Chinese Boy Without Ears Who Yearned to Be Adopted Now Happily Living With Forever Family

A Chinese boy who was featured in a documentary last year about children in China who live in medical orphanages has now been adopted and lives with his forever family in Singapore.

As previously reported, Wu Keyuan, now 8, was born without external ears and ear canals and had been abandoned outside an orphanage just a few days after birth. Another woman took him to raise him as her own, but when he was five, she brought him back to the orphanage.

For over two years, Keyuan, a bubbly and animated boy, has lived with 20 other children at Alenah’s Home, a medical foster care center in Beijing. His caretakers had been concerned, in watching other children at the home get adopted except for Keyuan, that he might age out of the system.

“I just think, ‘Please hurry up and come,’” staff member Zhang Jing shared in the episode, wiping away tears, “because he’s so big now. All the children he grew up with have left. It’s just him now.”

Now, Keyuan has a home. In February, after 10 months of waiting for the adoption process to finalize, he flew with his new parents, Yap Vong Hin and Lim Poh Lian, to Singapore, where he got to meet his three new siblings for the first time.

Keyuan had been Skyping with his parents every Sunday after learning that he was going to be adopted, and was presented with a photobook so he could learn more about his adoptive family.

Video footage of the joyful journey was posted to social media by CNA Insider. Click here to watch part one of “Bringing Keyuan Home,” and here to view part two.

In one segment, Keyuan asks his mother and father, who are U.S. citizens with Singapore permanent resident status, when they will be coming on the plane. When they arrive, he happily calls out “Mama!” and gives his mother a hug. He also takes his father by the hand, hurrying along.

While at a restaurant later, the emotion of it all sinks in and he begins to cry, but bounces back while on the plane as he giggles at the adventure of flying for the first time, where everything below looks like “toys.”

“Bye Beijing!”

“Adoption is a lot like marriage. You’re making a lifelong commitment to someone that’s not your flesh and blood to be and do what they need to flourish,” mother Lim Poh Lian, a doctor, told videographers. “You have to be willing to care for someone else’s needs as much as your own.”

Keyuan’s parents say that the boy is affectionate, always asking for a hug or just wanting to sit next to someone, and is fond of his new brothers and sister. He also loves to help out at home, raking the yard or helping to put away dishes. Keyuan, who wears implants to help him hear, has also been learning English and attends church with his family.

“We’ve been deeply touched by the way Keyuan’s adoption has moved so many people. There has been such an outpouring of kindness, joy and encouragement which we hope will make a difference for good,” father Yap Vong Hin told CNA Insider.

“If this in any way helps other people to understand the whole adoption issue, and have their hearts moved to do something, it would be more than worth it,” he said.