them. The babies and children were saved. That was the only justice to focus on." (p. 82)
As I stated, Garrow mentions no particulars about this orphanage, or any of his other stories. But being familiar with all of the orphanages in Chongqing, I can attest that none of them have "disappeared". Orphanages have closed, but we are still in contact with the directors and other employees.
Garrow does recount a few adoptions into the U.S. (but not Canada), but even these experiences lack the "ring of truth" for those who have personally walked through the paperwork and logistical maze of U.S. Immigration procedures. As I pointed out above, Garrow seems to maintain that all one needs to do to obtain a Chinese infant is to procure some forged adoption documents and show up at the U.S. border with child in hand. He seems ignorant of, or completely ignores, the pre-adoption approvals required (I-600, CCAA approvals, etc.) to obtain an entry visa for the child to enter the U.S.
What struck me as odd, however, was the nearly complete absence of any mention of Jim working with any of China's orphanages. In fact, a reader of "The Pink Pagoda" would finish with the impression that nearly all of the unwanted children had been adopted inside China. This impression runs completely contrary to what Jim told me and others in his interviews, in which he proudly boasted of working with four internationally adopting orphanages in Chongqing, from which he claimed that 80% of the children adopted came as a result of his work, and with hundreds of other such orphanages across China. His website continues to encourage U.S. adoptive families to "ascertain if we have been part of the process of saving your babies in China." Although in his book he claims that his first "save" was in 2000 (which he also confirmed in other interviews, including mine), he recently responded to a family with children adopted in the late 1990s from Anhui and Jiangxi Provinces thusly: "To be quite frank our work encompassed so many of the children rescued in the late 90's and up until recent days that there is a real possibility that your daughters were handled by our folks." He continued to contradict previous interviews and his own book by stating: "We never placed any children in orphanages after 2000. All the babies from then on with only a few exceptions were adopted internally by barren Chinese couples." It seems that Jim's story constantly changes depending on whom he is addressing.
The overall issue with Jim's book is that he provides no specific names, places, or events with which to confirm his story, from the "Xinyi" episode at the start, to his nomination for a Noble Peace Prize in 2009 at the end. In that episode an anonymous Chinese official asks Jim for permission to nominate him for the Peace Prize. There is no name of this official to research. Garrow goes on to say he was beaten for the Prize by President Obama, a man Garrow openly despises, and goes so far as to publish his letter of congratulations to the President. Readers familiar with the nomination process will realize that thousands of members are on the nomination committee, and the winner is nominated by literally thousands of those members. Nominees are not made known for 50 years, so we can't even determine if his nomination occurred. However, one can see that even if Garrow's nomination by the nameless Chinese official were actual, Garrow would not have received anywhere near the votes to present any competition for President Obama or the other top contenders. Thus, chapter 30 of his book, "The Nobel Peace Prize Scandal", in which he writes President Obama and states "We may have lost the Nobel Peace Prize to you, President Obama, but I believe that there is a higher purpose to every event in our lives" (p.149) is without doubt one of the most brazen and unprovable assertions in the book. And that is saying a lot.
In the end Garrow's story will be like those of other religious "prophets" to whom God has supposedly spoken: Outsiders will be able to point out inconsistencies, attack the veracity of the details, and question the validity of the events recounted. But believers in Jim's story will discount such problems, and insist that since such issues can't be totally disproved, they could be true. Thus, Garrow's story will be viewed as "a story told from a dream" by those who see it skeptically, but as the work of God by those who share Garrow's faith in the need to "save" children from China.
I read Jim's account, and while possibly true, I find the lens through which he sees the event as Western, simplified, and largely unfamiliar.
I got the same feeling while reading Jim's account of how he found a home for the unwanted baby. He met an American expat living in China whose wife lived in the United States. The man explained that they wanted to adopt, but that it seemed to take a long time to do the paperwork, etc. Jim told him he could adopt right away. Now, I'm sure that most readers familiar with the adoption might at this point be wondering how in the world this adoption could be completed.
Adoptive families from China will no doubt be interested in knowing what his book says about his work to bring unwanted babies into China's orphanages in order for them to be adopted internationally. While he is quite outspoken in private conversations and correspondence about the destination of most of the children he has supposedly rescued, the book is almost completely silent about his interactions with China's orphanages. He does recount one story involving Yoda, his protective intelligence officer, and an orphanage in Chongqing Municipality. Yoda learned that this unnamed orphanage had been accepting infant girls, only to turn around and sell them to sex traders, who would apparently raise the children for 15 years before using them in the sex trade. One can of course question the financial and logistical logic behind such scheme, but what is interesting to read in Jim's book is how Yoda handled it (remembering that Yoda is all powerful):
"Of course, I heard about it later; and once again, I did not ask for particulars. In one day, the entire orphanage was closed, and all of its people gone. When I say gone, I mean they permanently disappeared. An angry Yoda was like the sword of the Lord, smiting all who were sinners. These people were the worst of sinners, and no one, including me, ever asked what happened to them. The babies and children were saved. That was the only justice to focus on." (p. 82)
As I stated, Garrow mentions no particulars about this orphanage, or any of his other stories. But being familiar with all of the orphanages in Chongqing, I can attest that none of them have "disappeared". Orphanages have closed, but we are still in contact with the directors and other employees.
Garrow does recount a few adoptions into the U.S. (but not Canada), but even these experiences lack the "ring of truth" for those who have personally walked through the paperwork and logistical maze of U.S. Immigration procedures. As I pointed out above, Garrow seems to maintain that all one needs to do to obtain a Chinese infant is to procure some forged adoption documents and show up at the U.S. border with child in hand. He seems ignorant of, or completely ignores, the pre-adoption approvals required (I-600, CCAA approvals, etc.) to obtain an entry visa for the child to enter the U.S.
What struck me as odd, however, was the nearly complete absence of any mention of Jim working with any of China's orphanages. In fact, a reader of "The Pink Pagoda" would finish with the impression that nearly all of the unwanted children had been adopted inside China. This impression runs completely contrary to what Jim told me and others in his interviews, in which he proudly boasted of working with four internationally adopting orphanages in Chongqing, from which he claimed that 80% of the children adopted came as a result of his work, and with hundreds of other such orphanages across China. His website continues to encourage U.S. adoptive families to "ascertain if we have been part of the process of saving your babies in China." Although in his book he claims that his first "save" was in 2000 (which he also confirmed in other interviews, including mine), he recently responded to a family with children adopted in the late 1990s from Anhui and Jiangxi Provinces thusly: "To be quite frank our work encompassed so many of the children rescued in the late 90's and up until recent days that there is a real possibility that your daughters were handled by our folks." He continued to contradict previous interviews and his own book by stating: "We never placed any children in orphanages after 2000. All the babies from then on with only a few exceptions were adopted internally by barren Chinese couples." It seems that Jim's story constantly changes depending on whom he is addressing.
The overall issue with Jim's book is that he provides no specific names, places, or events with which to confirm his story, from the "Xinyi" episode at the start, to his nomination for a Noble Peace Prize in 2009 at the end. In that episode an anonymous Chinese official asks Jim for permission to nominate him for the Peace Prize. There is no name of this official to research. Garrow goes on to say he was beaten for the Prize by President Obama, a man Garrow openly despises, and goes so far as to publish his letter of congratulations to the President. Readers familiar with the nomination process will realize that thousands of members are on the nomination committee, and the winner is nominated by literally thousands of those members. Nominees are not made known for 50 years, so we can't even determine if his nomination occurred. However, one can see that even if Garrow's nomination by the nameless Chinese official were actual, Garrow would not have received anywhere near the votes to present any competition for President Obama or the other top contenders. Thus, chapter 30 of his book, "The Nobel Peace Prize Scandal", in which he writes President Obama and states "We may have lost the Nobel Peace Prize to you, President Obama, but I believe that there is a higher purpose to every event in our lives" (p.149) is without doubt one of the most brazen and unprovable assertions in the book. And that is saying a lot.
In the end Garrow's story will be like those of other religious "prophets" to whom God has supposedly spoken: Outsiders will be able to point out inconsistencies, attack the veracity of the details, and question the validity of the events recounted. But believers in Jim's story will discount such problems, and insist that since such issues can't be totally disproved, they could be true. Thus, Garrow's story will be viewed as "a story told from a dream" by those who see it skeptically, but as the work of God by those who share Garrow's faith in the need to "save" children from China.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
This really opened my eyes to what is happening in China. I admired his enormous efforts and successes in helping parents get their baby girls adopted. Awful to think of what happens to the millions he could not reach.
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I would highly recommend this book to everyone who is interested in saving lives and helping people. Dr. Jarrow should have won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
Really bro?
First off, I've save at least 2.8 million Chinese people with the electronics I've bought over the past 16 years. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Thatguy
4.0 out of 5 stars
informative
The author is meeting a very serious need in China. I found the book informative and interesting. A good read.
Published 4 months ago by befos
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Pink Pagoda (a kindle book from Amazon)
The Pink Pagoda---Excellent! I had a difficult time putting this book down. Jim Garrow is a striking example of one person who has affected thousands of lives for the better in... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Jeanann
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful book
Wow! How wonderful to learn about someone who is seeking to make a difference in the world where there are so many orphans
and who wants to do all he can to place them in... Read more
and who wants to do all he can to place them in... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Debby believes
4.0 out of 5 stars
Worth Reading
This is not great prose, nor is it great investigative journalism, but it is a story told in heartfelt terms of a truly great and noble man who has saved the lives of tens of... Read more
Published 12 months ago by Becky
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Pink Pagoda
I read a review on this book in WND and was really impressed with it. It is about this guy that became very wealthy by setting up schools in Canada and China. Read more
Published 12 months ago by John A. Jay
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good Book
Very Good Book I was impressed with how fast they shipped the book to me.
This book was very interesting from cover to cover.
This book was very interesting from cover to cover.
Published 13 months ago by P. Zabel
3.0 out of 5 stars
Inspirational Story
This is the story of a man who encountered injustice of the worst kind and, instead of saying, "that's too bad", took action,committed money and energy,and eventually took up... Read more
Published 13 months ago by Gid Adkisson
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Nobel Prize was Never a Real Possibility
Jim Garrow has made enormous sacrifices to save the lives of unwanted Chinese females. The country's one child policy dooms them because most parents normally opt for boys. Read more
Published 14 months ago by David Thomson
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