Sky Series: Episode 2

Growing Up

My parents brought me home from China right around Christmas in 1995. So I was just about to turn two, although caveat, the orphanage did change my birthday, which we we'll get into later. It did create a kind of a weird identity crisis.

Wait, so the orphanage just changed your birthday?

Yes. Oh, my gosh. It was only by ten days, but it actually kind of throws off a lot about how I grew up and perceived myself. My parents* are a little bit older, because my mom was 38-39, and then my dad was in his late 60s. So my dad had already had a bunch of grown children, so I do have a few half siblings who are significantly older than me. And then my mom, she had watched a documentary about adopting children from China. And so, kind of really on, in her early 20s, she realized she couldn't have any children of her own, so I think that that thought had always stayed with her. So they adopted me, and it was quite a long process, because originally, they were going to adopt a different baby.

Wait what?

Yeah, apparently, because my dad was so old, the orphanage didn't feel comfortable letting them adopt a newborn, so I think they thought at one point that this adoption wasn't going to happen. At this point, they had gone through all the paperwork, did all the fingerprinting with the government, and it is a very expensive process, and they had already paid all the fees. But then, I guess their contact at the orphanage or their contact within China told them, "Well, actually, we don't have a newborn baby for you, but we do have a baby who is closer to two years old.” So I think the orphanage felt more comfortable because I was older.

Did you parents travel in a group to China? Like, did you have a situation where there was a group of parents going at the same time to China to adopt, forming a cohort of other Chinese adoptees from the trip?

I think that originally was the plan, but then when they got the news that they were going to adopt me instead, I think everything got completely changed up, and they ended up traveling just by themselves.

I used to be a part of this group called Families of Children from China (FCC) when I was younger. I grew up in a small town in North Carolina and there was me and maybe one or two other Asian people in my school. So my mom wanted me to be around more adoptees and the closest FCC was about 40 minutes away.

I was decently involved with them from fourth grade through middle school. I think by the time I was in eighth grade I was kind of over it. I was the oldest girl in the group by four years. So, even though I had some friends, it was still a bit hard to relate to, you know, a 10-year-old when you're 14.

Can you expand on what “over it” means for you?

I think I just aged out, honestly. I was on the cusp of being a high schooler, just feeling like I don't know if I really want to do these trips with these younger girls anymore. I'm going to high school. They're maybe going into middle school. I don't know that I was benefiting from the experiences anymore.

Yeah, of course.

But also it wasn’t as if me and the other girls were having really deep conversations. If we had been closer in age, I think that would have been more helpful. A lot of the girls did go to school together, because they all lived in the same city, and I had to commute 40 minutes to see them, instead of seeing them on the regular. I would say, I definitely just aged out. Maybe I needed a different type of group setting to try to, you know, kind of talk through things.

But it was really fun though because we would go on trips. We would celebrate the Lunar New Year, the Dragon boat festivals and all that stuff! Yeah, so that was really fun. I think that was good for me to have.

My parents also did try to have me learn Mandarin, much to my resistance, so we would have a private tutor come over to the house, just this little old Chinese woman named Marie.

She would come over once a week and we’d watch educational videos of little kids singing in Chinese, or we would go over flashcards and little learning books. She would actually use this little cassette recorder and record herself speaking so that I could practice on my own, and try to get the tones correct.

I think I was in first or second grade doing these lessons for a couple of years. I was pretty young, and should have appreciated these lessons more, but you know, hindsight is 20/20. I didn’t appreciate them at the time because I didn't really want to be different. I didn't see myself as different even though my friends were white.

Actually, that kind of makes me think about how my adoption was never a secret. It was always very apparent to me. I don't remember a specific time where my parents ever sat down and told me I was adopted, but it's very obvious. For instance, my mom is tall and blonde. We don't look alike, but it never changed how I felt. I never really went through those feelings of feeling like I was abandoned or anything.

That could be just because of the way my story was framed. So when the orphanage told my parents, "Oh, well, she was abandoned.” My family thought, “Oh, her family's not out there, you know. Either something happened to them or they had passed away or they just, you know, something happened.” So the orphanage had told my parents that my parents could not be found, that no relatives could be found. So I grew up with that whole idea of, “Oh, my Chinese parents don't exist pretty much,” right? So I never, went through those thoughts of “Oh, I want to try to find my Chinese family,” or that I want to go on a trip to China or anything.

We just assumed. We kind of just took that story at face value because we didn't know.

Growing up, did other people point out that you were different, in a negative, neutral, or positive way?

Definitely, I’ve felt that pressure of “Oh, well, she is really good at school because she's Asian.” But I’m good at something because I actually have to work really hard! I would not say that school came very naturally. Some subjects, yes, but I still had to work very hard.

I had to deal with the assumption of “You're very good at math and science because you’re Asian.” I really did like math and science, but that was very hard for me. It did not come naturally.

What I felt did come naturally was more of the creative things. English and writing and reading. So that kind of veered off what people expected.

What kind of emotions would you say you had when this would happen?

It was definitely more annoying back then when it was happening. Now, looking back, being an adult, I can understand that they just didn't have exposure. If you're not around people who are different, all they see is what is on TV or whatever they’re consuming at the time.

So I didn't mind. Sometimes it was kind of flattering that people thought I was smarter than I was. I'm sure some people felt school came more naturally because I was Asian, but I did well in school because my parents had always instilled these values of, ”Do your homework, study, get good grades, go to college.” Very typical ambitious things that parents want for their children. I didn’t mind for the most part. I liked school really!

I can relate!

So halfway through high school, I moved from a small town to the suburbs of Nashville. It was a big jump for me, not even just geographically, but I think my grade had like fifteen, twenty Asians.

That was something new, having my own [Asian] peers. I was immediately pulled into what they dubbed the “Chinese mafia” or the “Asian mafia” in our grade. It was a group of 5 or 6 of us, all girls. There was one guy, but he wasn’t part of the group, per se.

We all hung out together and did a lot of stuff, and at first, I was kind of like, "Oh, this is odd,”because I wasn't used to that. I wasn’t used to being around people who looked like me and things like that. They were not adoptees either. Most of them were Taiwanese, or Chinese, or a mix. So that was just really different, but it was really good, and I'm really grateful, obviously, because one of those friends that I made, she really made being the new kid in school so much better. Because coming in, when everyone has gone to school with each other since elementary school, that is rough. She's still one of my good friends!

Family and Love

I will say that when I got to high school, the only real real true negative was when people would say, "Oh, why don't you date another Asian person? Because you are Asian.”

And I'm like, that’s so dumb of you to say. It actually only came up one time, but I don't know why it stuck with me. I never even dated in high school. It's not for lack of trying. I've always been more assertive. So, if I liked a guy, I would just say it, you know, or I would ask him out, and I don't think they were really going for that, back then.

People would say I was intimidating, but I just think I was a little bit too mature in the sense of, I’m not going to play games. I know that we’re just high schoolers who just learned to drive, and it's not that serious right now, but I was already beyond this idea of just dumb high school stuff.

Although I will say, my type has not changed. My type has always been tall, skinny, nerdy brown-haired guys, which is exactly what my husband is!

I wasn’t deliberately seeking or not seeking a particular race. I was just thinking "Oh, I think that guy is funny or smart or cute.” I’m not thinking, "Oh, well, I'm going date him or not date him because he's Chinese or because he’s white, you know?”

Those thoughts don't cross your mind when you're looking for someone that you want to spend time with. You just want to spend time with a good person you who makes you want to be a better person.

Awww! That is so sweet! So how did you meet your husband?

We met online on (POF) plenty of fish. I don't even know if people still use that particular dating app. At the time, it was kind of newer, and it was right before Tinder had become a thing. I just went on it because it was after my freshman year of college, and I was back at home with my mom and at the time, she lived in a huge retirement community, so there were no kids my age. And I was like, “what could it hurt, right?”

Maybe I could have some fun conversations, go on a couple of dates, whatever. I started talking to my now husband on there, and we did meet up. I drove up a couple hours and I stayed with one of my friends. We went on a couple of dates and just kind of hit it off, so, yeah. Kind of crazy it's been that long!

Okay, wow. Congratulations on everything! If I can ask, how has your idea of love changed? Or, what is your idea of love? Was there anything that changed your thinking or your feelings about what it means to be a family?

Ooh, okay. Ah, that's a good question.

I was a little bit neurotic in my late teens, early 20s. I had read a lot of dating books. I felt I was this expert, even though I had never had a proper boyfriend. I had gone on a couple of dates, my first year of college, and they were just…not great. I kind of stopped truly pursuing relationships because I figured, it will happen when it's going to happen. Even though it sounds contradictory, because then I went on the dating app, but I really didn't do that with any intent to find somebody. I just did that with the intent of, "Hey, I'm going to have some fun conversations, maybe meet somebody over the summer. I'm not going in with any plans at this time.”

That's when it happens!

Right, exactly! So I guess my idea of love has always been a little, maybe a little bit more, storybook fairy tale, even though I knew these are still just stories.

I'm trying to think when I realized, okay, he’s the one, so to speak. And, we’re definitely going to get married and all these things like that, and it's just this feeling of “Well, I'm such a better person when I’m with him and I want to be a better person when I'm with him too.”

That's so sweet. Oh, my gosh!

And he's honestly just genuinely, genuinely just a good person. I feel like it's hard to find people who don't have some type of pretense up or anything like that. He literally just shows up as himself and is just a really good guy. And so I think I wasn't really used to that either, right?

I feel like we both push each other to be better too. Now, after so many years in, we have a two-year-old and then we have another kid on the way at the end of the year.

Congratulations!

Thank you! So, for my idea of family, first off, I don't think you need to have children to be a family. Your family can be yourself, your family can be you and siblings, you and roommates, friends. Because I feel like a lot of people put that pressure of, "Oh, I don't have a family.”

It's like, you have a family. You have a chosen family. Whether your family is blood-related or not blood-related. My husband and I were still a family when we just had two dogs, and we're just a bigger family now that we have children.

PART 2 - On Birth Family Searching and Reunion

Back in March of 2017, I did a 23andMe DNA test because I was like, “Well, I have no medical history." I did the health option too, just to maybe see if I have any genetic stuff going on, because I was just flying blind. And I was just curious, because I always felt whenever I saw pictures of Chinese people specifically, I never felt I looked like them, which is kind of silly to say, right? But I kind of felt that maybe I was a mix of a few different ethnicities, so that's really what piqued my interest to even bother taking a 23andMe DNA test in the first place.

The day I found out I had a match for a relative, I got a message on 23andMe from Brian Stuy that essentially said “You’ve been matched.” I didn't think it was a scam, per se, because how do you fake DNA? But when I got the email notification that said I had a 49% match for a father figure, it was like, ”What is going on?"

I think I did let out some kind of a yelp or scream. I think I kind of freaked out my husband. I was like, “Is this real?” I just needed someone else to look at it and read it and make sure I wasn't losing my mind. I thought, if anything, that I would have matched with another sibling who had been adopted, because those were the stories that I had remembered seeing in the news. So I was definitely surprised that I had a father.

I was just confused about so many things because Brian sends a message from DNAConnect, which I had never heard of before, and then Brian asked if I had ever watched One Child Nation.

My husband and I watched One Child Nation and then I had my mom watch it. It completely changed everything we had thought about adoption, for better or worse, because you can’t come back from that. It’s crazy because I almost feel like that should be mandatory watching for adoptees. I know it's extremely painful to watch because of what they show in that, but they're right when they say that's where you should start, because it tells you so much.

My mom ended up paying the matching fee to DNAConnect to match with my Chinese family. Because it's not just me experiencing this, it's her experiencing it too. But yeah, once we paid the matching fee, Brian sent me pictures of my parents, and there was no doubt.

We all thought, ”This is not a scam. I look just like them."

It was just. It was freaky. It was bizarre. And then to find out that I have an older sister and a younger sister and that I'm a middle child…

Were they both raised at home in China?

Yes, so my older sister is quite a bit older, so she was born in 1987, so she doesn't actually live at home anymore, but a few hours away. My younger sister and I, we're pretty close in age. I was born December 1993, and she was born in February 1995.

When my Chinese parents had my younger sister, they were very poor. And, because she was so little they had to take her with them when they went to try and find work. My older sister was staying with my Chinese dad’s parents at the time, but his dad did not like girls. They refused to watch me too and my Chinese parents could not take me with them because they had my baby sister to care for. My Chinese parents ended up leaving me with some family friends and those family friends hid me away for months.

And then, were those family friends caught hiding you?

I’m not sure what changed and maybe some things I will never know because the memories are too painful for them to recount.

After a while of hiding me, I think the pressure was on from Family Planning and the family friends who were watching me turned me over to Family Planning.

The One Child Policy and propaganda were so intense back then, and there were also financial incentives too for people to find abandoned children. I don’t know the motives behind that other family turning me over to Family Planning. I can’t imagine what anyone was thinking at the time all this went down, so even though there are unknowns, I still hold grace for them for making an impossible decision.

When you saw the picture of your family for the first time, what were the first things you were looking at, and what were the first feelings or thoughts you had?

I was completely shocked because I was just like, “I don't understand.”

I had so many questions, because the orphanage told my parents one thing, but then you have to remember that we watched the One Child Nation documentary, so it was like, “Wait, the orphanage just lied?” And so the orphanage just took me away from these people, from my family?

I just couldn’t believe it, like there’s no way! And then I was confused because it's like, why was my younger sister not put up for adoption too, right?

But then I realized, I think that as long as the kids are either seven or eight years apart at the time, they could still keep the second kid if it was a girl. And so I think it literally was just the timing of it all.

Once I got more photos of my Chinese family, I just couldn't believe that they were real. I have two sisters, and in a couple of the pictures, I look a lot like my older sister.

I received that first message on January 31st of 2021. And I was kind of messaging with Brian Stuy back and forth on February 1st. And then Longlan Stuy helped me get set up on WeChat, and so, at first, she would help facilitate the conversations a bit. And thank God for the built-in translator on WeChat because otherwise communicating would have been nearly impossible.

We video-called, and there were local news people there at my Chinese parents’ house because it was such a big thing.

My Chinese mom is kind of a big deal in the village, so everyone in the neighborhood knew about me, knew that they had been searching for me, and they had been searching all over China because that's where they thought I had been adopted.

It didn't even occur to them that I could have been adopted internationally. I think that's part of why it took so long. But, thank God for people like Brian and Lan who are going to China and testing these families, because how else would they know that I was not in China this whole time? I can’t imagine approaching Chinese families and suggesting that their lost daughter or son could be out there, somewhere else in the world. I can't imagine that day of my Chinese parents thinking, “well, what do we have to lose, right? We've spent decades looking for her here in China to no avail. I guess we should just try it, right?”

It was definitely surreal. It felt like I was in a freaking movie. I was like, “Is this happening?"

I mean, essentially we're strangers but not.

When I was a little kid, my mom had shown me my documents from the orphanage saying that I was found in a village square in a basket, with just a blanket and a note that said my name and my birthday. Which also sounds like something out of a movie, too. Why would we ever question it though?

But it turns out, that’s part of what the orphanages do when you’re put under their care, is change your birthday so that families can't find their kids.

So my actual birthday is December XX, and why I was saying earlier that it kind of threw me for an identity crisis is because I grew up thinking that I was a Capricorn, I don't know if you’re into astrology at all, but turns out I'm Sagittarius. So, those are two different personalities with different signs. I’m definitely always analyzing which part of me is, you know, real, because I can see bits of both, but it's just kind of crazy.

My husband and I did travel to China. We got to meet everybody at the end of 2023. And so I think that this whole thing has shaped how we want our kids to feel. I got to know all of the family, all sets of grandparents and aunts and uncles and everything.

So we definitely want to plan more of a routine trip. Maybe three to five years or something, whatever we can get to work out.

It just fills me with a lot of appreciation, and I I truly can't dwell on it too too much, because then obviously, I get really sad thinking about a lot and all the stuff that my Chinese family went through. They spent all those years thinking, whatever happened, you know, to our daughter, or to my sister.

But I also know that if I had never been adopted, I wouldn't have the life I have. I wouldn't have been with my husband, wouldn't have my sons, so it's.. it's hard. It's hard for sure, but at the end of the day, I'm extremely grateful, and I know that my life has played out how it's supposed to play out. I'm just grateful that they're still alive and I was able to meet my Chinese mom's mom, and she was pretty old. But we were able to meet her. She has passed away since our visit. I’m definitely not taking any time for granted.

Wow, that's. That's really amazing and very beautiful. That's one of those things about people who are actively searching or passively searching or just curious need to deal with, is that time waits for no one and things happen. For anybody reading this, what would you want them to learn from or resonate with your experience or your story?

If it's a fellow adoptee reading this, I’d say get your DNA tested and upload to GEDmatch, because that's a global database. Because even if you're not searching, you know, like me, I wasn't searching, you don't know who else is. It could be an uncle. It could be anybody!

I think Brian and Lan have directions on their blog of how to upload DNA from Ancestry or 23andMe, or any number of DNA testing companies, to GEDmatch.

Do you have an alternative message for anybody who may be vehemently against searching or just, you know, happy with what they have and not want to kick anything up? Is there anything you'd want them to know?

Oh, that's a tough one. Because I want to be respectful, because you're right, some people may not be ready for the journey, or maybe it just doesn’t interest them. I’d say that, you don't have to do DNA testing for yourself, but for your Chinese family. I’m very passionate about this. I just want all the families to be reunited, you know, or at least to know, even if the adoptee doesn't want to have a relationship with their Chinese family, that I think it would make a world of a difference for their Chinese families to know that their lost daughter, their lost son, is okay.

But if you, as the adoptee, are not truly ready, then it's hard because it's a double-edged sword. Time waits for no one, but at the same time, you can't rush into it if you're not ready.

Just kind of go at it at your own pace and respect your own feelings, and try not to compare your journeys. Even if we have parallels, which I'm sure there will be parallels across us, everyone’s adoption journey is different.

Footnotes:

*I refer to my parents as my adopted parents; I refer to my birth/biological parents/family as my Chinese parents/family

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