Girl in U.S. custody fight adjusts to life in China

updated 5:05 a.m. ET Nov. 30, 2008

CHONGQING, China - Nine-year-old Anna He stands quietly amid the chaos in her boarding school dorm on a Sunday night, a frenzy of little girls chattering in Chinese as they change the linens on rows of wooden beds.

Anna is an outsider here. Her parents are Chinese, but she cannot talk to her schoolmates because she grew up in America.

This small girl with watchful dark eyes was at the center of one of the longest custody battles in the U.S. in recent times, a high-profile seven-year dispute marked by racial and cultural undercurrents. On one side were the Bakers, a white family in suburban Memphis, Tenn. On the other were the Hes, immigrants scraping by with low-paying jobs before they returned to China.

The legal fight is finally over. And a new story has started for Anna.

Last year the Tennessee Supreme Court ordered her returned to the Chinese couple, and the family moved to China in February. Since then, Anna has lived in two cities and attended three schools. After her parents' marriage fell apart, she was sent to boarding school this fall and goes home on weekends.

"I really don't like living at school," Anna murmurs in English, buttoning and unbuttoning her sweater absently as the other girls flutter bed sheets in the air.

Baby girl placed with foster family
Anna was born on Jan. 28, 1999, a few weeks after her father was accused of sexual assault by a fellow student at the University of Memphis. Shaoqiang He lost his scholarship and graduate student stipend, although he was ultimately found not guilty.

With very little income and no health insurance, the Hes asked an adoption agency to find a foster family until they got back on their feet. Anna went to live with Jerry and Louise Baker when she was less than a month old.

In June that year, the Hes signed court papers that transferred custody of Anna to the Bakers so she could get health insurance. The Bakers eventually sought to adopt Anna, saying the Hes had abandoned her.

Anna's parents wanted her back, and the case wound through four different courts. One judge suggested the couple only wanted to keep Anna to avoid getting deported, calling Anna's natural father deceitful and the actions of her mother "calculating, almost theatrical." For five years, the courts did not allow the Hes to see Anna.

The Bakers in turn questioned the quality of life for little girls in China, where families have a traditional preference for boys.

By the time Anna returned to her Chinese parents last year, she was no longer a baby but an 8-year-old American girl. She was unable to speak or understand Chinese, and American classmates told her the country would be "weird."

Anna's parents, also known by their American first names Casey and Jack, fell out just five months after returning to their native country. Her mother, Qin Luo, took the kids from the city of Changsha, where He had found work, to her hometown of Chongqing in southwestern China.

The mother and children — Anna, 8-year-old Andy and 6-year-old Avita — now live in a simple two-bedroom apartment on the outskirts of town.

Girl struggles with Chinese language
On a recent Friday night, Anna and Avita huddle in one room, dressed in matching Hello Kitty tops and whispering to each other in English on a bed strewn with a Chinese checkers board, marbles and miniature plastic figurines.

Here at home, everybody talks to Anna in English. Her brother and sister are perfectly fluent in English and Chinese. Everyone calls her "Anna," instead of her Chinese name "He Sijia."

Elizabeth Dalziel / AP Anna He, third left, plays a board game with her mother Luo Qin, left, her brother Andy, right, and her sister Avita at their home in Chongqing, China.

After nine months in China, Anna still does not speak much Chinese, a notoriously difficult language to learn. She says she can understand some things "if it's really easy."

"At class, I never understand," she says, with her childish manner of speaking, pronouncing 'R's as 'W's. And Anna is reticent about communicating with other kids in Chinese because, "Well, they never understand me."

Anna didn't tell her classmates about Halloween "because I don't know how to say Halloween in Chinese." Nor could she alert her teacher when she spotted "a big black bug" in the vegetables at lunch one day.

Anna is short for her age, but has a round tummy that she and her mother attribute to her "meat-atarian" diet. Like many other 9-year-olds, she has front teeth too big for her face.

At first Anna says she is "scared" to answer questions about herself, but soon she's eager to talk.

"Well, I liked America. I liked to be at school, I liked math and science," she says. "I have, like, a lot of friends and I get to be with everyone that can speak English."

And what are three things she likes about China?

"Well, let me think ... well, I have made a friend but now she is gone. Her name was Sarah. That's one thing. I'm trying to think of a second thing. Second thing I like about China ... is ... well, I don't really know. I don't know ... There's so many cars and a lot of people smoke. I really hate that."

Anna should be in fourth grade but was placed a grade lower because of her language difficulties. She says school in China is "five times harder" than in the U.S. She has a backpack filled with papers from her American school, most marked in green ink with a perfect score.

Elizabeth Dalziel / AP Anna He looks at her graded papers from her school in the U.S. Anna should be in fourth grade but was placed a grade lower because of her difficulties with the Chinese language.

"At school, on my report card, I always had A's, never one B," she says. "In China I maybe got too many B's and C's."

Anna hates ballet, and her favorite class is piano.

"I like music ... it takes the troubles out of my mind."

Do you have a lot of troubles?

"Yeah."

Like what?

"Well, I don't like school," she replies.

What do you wish could happen to make it better?

"I wish everyone would speak English," she says, laughing.

When asked about the Bakers, Anna pulls away. She rolls onto her back. She covers her face with her hands. She says she has forgotten what it was like when she moved from one family to the other, and whether she was happy or sad.

"I don't even know," she says.

At dinner in a Chinese restaurant near their home that Friday night, Avita snatches two duck drumsticks while Andy hacks at a crunchy potato dish. Anna closes her eyes and puts her hands together.

"Her teacher asked me, what is she doing? I had to tell her, she's praying," Luo recalls with a laugh.

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