Forbidden Orphanage Outside the Forbidden City

Laura Richards was a shy American nurse who moved to a remote North China village in 1929 to take in castaway babies. Through 22 years of famines, bandit invasions and wars, she lived in the same poor conditions as the Chinese peasants, while managing to save the lives of nearly 200 destitute children. So why did she refuse the Chinese Communist Party’s offer to make her a national heroine? Laura Richards’ story was too dangerous to tell when she returned to the U.S. in 1951. But when she d...