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Download Learning to write the Chinese characters for "love" and "happiness" in a Beijing classroom was the first activity for a group of American families on a cultural tour of China on Tuesday. But this was not a typical tour group. Although the parents may have been born and raised in the United States, their children were born in China, before being adopted to be raised on the other side of the world. Thomas Shuo Fahnle, 10, learned Chinese calligraphy and paper cutting with great interest at the culture class, accompanied by his adoptive father David Charles Fahnle. The boy, wearing a hearing aid, dipped his brush into black ink and then painted on blank paper following the teacher's instructions. For the first three years of his life, he could not hear at all, said his 58-year-old adoptive father. The boy had been at a child welfare institute in Beijing until he turned 3, when the single father adopted him in 2005. After seven surgeries, he can now hear from both ears "I have been a teacher of deaf children for 36 years and I know this is the area I really know something about," Fahnle said. "When I chose him, I knew his medical history and knew what I could do both educationally and medically to help him to hear and improve his academic skills, and at the same time give him a caring and loving home." Thomas kept showing his father his "masterpieces" from the class and received compliments and encouraging words in return. | 
