Wuhu Diary

'I was in my hotel room in Hefei, a town in rural southern China, when my phone rang and a voice said, 'Would you like to meet your baby?' It was two hours early. I raced around preparing as if for a visiting dignitary. I was so scared I could hardly breathe. I was ten thousand miles from home, all alone, and about to meet the person I would be responsible for for the rest of my life.'

In 1994 Emily Prager, American novelist and columnist, adopted a 7-month-old baby in China. Five years later, she went back with her adopted daughter to spend three months in Wuhu City, where as a three-day-old baby Lulu had been found on the street in front of the police station. Within a week of their arrival, NATO bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, and anti-American feeling ran high; Emily's was the only non-Chinese face on the streets but Lulu was a 'Wuhuren' and therefore sacrosanct. They and the townspeople became involved in a relationship of warmth and complexity that stood politics and prejudice on its head. It was Lulu's joy and pride at having found them that people could not get over. After all, this was the same town that had thrown her away. Looking beneath the surface of modem China, Wuhu Diary is a gripping account of their experiences, both poignant and funny, and the extraordinary search for Lulu's origins.