I recently spent several months in central china, working at a private (non-state) orphanage for very ill babies. My job was largely to care for them: diaper and feed them, play with them, put them to sleep, hold them. It is illegal to give up babies in China, so parents who can’t afford a sick child have to abandon it, usually in a public place where they hope she will be found soon. Intensively an outsider — linguistically, culturally, medically — I didn’t understand a lot of what went on around me.