Nanning
Nanning Social Welfare Institution
No. 16 Xin Yang Lu Bei San Li
Nanning, Guangxi Province, China
530003
Half the Sky's 28th Children's Center & 15th* Blue Sky Model Center
*upgraded 8/2010
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Infant Nurture Program since May, 2006 |
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Little Sisters Preschool Program since May, 2006 |
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Youth Services Program since June, 2007 |
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Family Village #3 since July, 2006 |
Nanning is the regional capital of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Located only 235 kilometers from the Vietnamese border, Nanning is a gateway to southwest China and Indochina. As such, Nanning plays an active role in the commerce between China and the "Pacific Rim" countries of Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia.
In early 1998, the Chinese government completed the Nankun Railway, linking Kunming with Nanning and offering a crucial alternative transportation route between Guangxi, Guizhou, and Yunnan Provinces. Nearly one-third of the route is bridge or tunnel and the train passes through a rough jumble of around 900 km of mountain ranges and steep valleys. This train route has provided fresh fruit and vegetables year-round to previously isolated villages.
Nanning, whose metropolitan population is 3 million, is now well connected by road and rail with the rest of China, but perhaps the most important transport route is the Yongjiang River, which carries most of the city's exports to their destinations overseas.
Guangxi is home to 11 minority groups, including the Miao, Dong, Zhuan and Maonan. The Guangxi Minorities Cultural Relics Center in Nanning houses many treasures of various minority groups including several bronze drums used by the Dong. Along the ancient drums’ edges sit bronze frogs. The Dong use frogs as fortunetellers. The Dong bury a frog alive and after a few days dig up the dead frog’s carcass to examine the bones. If the bones turned a certain color the person’s future could be told. The center also features a Zhuang minority pile house, a Yao minority bamboo house, and dance performances from various minority groups.
South Lake Park (Nanhugongyuan) in downtown Nanning includes a wide, peaceful lake and green-covered gardens, including a Chinese medicinal herb garden, ministaure landscape garden and an orchid garden.
There are many local dishes, including tasty Old Friend Noodles. Legend has it an old man went to a tea house every day to drink tea and became friends with the owner. One day the old man caught cold and did not go to the teahouse. The owner prepared a bowl of hot noodles for the old man. After eating the noodles, theold man felt much better. Old Friend Noodles are made with a variety of ingredients including hot peppers, minced meat, sour bamboo shoots, preserved blacks beans, etc.
Porridge is a favorite breakfast dish. There are more than 10 varieties of porridges, such as lean pork porridge, fish porridge, egg porridge and red bean porridge.
Another local favorite is river snails fried with garlic and ginger and other seasonings. Sometimes a needle is used to pick the meat out. Locals also favor sweet, sour, crispy and hot pickles made from papayas, cucumbers, cabbages, jackfruit, pineapples and other vegetables and fruits vinegar and peppers. In recent years, Nanning’s chefs have gathered many local recipes of Guangxi’s minorities, such as oil tea of the Dongs, glutinous cakes of the Zhangs, and Miaos’ beef fried on an iron plate.
If you adopted a child who was in a Half the Sky program, we will be happy to send you any progress reports with translations we may have on file. Please fill out and send us this Form so we can start processing your request.
You should also have received a Memory Book at the time of the adoption so that your child will have an additional record of her/his earliest years in our program. If you don’t read Chinese and don’t know anyone who reads Chinese, we suggest that you check with a local college to find someone who can translate it. If you did not receive your child’s Memory Book, our Beijing office will try to track it down, though occasionally there are bureaucratic glitches and the institution is unable to find the original or in even rarer cases a copy. In every case, we will do our best to retrieve the Memory Book.