We Were Wondering

Not far from our bunker, three adjacent houses that had been a drug rehab &/or mental health center for men were recently gutted & remodeled, & a sign went up that identified the new operation as a "Post-Partum Confinement Center," whatever the hell that was. After a wk. or so, the English on the sign was painted over, leaving Korean characters & a 'phone no. We had no idea, but now The NYT fills us in on the bizarre crap that foreigners believe, & gives a clue why the English part of the sign disappeared.

The centers largely fly below the radar of English-language authorities — they advertise online or in Chinese-language publications. They make up such a niche market that city and state authorities did not know they even existed. Jeffrey Hammond, a spokesman for the state Health Department, said that as long as the centers were not offering medical services, they would not require a license. A spokeswoman for the city Health Department said that it had no information on the centers.

But they made a brief appearance in the news when, in March, officials in San Gabriel, Calif., shut down what they said was a home for women who had come to the United States to give birth so that the children would be American citizens — so-called anchor babies.

Might be fun to contact someone at the local Health Dep't. & see if we could get the dump shut down, anchor-babying or not.