THE PINK PAGODA by Jim Garrow is the compelling, compassionate story of one man’s determination to save baby girls in China, one child at a time. Today, the number of girls he has saved from gendercide brought about by China’s one-child mandate is over 40,000. Given that Dr. Garrow has been doing this for eleven years and is himself only 60, one can only speculate as to how large that number could become during his lifetime.
This is the story of how one man’s decision to say “Yes” to one child in danger led him to use his entrepreneurial gifts and innate skills for mobilizing others to create the baby-saving organization which is called Pink Pagoda. All of this has come at great personal cost to him, along with the reality that his life and those of his family hang on the edge of danger. Pink Pagoda is his promise to God out of gratitude for his own son’s life being saved at birth. That is a promise he will honor for the rest of his life.
Not that Dr. Garrow is a mild-mannered milquetoast loved by all and gentle in his demeanor. More accurately, he is a “rogue with integrity” who works hand in hand with the most secret of Chinese intelligence forces, and who is by United Nations description a “criminal engaged in human trafficking”. Ironically, he was also nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 and the Order of Canada in 2010. Apparently, God’s guanxi trumps the U.N.
The term guanxi is central to how Dr. Garrow accomplishes what he does. The concept of carefully nurtured relationships and connections dates back to medieval China, and is what drives life in China, at all levels – from the simple peasant to the President of China. Garrow is a master of guanxi, and one of the most highly respected people in China.
His story combines his impish humor with the horrors of what he has encountered in China, more adventure than apologia. He is at the core an ordinary man doing extraordinary work under the guidance of God.