ShaoWu Welfare Institute

 Address: No. 43, Wuyi Road, ShaoWu    
    Postal Code: 354000      Telephone No: 0599-632-2553

Day 1:

Our guide will pick you up upon arrival in the Fuzhou and meet the guide for transfer to your hotel. Enjoy free time the rest of the day.

Day 2:

Breakfast. Then drive to Shaowu city(6 hour driving distance), visit your child's home orphanage and meet with people related to your child's adoption. If you desire, host a lunch or dinner for the orphanage director and staff. Explore the local area with your guide. If needed, locate and visit the place where your child was found or visit your child's former foster family (if applicable and pending special permission).Our guide will escort you back to your hotel.

Day 3:

Breakfast. Morning is free on your own. In the afternoon, drive back to Fuzhou.

Day 4:

After the breakfast, our guide will transfer you to Fuzhou airport/railway station.

Prior to your orphanage visit application submission, please make sure you have the following documents ready:

A copy of each visitor's passports

A copy of the adoption certificate or the notarized adoption documents

An orphanage visit application letter

We all know that it is important to return to China. Apart from visiting the orphanage, children may focus more on traveling itself. Therefore, if adoptive families want to explore more tourist cities in China, please feel free to tell us. And we will customize a heritage tour of lifetime for you.


ShaoWu orphanage: This orphanage has about 70 children in its care, some of whom are in foster care. Most of the children have disabilities or medical conditions. The orphanage was established in 1952 and is about 190 miles from Fuzhou. It can be reached by train. The trip by car is about four hours each direction over mountainous roads.

About Shaowu: Shaowu city is an important communication center in northwestern Fujian Province, located on the railway line from Jiangxi to the coastal ports of Xiamen and Fuzhou and at the hub of a network of locally important highways. Local products include bamboo, rice, timber, tobacco leaves, and tea. Shaowu is near Mt. Wuyishan, a popular summer resort and an area of spectacular beauty.


Revisiting the orphanage is the important aspect of your homeland heritage trip, what do we need to prepare for this part? Here are some tips for your reference:

Depending on the size of the SWI and how often visitors return, a visit could can be a highly anticipated event by the staff, or a routine, minor inconvenience to the day to day running of the institution.

You will want to discuss this aspect of reality with your child and prepare her or him for what it might be like, based on what you know. It is good to talk to your child about what to expect and then what to do if things turn out differently than you expect. It is important to develop an attitude of flexibility and focus on enjoying the experience rather than to get set on things going a certain way, since things don’t always go exactly as planned on any trip or daily life experience. A small gift is always appropriate for the effort expended by the director and or staff to accommodate the visiting family.

Since it may be several years after an adoption, it’s not unusual that the orphanage moved to a new place. Remember it’s normal, natural, time will not stand still, just as your children changed dramatically from she/he was a baby when just there.

If you are interested in visit both of the orphanages, we are happy to facilitate it, you can follow the previous footprint to recall your excitement when you look at your children at first time.

We usually arrange visiting the finding site for families if have the Notarial Certificate of the finding place. The finding site usually is at the front of hospital/orphanage/government agencies, etc. Please note that there places may be changed also.

Since visiting the finding site is the most emotional part of the trip, it’s a personal decision for each family and only you can make the decision if you want to accomplish it.

We always arrange the meeting with the previous caregiver/ foster family. If you have the information of the previous caregiver, we will try our best to find her. Please do remember that it’ll be some years after your adoption, the caregiver may be moved away or be retired. If the caregiver is still working in the orphanage, the director will happy to facilitate the connection.

Also please note that the caregiver may take care of more than one hundred babies in the orphanage, so that she may not remember your child well.

If your family is interested or inclined to invite the orphanage director to lunch, it is proper to invite others in the meeting as well. This would usually be one or two of the directors' assistants. If you want to invite the caregiver or nanny, then you should extend that invitation through the director to show the proper respect that the position merits. Your guide will handle this for you, but inviting the staff through the director follows proper etiquette for the situation. Some of the orphanages offer the free lunch while the others request about USD90-USD150 for the extra charge. You may ask our trip consultant before you travel.

When visiting an orphanage, it is appropriate to prepare some gifts for the director/staff and the children. You can invite the director, the staff or the caregiver to have lunch together or prepare fruit basket for them, for their effort expended to accommodate the visiting family.

As for the gifts to kids, you can prepare some snacks, candy, books, school backpacks, toys and so on. Usually, you can buy them when arrival at the orphanage place, the guide can escort you.

If you want to donate something more valuable and not sure what is needed for the orphanage, you can first learn it from the director and then purchase them from the local market. Some SWI will issue a donation certificate to you but not every SWI will do this.

Planning a trip? Ask us here

With years of experience working with children in orphanages all over China, Lead to China is uniquely qualified to offer a special homeland experience for you. You will:

  • Visit the orphanage, foster family and finding site
  • Learn about birth country culture
  • Get the first hand price from local agency

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