[nicki56]

Clearly China Adoptions are new to me... I was just wondering how families are matched with their children. Not to be crude but do they simple move down the line matching without reflection on the families? In another post I mention that I have an asian daughter from Kaz. I'd love to think that her appearance might influence who her sister is.

Can anyone share insight into this process?

Thanks

Nicki

[kjharris]

Nicki -
Check out this thread from back in July. It may answer your question:

The Matching Room! Check it out!

[nicki56]

Kim -

Thanks for taking the time to find the post for me. All I can say is that I hope they don't look too closely at my husbands passport photo - he always looks drunk in his pictures.

[Ready2bparents]

Great thread - too bad I can't access the link. Can anyone else access it or know the web address?

Thanks!

[kjharris]

Maybe this will help. This is the link that goes directly to the pics of the "matching room"

http://www.nov2003dtc.com/ccaapics.html

If you aren't able to access it by clicking the link, try copying and pasting it in your browser.

[Tsmom]

That was my old web address - here is my new one

www.babysites.com/sites/mccormick2/

Click on Favorite links
I have two links:
How the CCAA matches families
and
A tour of the Matching room

Nona
Please let me know if you can't get into the site.

[KarenInCa]

I don't understand why they have you take so many dossier pictures if they don't use them for the matching room. I'm wondering if it's always the passport pictures, or do they choose the best facial features picture out of all of them??
So many of the families have similar featuers as their child, and I KNOW that (for most cases) it cannot be attributed to passport pictures!!! I have also seen that the features look close to siblings a lot of the times....and siblings passport pictures do not even get sent out.

[foxl]

I hope I am not hijacking this thread, but I think my question is relevant enough (re: matching room, etc.) to ask it as a part of this ...

We have two darker-skinned children, one from India, and one from Guatemala. I want it made clear that we are open to a third child with darker skin, as well. We would already be familiar with any prejudices that darker skin might cause our kids to encounter ... and I know that some of the ethnic minorities in China are quite dark.

Do you think it would be appropriate to mention this line of thought, in our petition statement, or not?

Sorry if my still-nebulous thinking on this in any way offends anyone, it is certainly not intended to!
Linda

[SofiasMom]

Just thinking of the logistics - there are thousands of dossiers coming in from families and thousands coming in from the orphanages each year. There appears to be only a roomful of workers in Beijing. They need to group the orphanages with travel groups (or your agency would be sending a group to 5 different provinces).

My daughter looks nothing like me (thank goodness!) and I've noticed only a few children/parents looking alike at our reunions (and those are mostly the American-Chinese famlies and their adopted children).

But maybe I'm wrong and they do have the time to match up according to the photos.

[nicki56]

I am new so maybe there is something I am missing. I am not sure how they can use your passport photos.... if in the dossier you provide a photocopy of the passport it really is going to marginally clear. At least that is what ours looked like in our Kaz dossier.

[mythreesons+]

You have to send them 2 copies each of an actual passport photo with your dossier. So if you already have a passport you will need to get 2 more sets done. One will be used for the matching room, and will be sent in your dossier the other one will be used for your visa.

Just a little FYI. Neither my husband nor I are photogenic so we took lots of photos at home with a digital camera using a plain backgroud. I then took the two best ones on a disk to a camera store where they took the image and resized it, changed the background to white etc to make it a passport photo. This could probably be done on a home computer but we were rushing last minute to get our dossier out the door so willing to pay the 32 dollars to get it done.

You can look up on the internet the requirements for a passport photo if you want to try to do it your self especially since it isn't really for a passport.

Cindy

[chinagirl2006]

Thanks for the site that shows the matching room...its incredible how many files are there!

[prechrswife]

Originally Posted by nicki56

I am new so maybe there is something I am missing. I am not sure how they can use your passport photos.... if in the dossier you provide a photocopy of the passport it really is going to marginally clear. At least that is what ours looked like in our Kaz dossier.

They are not your actual passport photos. They are passport-sized photos which had to be included in the dossier. Ours were the same as our passport photos because we had them all done at once.

[Li Jia-Yu]

In our dossier we included LOTS of photos of us (including wedding photos, as well as baby photos and school-age pics). We also included photos of our siblings and my parents (also included recent photos and photos of Mum & Pops as children).

Both my DH and I are very fair/light-skinned. In our dossier we said, "Although we understand that CCAA cannot accommodate any or all of our requests, we humbly and respectfully ask if we could have a daughter as young as possible (age one year or younger), with fair skin and from either Hubei or Shanghai Province."

We asked for specific provinces because I am Chinese and my ancestors are from this region. We were THRILLED when they complied with all of our requests, but interestingly enough -- our baby looks remarkably ALOT like both of us. They matched our daughter to my family and she resembles both myself, and my elder brother -- its a bit uncanny!

I have a cousin who works in adoptions in China and she tells me they work very diligently to try and match children to the applicants -- looking at personality traits, facial features and age. She says they cannot always comply with every request but they do try their best.

I hope that helps.

Warmest wishes,
Li Jia-Yu

[KarenInCa]

"We asked for specific provinces because I am Chinese and my ancestors are from this region. We were THRILLED when they complied with all of our requests, but interestingly enough -- our baby looks remarkably ALOT like both of us."


That's why I also think they use more than just the one profile picture to do the match. Otherwise, what is the point of sending so many of the pictures with the dossier?