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"In China there is a one-child law, it's illegal to abandon your children and boys are your retirement. You can see that it gets complicated," Brown said, as Ava Min climbed on her lap, spewing a discourse of baby babble. "The adoption plan there is that you wrap little girls up and leave them with a bottle where they will be found immediately."

Brown and her husband Ken brought Ava Min back from China in February. The little girl is the newest addition to a group of about two dozen Chinese girls adopted by Juneau families in recent years.

"Once we made the decision to adopt, I knew so many families here that had adopted from China, I didn't really think about a domestic adoption - it was just right for me," Brown said.

China sits at the top, just ahead of Russia, of the list of birth countries for children adopted from overseas. Last year more than 20,000 children were adopted from locations abroad, 5,000 of whom from China, according to the U.S. State Department.

Chinese orphanages are burgeoning because of a population-control law, first enacted in 1991, that allows urban Chinese families only one child and rural families only two. In a country where nearly 20 percent of the adult population lives on less than one U.S. dollar per day, male children have economic value because they are some parents' only source of support in old age. Families also must pay a fee to the government for having more than the legal number of children.

Because of the economic necessity, and a traditional preference for boys, infanticide, sex-selective abortions and abandonment of girl babies are common in China, according to the U.S. Department of State. The Chinese government said in 2002 there were 50,000 children, primarily girls and disabled boys, in state-run orphanages. Human rights groups, such as Human Rights Watch, suspect the number is higher because many births go unreported.

The Browns plodded through nearly a year and a half of arduous adoption proceedings before they were able to travel to China to pick up Ava Min. The couple had to fill out stacks of paper work for both governments, have health evaluations, and pay numerous fees. International adoptions generally cost between $12,000 and $20,000, including the cost of travel.

The couple also had to have a home visit from a social worker and provide proof of their marriage. China has put limits on adoption by unmarried parents, in part because the government is uncomfortable with adoption by gay and lesbian couples, according to a 2000 article in the Chinese language newspaper World Journal. Only a few single people may adopt each year; they must meet age and education requirements, and provide written proof they are heterosexual.

"You are bounced from desk to desk, then one day you are matched with your child," Brown said. "Finally, in December we got the call that we were matched."

A few weeks later, the Browns received a photo of a tiny, fuzzy-headed little girl sitting in a pink plastic walker. Her name was Qu Min. The first part of her name, Qu, was given for the Qu Jiang orphanage where she lived. All of the children in the orphanage had the same first name, which is like a surname in China, Brown said.

The Browns, who changed Qu to Ava, chose the agency Chinese Children Adoption International, which was recommended by other Juneau couples. CCAI organized an "adoption group," somewhat like an unconventional tour group, Brown said. In February, Sherri, Ken and Hunter Brown boarded a plane at the Juneau Airport. After contending with fog-related flight delays, running through airports and making the long flight to China, the family wound up in Hong Kong, where they spent two days acclimating and visiting tourist attractions.

"It was very interesting because we were like touring, as if we were on vacation," Sherri Brown said. "I was so excited and nervous."

On the third day the couple and their son took a 40-minute flight to the city of Guang-Zhou, where they were taken to the White Swan Hotel. The White Swan, which sits next door to the U.S. Consulate, has become famous in the world of Chinese adoption because it caters to outsiders who come to adopt. The luxury hotel's gift shop sells baby formula, pacifiers and strollers. Everywhere they looked, the Browns saw Americans and Europeans with little Chinese girls.

"It was very surreal," Sherri said.

At 4 in the afternoon, the day they arrived in Guang-Zhou, the family was invited to meet their daughter.

"We go to this public office, and they take us to a boardroom and they inform us they are going to call us up one by one. They called us up first," Sherri Brown said. "All of a sudden, we had a baby."

Qu Min was dressed in thick pants, a thick turtleneck and a sweater despite the warm weather, because Chinese practice is to keep small children well-wrapped, Brown said. When her caretaker from the orphanage handed her to the Browns, both the caretaker and the little girl cried.

"It was obvious that she was well loved and well taken care of," Brown said.

Conditions in Chinese orphanages have improved during the last decade, in part because of the support provided by adoptive families such as the Browns who pay an adoption fee of several thousand dollars. The Browns chose CCAI specifically because they wanted to make a donation to Ava Min's orphanage, Ken Brown said.

Sherri Brown explained that in the mid-'90s, a team of British journalists made a documentary called "Dying Rooms" in which they exposed a practice in some Chinese orphanages of starving unwanted infants to death. Since the release of the documentary, which the Chinese government vehemently disputed, outsiders have not been allowed in state-run orphanages. But human-rights groups say conditions have improved.

Jay Satterfield and his wife Lisa Oberle, both of Juneau, have adopted two girls from China, and were allowed to visit the orphanage in 1996. Oberle found the orphanage to be clean, but crowded, with more than one child in a crib, and only one caretaker for 15 children.

"It was a bit of a sterile environment, without a lot of stimulus, " Satterfield said. Some children from orphanages have developmental delays due to lack of stimulation, Satterfield said.

Ava Min is developmentally right on track, her parents say. She vocalizes often and just began saying, "kitty." Sherri said she wonders whether some of her baby talk actually was Cantonese, the primary language spoken in the Guangdong Province.

"(When I met Ava Min) it just felt like the beginning of a very rewarding relationship," Ken Brown said. "Really, we were all very, very happy."

Julia O'Malley can be reached at jomalley@juneauempire.com.