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BEAR GRYLLS: 20 years ago, social
worker Robert Glover

and his wife, Liz,

moved to Shanghai with their six
young children.

Robert looked to spearhead the
first-ever

joint social welfare venture

between the British and Chinese
governments.

I was with the Chinese government
people

and I didn't understand a word of
what they were saying.

And then one chap stood up and he
said,

"I want to tell you the meaning of
your Chinese name."

And he said, "As many stars as there
are in the sky,

you'll be father to children in
China."

This is the story of eight million
children,

a 3,000-year-old civilisation...

..and the birth of an idea.

Shanghai, China's wealthiest city.

Its skyscrapers are temples
to the spirit of enterprise.

But its veneration for the family is
rooted in ancient tradition.

20 years ago,

Ai Liang lived in an orphanage.

At the age of five, Ai Liang

became one of the first foster
children in China's history.

And today her gratitude knows no
bounds.

Sheng Weiqun and her husband
Lao Wushen

decided to become China's first-ever
foster parents,

after learning the details of Ai
Liang's early childhood.

Ai Liang may be a happy and
successful young mum today,

but when she was five

any of kind of future
seemed an impossibility.

I don't think there was even a word
for fostering.

There wasn't a word for adoption.

And...

there had been some very adverse
publicity

in the UK and other countries

about the poor state of orphanages
in China.

Countless children were growing up
without hope.

But something utterly extraordinary
was about to happen.

And it involved a former
professional footballer from Norwich
- Robert Glover.

Robert had moved from sport to social
work

and his work with young offenders
had won him a reputation

for ripping up the rule book.

When Robert learnt about the
situation in China

he felt impelled to act.

Robert travelled to Shanghai at his
own expense

and secured an invitation to a formal
dinner

for local officials and international
charities.

I sat next to this senior member of
the Communist Party, retired.

And um, we got chatting and we got
on quite well.

Some other foreigners were wagging
their fingers

and telling them off, telling them
they're doing it all wrong.

I was just enjoying the food. It was
just lovely food.

And really I suppose I was just
being sociable.

You know, I was in their country, I
was their guest.

I just said, "I come with a heart to
serve

to see if there's any way we could
help."

The Chinese do everything through
guanxi, which means relationship.

It's very much about food, it's very
much getting to know and trust.

And face is very important in China.

You don't make anyone lose face, you
know.

You keep their honour and face. It's
very important.

Astonishingly, Robert's friendly
approach

and genuine love of Chinese food,

achieved what the entire Western
establishment

had failed to do for years.

There was some shuffling and the top
guy said to one of the others,

"Get rid of the other guy and get
Robert back for dinner."

The started asking me about why
should children be with families.

How do we get there and how do we do
this?

How does that work? How does this
work?

So, just answering their questions

and the guy looks at me in the eye
and says,

"Will you come back and help us?"

Like, "Wow."

This was Yan Mingfu,

a remarkable man, who was Chairman
Mao's official translator

during his tense summits with Soviet
premier Nikolai Khrushchev.

When Khrushchev mortally offended Mao
by banging his shoe on their table,

it was Yan Mingfu's diplomacy

that persuaded Mao not to retaliate
with a declaration of war.

Speaking in 2000,

Yan Mingfu recalled his first meeting
with Robert.

As Deputy Minister for Civil Affairs,

Yan Mingfu held great sway with the
government.

Robert made an impression

on the politicians

because...he's not a politician.

Everyone could see that Robert was
not in this for what he could get

but what the children would get.

Robert feared he'd caused a
diplomatic incident.

I'm sitting in my office thinking,
"Was I really in China last week?"

The phone rings, picks it up
and it's the Foreign Office saying,

"We want to talk to you."
You're thinking, "Oh, no."

You always think, don't you, "What
have we done wrong?

What went wrong in China?"

They said, "Well, look, if you're
prepared to go and be their
consultant,

they want you as their consultant

to advise the Shanghai government

on how to develop family placement

as an alternative to institutional
care."

Robert's breakthrough would change
history.

But it would come at massive personal
cost.

We had a beautiful old farmhouse in
Guernsey

just up the road from lovely beaches.

A field with chickens.

Robert and his family were the very
heart of the close-knit community

on the small island in the English
Channel.

The Glovers were certainly different

and exciting to be around.

You never knew what was going to
happen next.

It was quite crazy because it was
the whole herd of them.

Because they're all blonde, as well,

they're quite a...spectacle, if you
like.

They were the life and soul of the
party.

It was always just... (LAUGHS)

..just a laugh all the time.

They had a lot of love to show for
young people

and for kids.

I mean, with somebody of Bob's
stature,

he could come over as quite
intimidating.

But he wasn't. All the kids just
warmed to him.

They just thought he was like a big
bear.

We both were saying, "We want to be
effective somewhere."

We didn't want to just sit.

So, by the time China came along,
we were pretty ready.

Although there was still lots of
preparation to be done.

It was scary. I'd never been to
China.

I didn't have a clue what it meant
to live there

and actually to take our six
children.

But the thing that made it feel more
secure

was that we would be helping other
children

that were in much worse conditions

and much worse situations than my
children.

Dad said, "This is what we need to
do. We need to move to China"

and I think I burst into tears.

When we left Guernsey

we felt strongly that we probably
wouldn't return.

We didn't want to be looking back.

We didn't want to be thinking about
the past.

So there was something liberating
and something really rich

about giving everything away.

And as we did that and things went,

you start to focus on going forward
rather than back.

And, you know, all we had left was
our mattresses.

So the final bit was to go up

and have this little time together
and set fire to our mattresses

and say goodbye to Guernsey.

It was, you know, goodbye.

And from that point, again there was
this freedom, this liberty,

that just broke through that we were
going to China.

It was a change point, it was a new
direction.

Lois often talks about she cried a
lot.

In some sense, for a little
ten-year-old girl,

it was almost like going to give her
life for this cause.

Living in Guernsey, you're a very
small community,

compared to going, as the Glovers
did, to Shanghai,

to a huge, bustling city with
millions of people.

A huge challenge for a young family.

Yeah, I was upset they went.

The daily contact and...and...

the strong friendship that we had
and have.

I knew that they were doing the
right thing

but I don't think you realised how
special that time was.

Before they could leave, Robert
needed the final approval

from Lord Laming, the Chief Inspector
of Social Services.

I thought to myself, "He doesn't
know China very well,

he doesn't speak the language

and he's going to take six children
with him

to a country where there's
a one-child-per-family policy.

And I thought, "This doesn't seem to
me to be practical."

But then I thought about it
overnight and I thought,

"If this project changes the lives
and the life opportunities

of, say, only 20 children,
it has been worthwhile."

So I told the government I supported
it entirely.

The family of eight would be
travelling almost 10,000km

from a rural island with a population
of 60,000

to the most populated city in China.

We didn't understand the language
and we didn't understand what was
going on.

I just remember arriving into China

and feeling so small and it being so
big.

People used to come up and touch our
hair...Mm...and we'd actually cry.

I remember us as a family of eight.

Six children, all blonde, and
distinctly sticking out.

(SPEAKS ENGLISH)

Daphne, a young graduate, was made
Robert's personal assistant.

(SPEAKS ENGLISH)

Rather than set up in a distant
office,

Robert based his new charity, Care
for Children,

inside Shanghai's biggest orphanage.

This was quite a...formidable sort
of institution

with lots of different people, lots
of different roles.

Lots of children in cots that
weren't nurtured and weren't helped.

That was really tough.

They used to bring the children out

and tie them together so they could
walk in a line and not wander off.

They had hardly any possessions.

So they had a tiny cupboard where
they kept their stuff

and they had some books and a few
little tiny toys.

Then you saw some of the older boys
and how tough they were.Yeah.

And you knew that in their
toughness,

they'd survived, you know.

For every one of those boys that
survived, many hadn't.

One orphanage boy who survived the
system then thrived through fostering

is 29-year-old Su Yiya.

Today he is one of the city's most
sought-after coders.

Tencent is valued at over $500
billion.

It owns WeChat,

an app combining messaging, social
media and mobile payment.

Su Yiya's prospects haven't always
been this bright.

20 years ago, aged nine,

he was abandoned between a building
site and a railway track.

The police took him to an orphanage,

where there was little hope of an
education.

Care for Children found Su Yiya a
foster family

and he visits them every day.

One of the things we know about
children

is when they come into care

they've often gone through awful
rejection.

They're feeling abandonment.

And what we have to do is to try and
work with the family

around, "You know what? These
children are hurt."

So often they will display quite
abnormal behaviour.

It's a self-destruct button.

Robert and Liz haven't seen Su Yiya

since their charity arranged for him
to leave the orphanage.

We are so happy to get to know about
you after 20 years.

Do you remember the earliest memory
you had going to your family?

(SPEAKS ENGLISH)

Mm.Aw!

Mm!Aw.

Yes.Yeah, yeah.Yeah.

Feel the love from your mother and
father.Yeah.

Now, do you remember anything before
you went to your family?

Tell us about some happy memories in
your family.

Quite remarkable really.

Suddenly, out of this little boy,
comes this bright spark

and seeing fulfilment in his life
where he's actually feeling,

"Wow, I made it. I've done it."

Care for Children has placed over a
million orphans with foster families.

But 20 year ago, as he set up his
fledgling charity

in the Shanghai orphanage,
Robert looked to have little chance
of success.

This was my office where we...Yeah.
..went in through that door.I
remember coming in here.

(CHATTERING)

The orphanage did not welcome Robert
with open arms.

I was told I couldn't eat with the
rest of the staff in the canteen,

so I had to have my...er...
my lunch on my own.

There were a lot of vested interests

in Shanghai at the time,

in the orphanage system.

It was a business.

And we were breaking down that
business.

The orphanage director asked me to
give an overview of what foster care
was.

And so I had a translator.

And I noticed very quickly, within
three or four minutes, people were
fidgeting

and going out to the toilet,
answering their phones.

And then, you know, five minutes,

I could see people reading the
newspaper.

And I think after about ten minutes
of trying to do my presentation

there were some that actually
started a card school at the back.

So... (LAUGHS) ..you know,
it was very unnerving.

I think the...

expectations from China

were very high.

And I was fearful at that time

that Robert wouldn't be able to
deliver on that.

It seemed like every time that we
made a step forward

more obstacles would come in the
way.

Progress seemed impossible.

But Robert's former career as a
footballer

was to provide an unlikely
breakthrough.

At sort of 15, I was asked to come
and train with Norwich City.

Got sort of scouted again by
Portsmouth.

Signed the same day as a young man
called Chris Kamara.

And played against Celtic. That was
kind of the highlight -

with Kenny Dalglish on the
opposition.

Robert exported his skills from
English football league

to the Shanghai orphanage.

The teenage boys often were being
bypassed.

They weren't gonna get the
opportunity to live in a family.

So I used to often take a ball into
the playground

and, you know, teach them a bit of
football.

It started with about five of them
and it grew

to the point where we got permission
that we could train them.

And then I wrote to my...my old
team, Norwich City,

and they sent out the strip with
yellow shirts,

green shorts and green socks.

And the training became a bit more
serious then.

And we decided to enter them into
the Shanghai Schools Trophy.

There were probably five boys that
were deaf and dumb and some...

There was a boy who only had one
arm.

So a lot of them had disabilities
but they overcame that.

Very strong, very resilient.

In the final, they beat the American
School 5-3.

Um...and it was a major achievement,
really, for the orphanage.

Robert's astonishing victory with a
team of disabled orphans

in an able-bodied competition

brought honour to the orphanage.

And that changed everything.

They knocked on the door and I went
to answer it

and the whole of the staff group
were outside

with madam, the director,

with my bowl with my name on.

Which, after six months, meant that
they'd accepted me

and I could eat in the canteen with
them.

Which I felt was a huge
accomplishment.

Robert had finally won acceptance

from the orphanage -
and the local press.

Hundreds of families in Shanghai
signed up to the project within days.

One couple - Li Gongwei and Wang
Wanbin -

fostered a five-year-old girl called
Xu Peiwei.

Today, Xu Peiwei is a successful
musician and artist.

She met with Robert and Liz at
Shanghai's world-famous Bund.

Oh, I missed you so much!Aw!

(CHATTERS INDISTINCTLY)

It's great to see you, 20 years on.
20.Yeah.

You were five years old...When you
went to the new family.

Like many orphanage children at the
time,

Xu Peiwei had delayed development.

At five, she had the skills of a
baby.

I have the husband...

Oh!..in Shanghai.

Wonderful!Mm.That's so good.

Shanghai's ancient street markets mix
the old worlds and the new.

Events organiser Xu Guoqi and student
Chen Feifei,

often spend their time exploring
them.

They've been friends ever since they
met at one of Shanghai's

first-ever schools for children with
learning difficulties.

At school they both represented China
at swimming and roller skating

and became Special Olympic champions.

Xu Guoqi spent the first five years
of her life in an orphanage.

She would have stayed there
had she not become

one of the country's first foster
children.

The arrangement was made by Care for
Children's

senior training officer Lucy.

Xu Guoqi and Chen Feifei

are still in regular touch with their
teacher

and Special Olympic
trainer Miss Dong.

They like catching up at one of
Shanghai's traditional tea houses.

(CHATTERS IN NATIVE LANGUAGE)

The girls performed so well, they
were chosen to represent China.

Robert and Liz Glover know nothing of
Xu Guoqi's sporting success.

They last saw her 20 years ago

when she had serious disabilities

and could not speak or walk properly.

Bit anxious cos I remember this
child

and I remember when she came from
the orphanage

and she needed a lot of help.
I really don't know what to expect.

(CHATTERING AND LAUGHTER)

(SPEAKS NATIVE LANGUAGE)Oh!

Special Olympics.Ah!Ah.

Oh!

Wow!Yay!(CHUCKLES)

Amazing. Thank you very much.

(LAUGHTER)

An amazing family. That little girl,
when she came out of the orphanage,

she couldn't speak, she couldn't
walk

and she couldn't eat solid food.

And now she's a confident young
woman.

She's an athlete. She's represented
her country.

Really China should be proud of this
family.

They are awesome. They are the
heroes of the state.

While Robert was helping out
youngsters in the orphanage,

his own family were adjusting to life
in a Shanghai village.

Yes, it's so good to be back in a
village like this.

Just so similar. Even the smells and
the people.

It just makes me feel so happy to be
back here.

We all look at the cities, but most
of China is just like this.

To love China and to be in China,
you have to love a place like this.

You have to. Cos you get to know the
people and the people are amazing.

(SPEAKS MANDARIN)

Ah!

Our six kids used to love spending
the weekends in the village,

you know, just doing what the
Chinese kids did

and learning all different things

they'd never seen or heard of
before.

I remember going into the village,
and it feeling...

Just you felt so free to go and be
in amongst them all.Yeah.

Like, their houses were open. You
just walked through.

You had kids walking from place to
place.

But there was just this safety about
it, there was this freedom.

Compared to the West, where we can
be quite shut off, it was the
opposite.

You'd just walk through and there
was just space to be with people.

We'd invite the villagers over,

especially in the early
years in Shanghai.

We grew up as a minority,
in many ways,

and that was, for us, an opportunity

to kind of explore culture in China.

Thinking back to the Chinese New
Year celebrations,

they were amazing.

(LAUGHS)ANNA: I really remember the
Chinese fireworks going off.

And they were so loud and there were
so many of them.

And I remember a few of us children

just running across their fields
pretending to be shooting each other

and diving from place to place.
Yeah.

And I also remember these, like, red
strips

of almost just gunpowder
all down the streets.

They'd set them off and all they'd
do was bang.

"Bang, bang, bang!"Just "Bang,
bang, bang!"

(BANGING AND CRACKLING)

Looking back, I think they're a bit
mad... (LAUGHS) ..in a way.

And there moments where I thought
"Gosh, this is hard"

and even in my teenage years
thinking,

"Has this not been a good thing?"
Mm.

But now, looking back, I really do
see it as a privilege

and to this day I would say my
family are my best friends.

We're both mothers of our own
families and so to think,

wow, picking up and taking your
children to another nation,

yeah, for the sake of a cause or a
desire on your heart

to see children in families,

you realise the sacrifice that went
in more.

Family meant a great deal to Robert
- and to the Chinese.

Family care is very important.
Family life is very important.

Each member of the families are very
intricate and detailed

and they were very pragmatic and
practical.

I'll give you one instance. So in
England

we tended to look at the one child.

You know, we'd place one child at a
time.

In China, you've got, you know,
maybe 1,000 children in the
orphanage,

so they were sending out 10, 15
maybe 20 children at a time.

And I was like,
"No, no, no, you can't do that!"

And "Why?", you know. The question
would always come back, "Why?"

And now I look back, you know,

the fact they were placing ten
children into one village

with ten different families that all
supported and encouraged each other,

in hindsight you can see how,

pragmatically, that was quite
practical.

The foster villages attracted global
attention.

I feel like I've been a lot
of places around the world.

and I just don't know that I've...

ever seen a more beautiful group of
people.

I mean, you've got 70 families in
this village

and they have taken in 160
special-needs children.

And you just try to imagine, where
would they be if this wasn't here?

And many of them probably wouldn't
have survived some of the orphanages

and you just see the life and the
joy in these kids now.

I don't even know how to process it
all.

Robert was fast becoming a major link
between China and the UK.

Robert helped smooth the way for
Virgin Airways' Richard Branson

to open the first London to Shanghai
flight in 1999.

In return, Virgin ran an ad
for Care for Children.

It featured a little
orphaned girl called Ba Yue.

I think for Ba Yue, she'd been
through this rejection,

this abandonment, this hurt,

experienced all this, and then gone
into a family.

A loving mother, a loving father.

And I think when he died,
she couldn't cope

with the grief, the loss,
and I think she ran.

You know, whatever we feel when we
lose a parent,

she was feeling it ten times more

because all the feelings of her
childhood was coming back as well -

about the loss, the grief, the
rejection, the abandonment.

That would have surfaced again.

Thankfully, her mother was strong
enough

and the foundation was there to help
her through that.

Ba Yue now has a successful career,

inspired by the company who brought
her and her foster parents together.

News of Care For Children's
success was spreading fast.

We knew there were many more
children out there

and we were getting invitations from
other cities.

And Beijing requested
that I move from Shanghai

and become a national advisor
to the central government.

'You're thinking,
"What is going on?",

banging your head against the wall.

But people did want to try and make
things work.

It was quite funny really. They had
a one-child policy,

I was their senior consultant

for disadvantaged children
and I had six children.

They laughed and we laughed. We all
thought it was quite funny.'

I think the Chinese government must
have recognised in him

exactly the qualities that I saw,

which was his sincerity, his
genuineness,

his care for children, his
enthusiasm for the job.

We rolled out initially to 15
provinces

and then 30 provinces of China.

And I think once that then started
to roll out

and people saw the numbers and,
you know,

how easy the success was in seeing
children's lives transformed,

it turned out to be very productive
in the long run.

Fostering was replacing institutional
care in Beijing and Shanghai,

China's political and economic
powerhouses.

But Robert's biggest
challenge was to come in Chengdu.

Famed for its giant pandas,

Chengdu was founded
in the 4th century BC

and is the capital of China's
Sichuan province.

Tragically, it's also known for one
of the worst natural catastrophes

of the 21st century.

It was 2008 and it was China's year

because it was going to be the
Beijing Olympics.

And this earthquake struck

and it was just on an enormous
scale.

We were down on the ground, day two,

and gathering information,

and you've never seen anything like
it.

As far as your eye could see

there were just houses that were in
rubble.

Doorframes left.
It was really surreal.

And then meeting, you know,

parents, mothers, walking around,

distraught, looking for their
children,

with pictures, asking have we seen
these children.

Seeing little shoes that were left,

um, you know,

just lying by the side of the road.

People lost whole families. Like
their mums, their dads,

their...their uncles and their
aunties, their children.

So, you know, part of our job really

was to get alongside them and help
them to pick up

and just to try to encourage them

in times of, you know,

great grief and remorse and shock.

Everybody was in shock.

Um...and then really with them

starting to connect with families.

But the good thing is all the kids
were safe,

none of them were injured.

The charity placed the children with
foster families.

One Chengdu orphan was Long Xianqiao.

But today, he's an expert baker.

Long Xianqiao
teaches a weekly baking class

at Chengdu's rebuilt orphanage.

I'm an adopted child myself,

so I know from my own life the
benefits that that brings.

But you multiply that then by
thousands and thousands

and you can see how a whole society,

a whole generation, a whole nation

can be changed by that.

In 20 years, fostering has gone

from being an unknown concept
to a national practice.

And it all began in Shanghai.

Today, Ai Liang's foster parents

have invited Robert and Liz Glover
to their apartment

to celebrate the 20th anniversary

of one of China's very first family
placements.

(CHATTING AND LAUGHTER)

To hear that from the parents

has made me feel like 20 years ago

it was worth us leaving the UK and
coming with our six children

and being here and...

Yeah, it just made it feel all
worthwhile.

I'm struggling a bit. (CHUCKLES)

'Growing up, I didn't have a
father.'

There was clearly something missing
in my childhood, in my adolescence.

And I can appreciate that these
children

almost have nothing to direct them
or guide them.

Who sets the family boundaries of
security and love

and nurture and stimulation?

We know what institutions create -

dependant, dysfunctional people.

And I think that returning that
generation

back into family life

will change the nation of China.

'There's been so many highlights
along the way.'

Seeing the first children from the
orphanage go into the families

and then seeing the transformation
of that

and my children witnessing that.

We got to go along to the
orphanages. We got to meet the
children.

And to know that these children are
now in

families that love them is...
is amazing.

Care For Children has placed over a
million orphans in foster families.

China, with such a huge population,

had the largest number of orphans,

practically all of whom have been...

..taken in families.

If it can be done in China, it can
be done anywhere in the world.

On Tuesday 17th December 2019,

the UN's 193 member states

passed a resolution pledging to phase
out orphanages

and to promote family-based
alternatives.

Fostering orphans was a completely
new concept in China

and challenged three millennia of
social convention.

And it all began 20 years ago
in Shanghai.

I was sat round a table with maybe
ten people, Chinese people,

and they suddenly said, "Whoa, stop.
We need to give you a Chinese name.

Cos if you're gonna be our
consultant, you've then got to have
a chop

and it's gotta go on the reports so
we know it's from you."

They went into this conversation. I
had no idea what they're talking
about.

Talking for some time about what my
name should be, you know.

Eventually one guy stood up
and he said, um,

"We want to tell you the meaning of
your Chinese name" -

cos that's really important in
China.

And he said, "The meaning of your
Chinese name

is 'as many stars as there are in
the sky, you'll be father to
children in China'."

That really hit me because um...

..many years previously,
when I was in Guernsey,

a man came over to our church and he
prayed with me and he just said,

"I just sense that God is saying
you're going to be father

to as many children as there are
stars in the sky."

And I thought, "How can you get that
many children?

Have you seen how many stars are up
there?"

But, of course, Shanghai.

There was my name and it was just
like

now I know where I'm meant to be.

# MATT REDMAN: The Father's Song

# I have heard so many songs

# Listened to a thousand tongues

# But there is one

# That's sounds above them all

# The Father's song

# The Father's love

# You sung it over me

# And for eternity

# It's written on my heart

# Heaven's perfect melody

# The Creator's symphony

# You are singing over me

# The Father's song

# Heaven's perfect mystery

# The king of love has sent for me

# And now you're singing over me

# The Father's song

# The Father's song

# The Father's love

# You sung it over me

# And for eternity

# It's written on my heart

# Father #

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