In a classroom for four-year-olds at Elim Autism school in Qingdao city, eastern Shandong province, the teacher draws her students' attention. Standing in the center of a horseshoe of tables, she addresses the eight students sitting at individual desks, their mothers sitting directly behind.
"Kan laoshi," (look at me) she begins.
Some of the students shift their attention to her, but most remain fixated on the table in front of them, or stare off into empty air. She has them clap their hands and stand up; then she directs them to sit down and settle themselves. She begins her instruction.
The task is simple. She has wooden blocks with thread
interwoven through. She shows the students how to hold the blocks with one hand and maneuver the thread with the other. Most of the children have to be coerced by their mothers to initiate the activity. Some cry and shout; one repeatedly bangs the desk, refusing to take up the task.
Despite their reluctance, these children are luckier than they know. Elim is China's premiere rehabilitation center for autistic children aged three to six. Founded in 2000 by Fang Jing, mother to a now young-adult autistic son, the school is one of only a handful in China that specialize in curriculum using science-based intervention techniques. Of the more than 1 million Chinese families that are touched by autism, only the very lucky, or very rich, have the resources to score a seat in this school, an almost holy grail of autism treatment centers.
As the diagnoses rate of autism in China has skyrocketed since the disorder was officially recognized by the government in 2006, so too has the popularity of Elim. Its waiting list is 2,000 names long and, at 30 accepted per month, can require years of patience.
Families from every province of China can apply online to secure entrance, and the school attracts students from even the remotest corners of the country. Once they're fortunate enough to score a slot, parents pay 4,000 yuan per month (US$645), with a minimum required stay of three months, to enroll their kids in a demanding schedule of nine classes per day, Monday-to-Friday, that span from intensive one-on-one communications skills to physical therapy: zipping head-first down plywood ramps on small roll carts. With 330 students, the school is one of the largest single-housed autism early intervention centers in China.
All the cutting-edge technology comes at a cost, though. Despite the school's efforts to subsidize low-income families, the stiff price tag and the requirement that families arrange their own housing during their stays means that an overwhelming majority of students are from wealthy or upper middle class families.
Inside Elim
There is no mistaking Elim in its suburban Qingdao neighborhood of tire shops, scrap metal, and pay-by-the-hour hotels. It's an hour's car-drive away from the city center and coastal boardwalk that snakes past Bavarian style lodges and beer halls - a legacy of German colonization.
A frenzy of construction has whipped the area into a pit of open-dirt fields and half-finished apartment complexes outfitted in green mesh and scaffolding. In this galaxy of drabness, Elim comes on like a kaleidoscope of colors. Six stories of circus tent, slathered in loud, fantastically garish paint: orange, yellow, blue, green, and beige, stripes next to each other like still-in-the-box Crayolas.
Since its founding in 2000, Elim has switched bases in Qingdao six times as it grew and its facilities needed upgrading. Its latest digs are, without a doubt, the most whimsical (think Alice in Wonderland meets FoxConn).
In the parking lot, a BMW and Mercedes compete for a spot in an area already crammed with luxury sedans and hulking SUVs. Mothers amble near the front door, fussing with caps and gloves for their kids, as a few red-eyed fathers smoke cigarettes silently, sour expressions painted on their faces.
Inside, the hallways are painted sea blue and dotted with colorful fish and smiling squid. A flat-screen TV streams the school's latest ad in the lobby, as the pitter-patter footsteps of young students hurrying to class echoes off the high ceiling.
Jiang Rong, now a senior teacher and administrator at Elim who's been at the center for five years, is a convert to the field of autism treatment. For six-and-a-half years, she practiced medicine, as a doctor specializing in women's care. She had etched out a good living, started a family, and things were stable, she says. Then her nephew was diagnosed with severe autism.
"I was desperate," she says. "I knew little about autism, so I decided I would do whatever I could to help."
She'd heard about Elim - its online forums are legendary among Chinese parents and family members looking for tips to support their autistic loved ones - and decided to check it out. She was impressed by the center's frequent interaction with Western specialists - it sends staff to America three times a year for training, - and within a few months, she was leading a classroom at the center.
"Because of the one-child policy, it's a disaster to have an autistic child." She says, elaborating on the pain and confusion most parents feel once their son or daughter is diagnosed with the disorder. But with early diagnoses and early intervention - teaching young autistic kids how to communicate effectively and ease the crippling aversion to transition and uncertainty that define the disorder - improvement is possible.
"You can't cure an autistic child," Jiang says, words that she admits are hard for some parents to swallow. "There's no such thing as a cure, but you can teach valuable coping skills. Elim helps parents rebuild their confidence. The goal is for the parents to learn effective techniques to enable their children to learn independent living skills."
Teaching techniques
At Elim, a parent is required to accompany his/her son or daughter for the entire academic day. An overwhelming majority of the children at Elim are there with their mothers, while their fathers stay at home to keep affairs in order and to earn money. Three months of intensive classes teaches the parents how best to interact with and instruct their children, Jiang says.
The first thing the school does with a new student is to group and number him/her, one to five, according to skill level, with one being very high functioning students and five the most seriously impaired: often nonverbal and non-respondent even to their own mothers.
Each student spends the school day with a parent and up to 10 others in the same grouping, bouncing from classroom-to-classroom for short bursts of classes and therapy sessions - most lasting for about 30 minutes before attention spans vaporize and it's time to move on. The school employs 140 teachers to keep the student-teacher ratio somewhere south of three-to-one.
Among the parents and students ambling through the hallways ahead of the Chinese New Year are Peng Chun Ping, and her 5-year-old son, Xiao Feng. In Elim's classification system, he is a one - on the high functioning end of the autism spectrum, nearly indistinguishable from a non-autistic boy except for his aversion from eye contact and preference to play with himself. After a successful three-month course of classes in 2011, Peng Chun Ping re-enrolled her son, making the return trip from Wuhan in Hubei province to Qingdao, where she now owns a house.
"The school's methods are very specialized." Peng says, explaining that her son learned more in a week at Elim than in a year of therapy courses at a children's hospital in Wuhan. "After a few weeks at Elim, he was talking for the first time. Simple things, like his name. But it was still important."
When Xiao Feng was diagnosed with autism at the age of two, Peng says she and her husband, who works for an electronics engineering firm in Wuhan, were taken aback. "It was very sad," she says. "I cried many times. I even tried to hide it from his grandparents, until I realized it was useless."
As soon as she came to grips with the situation, she scoured the Internet for the best possible school, and, like thousands of others in China, hit on Elim. She signed up, but had to wait 11 months before classes started. Her end goal, she says, is for her son to be able to successfully enroll in a private primary school in Wuhan during the 2014 school term.
"I just want him to be able to live as normally, as independently as possible," she says.
For her, the sacrifice is tremendous. Like so many others at Elim, she is away from her husband and her home, and spending every minute of the school day with her son, who is improving, she says, but slowly. She talks of his improvement in a confident, calculated tone, but her eyes betray a sunken sadness. Improvement is one thing she seems to say - but if only for the magic bullet of a cure, if only the situation could be reversed.
Again, teacher Jiang Rong's words echo, giving hope, but also a twinge of something close to sadness to the millions of individuals, like Peng Chun Ping, impacted by autism in China: "Before, many parents thought they could find a solution to autism by themselves. That's the wrong way of thinking. You can't solve this problem by yourself. You need support, you need a place like Elim. You can't cure an autistic child... Every child has their own advantages. They must be taught to bring those skills out. It's a long road, but a road that must be taken."
Nick Compton is an American journalist completing post-graduate studies at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
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