Maria Shriver watches a film in Shanghai about Chinese orphans in China with Lin Guo Chu, left, a girl waiting to be adopted. [AP]

BEIJING, Nov. 18 -- Touring a state-run home for orphaned children on Thursday, Maria Shriver was reminded it was exactly two years since her husband was sworn in as governor of California.

    "Is it?" Shriver said with a laugh, apparently not dwelling much on the memory of November 17, 2003, the day she became the state's most reluctant first lady.

    "It's been challenging for me. I'm always very straight about that," she said of the last two years. "I've found it humbling in many ways, exciting in many ways, inspiring. I have to say, I feel pretty good about how I've done."

    The longtime television journalist, who turned 50 earlier this month, has traveled her own path since the historic recall election that swept Arnold Schwarzenegger into office.

    Accompanying Schwarzenegger on a six-day China trade mission, Shriver has spent the week much as she has spent the two years since his inauguration. She has been his partner, but also has kept a separate schedule that reflects her own interests.

    At the Shanghai Children's Home, Shriver visited the Half the Sky Foundation, a program offering snuggles and stimulation to thousands of orphaned children in foster care or waiting to be adopted. Shriver distributed teddy bears to several children and briefly choked back tears as little girls toddled toward her, calling her "Mama."

    The foundation, launched in 1998 by San Francisco Bay Area resident Jenny Bowen, fused Shriver's interests in promoting "remarkable California women" as well as social programs to help the disadvantaged.

    She explained how the program is named for a well-known Chinese saying -- that women hold up half the sky.

    "Most women I know hold up the whole sky," Shriver joked.

    Earlier this week, in Beijing, Shriver visited the Maples Women's Psychological Care Center, which offers counseling to victims of sexual harassment, domestic violence and other forms of abuse. The center has taken 80,000 calls since opening in 1988.

    "The women I met today had no idea, they had nowhere to turn, until they heard about the Maples Center," Shriver said after visiting with two of the center's clients. "They had no hope and no understanding of what they could do with their lives or their marriages."

    In Hong Kong, the final stop of the three-city trade mission, Shriver will visit Harmony House, a shelter for battered women.

    To be sure, Shriver's week has included its share of official duties, including a trade-promotion dinner with Schwarzenegger at Beijing's Great Hall of the People. The couple also were mobbed by curious onlookers after a Special Olympics event Monday afternoon.

    There have been plenty of glamorous moments, too.

    She was scheduled to walk the red carpet with Schwarzenegger at the Shanghai premiere of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." And earlier this week, in Beijing, she donned a lacy designer gown to promote California couture at a state trade show.

    Her appearance in the dress prompted its designer, Kevan Hall, to proclaim Shriver was "a young, modern Jackie O."

    That the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was also the widow of Shriver's uncle, President John F. Kennedy, was an odd, if inadvertent, reference to Shriver's complicated history.

    Shriver's mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, was the late president's sister. It's a legacy she mentioned Thursday as she reviewed her two years as first lady.

    "I grew up the child of politics. It's a very challenging place to be," Shriver said, adding that her goal as first lady was to make sure her four children developed identities separate from their famous family ties.

    Her hope, she said, was "that they knew who they were, separate from being Arnold Schwarzenegger's kid, a Kennedy, a Shriver, whatever that is."

    A liberal Democrat, Shriver stayed conspicuously silent this year after Schwarzenegger called a special election and campaigned for a series of measures aimed at reducing the power of unions and Democratic lawmakers in the state. He suffered a humiliating loss Nov. 8, when voters rejected all four of his "year of reform" initiatives.

    Schwarzenegger said he was glad he has a wife who can openly disagree with him.

    "It's what makes my relationship with my wife such a special relationship," he told students at Beijing's Qinghua University. "My wife has been an incredible partner. Even though she comes from a different political background ... she's been very supportive."

    Prompting laughs, he said, "We have very interesting discussions, but we don't have fights."