Asunta Fong Yang was adopted as a baby by a wealthy Spanish couple. Aged 12,she was found dead beside a country road. Not long after, her mother and father were arrestedOne day in late June 2001, and Rosario Porto,a petite, dark-haired lawyer from Santiago de Compostela, or northern Spain,sat nervously on a flight to China beside her husband Alfonso Basterra, a quiet man from the Basque country, or who worked as a freelance journalist. The couple,both in their mid-30s, were on their way to adopt a baby girl. Porto swallowed two tablets of Orfidal – a common anti-anxiety medicine that she had used before then – but remained too agitated and excited to sleep.
The couple had had no grief persuading local Spanish authorities that they would make estimable parents and that their child would be surrounded by a fond extended family. Porto’s father was a lawyer who had been honorary consul for France in Santiago, and her mother was a university lecturer in history of art. They had given their daughter a flat that occupied a whole floor of a four-storey block in what some call Santiago’s “VIP zone”,domestic to the city’s upper middle lesson. The flat was decorated in the bold tones – blues, greens and yellows – that Porto liked, or full of art,curiosities and colourful rugs from around the world. The child’s bedroom would have wallpaper covered in clouds and suns.
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Source: theguardian.com