A New Baby Restores Hope to a Devastated Family

He was meant to be a Christmas baby, a present to a devastated family and a kind of reincarnation of his older brother. Instead, he arrived early, the Monday before Christmas, in honor of his mother, whose birthday it was also.

Hui and Lan Liu, who were profiled in The Times on Dec. 21, welcomed 7-pound, 6-ounce Andrew Liu at an Arcadia hospital as an answer to their prayers.

“The day before, his mother asked me what I would give her for her birthday, I said there is nothing I can give that is good enough. Maybe God will give you our son soon,” said father Hui Liu.

Andrew entered the world to shoulder the responsibility of restoring his parents’ shattered dreams. They named him Zhu En, meaning “Gift of God” in Chinese. (Its pronunciation in reverse--en zhu--sounds similar to Andrew.) His parents have been praying for his arrival since his brother, Charlie, died two years ago after an unsuccessful bone marrow transplant in Los Angeles. He was two months shy of his 10th birthday.

Cultural isolation and language barriers made the couple’s struggle with their loss especially painful. Because Charlie was an only child, they kept his death a secret from his grandparents in China.

With Andrew in tow, Lan Liu, 38, plans to visit relatives in China during the Chinese new year in February to show off her new baby and to see her 3-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, who was conceived to supply healthy bone marrow to save her sick brother. But it was not a match. Her parents found caring for their sick son and a newborn too taxing and so asked relatives in China to care for her.

Hui Liu, a former tour bus operator turned publisher of the Chinese-language magazine AC Times in Alhambra, is not sure he will make it back on this trip. How would he deal with the issue of Charlie? How could he face the grandparents who are still led to believe the boy is alive?

Hope rests with a newfound faith in God and a series of coincidences that remind them of life’s marvels.

Charlie was born in the Year of the Rabbit. Andrew rushed into the world just in time for the end of the rabbit year. The Chinese calendar follows a 12-year cycle and a repetition of the same sign allows the parents to feel a sense of replacement for their loss.

Charlie watched the Hong Kong hand-over ceremonies on TV from his hospital bed when the former British colony reverted to Chinese rule on July 1, 1997. He died weeks later. When another former colony, Macau, returned to Chinese hands this year, Andrew was also in a hospital, newly born and sharing his mother’s birthday.

“Some people ask my wife, ‘Why don’t you have a millennium baby?’ ” Liu said. “My wife told them, ‘My son was a 20th century child. I want him [through his brother] to come back in the 20th century.’ ”