After being separated for 11 months, 4-year-old Hannah and 3-year-old Dawson met each other again at the Dallas-Forth Worth Airport earlier this month. Both are orphans from China and have been adopted by families in the same town – now living just five minutes apart.
Hannah was abandoned for her cleft lip while Dowson’s family couldn’t take care of him because of fluid surrounding his brain. The cute duo initially spent their entire lives together at a Chinese orphanage, both arriving there when they were only few months old.
Their friendship grew strong by sharing the same “weekend mum”, a foster mother who cared for them on weekends.
Last year, when Andy and Sharon Sykes were going through Hannah’s adoption progress, they found that in almost every picture of Hannah taken at the orphanage there was the same little boy always standing next to her or holding her hand. They eventually learned that they were best friends and even called each other brother and sister.
The idea of splitting up the two best friends upset the couple, so they decided to find the little boy a home in the same area. Their strategy, to find an appropriate family via Facebook, finally worked out this month: the Clarys have taken him as a part of the family and named him Dawson.
Sharon Sykes filmed the exciting moment when the two children met for the first time after a separation of nearly a year.
“They must have hugged 400 times. They kept hugging and getting so giddy that they would fall over,” Dawson’s mum told CBS.
“That went on for like 20 minutes,” added Hannah’s mum.
The reunion footage and the friendship story has made major waves in international news media and on social media. The two families appeared on ABC’s morning TV program to share an update on their lives and the “priceless” connection between Hannah and Dawson that touched so many netizens.
According to a Vice China report, American families adopt the largest number of orphans from China, especially children with serious disabilities. Despite the fact that China is one of the main destinations where overseas parents seek adoption opportunities, the actual number of Chinese orphans has been decreasing in recent years. A changing attitude towards female babies is suggested to be a critical reason behind the reduction.
[Images via The Daily Mail]
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