Greatest gift: Adoption like a fairy tale for the Huntsmans

Like something out of a fairy tale, she was found on the doorstep of a vegetable market in a poor Chinese neighborhood. She wound up in a police station. She was handed off to an orphanage. Her childhood might have played out its days there, another face in a cast of thousands in a nation where female babies are discarded like unwanted pets for one simple reason: They are not boys.

But Gracie Mei, as her future family called her for months, long before they even knew of her, would be found twice.

She came to America in the arms of a rich young businessman-politician and his wife, to a large family, where her new siblings had been writing her letters she wouldn't be able to read for years, where her new sisters were waiting at the airport, arms linked, tears streaming down their faces.

Five years ago Tuesday, Gov.-elect Jon Huntsman Jr. and his wife, Mary Kaye, brought their new baby home from China to join their family.

"She is our greatest Christmas present ever," says Mary Kaye.

Gracie Mei, now a precocious and gregarious 5 years old, is sitting at her mother's side, pointing to photos of her former home, an orphanage, with its rows of cribs and a herd of children looking up at the camera, waiting, always waiting.

"They found me in a vegetable market," says Gracie Mei. "See the babies. Those are their cribs."

She knows every detail of her story and delights in telling it, but there are some things no one knows, such as her original family and her abandonment.

"Who found you in the market?" Mary Kaye asks her daughter.

"Jesus."

Gracie Mei (Gray-see May) was a long time in coming to the Huntsmans. The Huntsmans had been talking about adopting an Asian child for years. Or rather Mary Kaye did the talking; Jon did the listening. She wanted a Chinese baby; he kept putting her off.

They had strong ties to the Chinese culture. Jon served an LDS Church mission in Taiwan and spoke fluent Mandarin. Later, he moved his family to Taiwan to work for his father's company, Huntsman Chemical, and eventually served as U.S. ambassador to Singapore.

As Mary Kaye likes to tell it, Gracie Mei's adoption really began one day when she was strolling the streets of Tien Mu, Taiwan, and noticed a Catholic orphanage.

"I had never been in an orphanage, or even thought about it," she recalls.

But she was drawn to the place. Nuns answered the door. Mary Kaye couldn't speak the language, but she motioned to them that she wanted to enter.

"All these handicapped children were on mats in a dark room," she says. "I sat there and I thought, 'I want to take them home.' "