Sky Series: Episode 5

Note about the cover photo: My dad passed away a year ago. It was a hard time, but I took a picture of the sky the night that he passed away, and it's one of my favorite photos that I have. It was really beautiful that night—I remember that. Some people tell me that he wasn’t my dad, but he was my dad. It doesn't matter if he’s not biologically related.  He was Dad.

GROWING UP

I grew up in a predominantly white area and that was really hard. I had such an identity crisis at a very young age and that's not a thing that a lot of people are going to understand.

My sister, who was also adopted from China though, was so naturally smart. I have ADHD and dyslexia, so me, not so much. It was really hard in school, and I wasn't smart enough for the Asian groups, so they didn't want to be friends with me.  They were like, "You're not like us.” But I wasn't white so I didn't really fit in with the white kids in my school, even though I had white parents. In my head, it was like, “Y'all should be my friends,” but I didn't really fit in. The foundation of that identity crisis really started in elementary school through eighth grade, but in high school, it really started to show through more.

Not that anyone was saying, “You're not Asian enough,” but I got the vibe.  I was old enough to understand the vibe. When it came to being friends with white people, or even anyone, I could tell that they were not vibing with me. They'd vibe more with people like them, but not in a racist way or anything.

I had my friends. I had Asian friends and white friends, but it wasn't like I had a group. That was very telling for me at a young age. I even wrote my college essay about my identity crisis and not really knowing where I was supposed to be essentially. I kind of figured it out on my own. I fell in love with video editing and creativity and making content and stuff like that. That’s where I really found my friends in people who were more creative, instead of just looking at what friend group I'm going to join.

I was really young when we adopted my little sister. We do have footage of my adoption and hers that I have up on my TikTok. I initially went viral on TikTok in 2019 for being adopted because when we went back to go get my sister, my family was actually in a National Geographic documentary about adopting girls from China with Lisa Ling.

In the state of Texas, it's law that when you're learning about China in high school geography class, you have to watch this National Geographic documentary. So when I was in high school, my freshman year, we watched it in class. I remember everyone would look at me at the back of the class when my family and I came on. But that's why we went viral in 2019 about it, and then my sister and I did a Q&A on my YouTube.  It's private now, but so many people were asking us questions about being adopted. TikTok had just become a thing and I feel like on social media, no one had really talked about being adopted before. My sister and I were kind of like, I'm not going to say we were the first ones, but some of the earliest.

My sister and I never really talk about being adopted with each other because it's natural for us. I don't look at her and think, “You're not my biological sister.” It was like, she just showed up one day and I guess I was stuck with her.

Did you grow up with other Chinese adoptees in the community or school? Was it common growing up seeing other Chinese adoptees?

 No, it wasn't common.  There was another little girl that was adopted. She was a lot younger than my sister and I. My sister and I were in junior high and she was in first grade. My mom would try and make us hang out with her, and my sister and I were not having it because it was just different age groups. My sister and I felt like we were babysitting. My sister and I do have a Chinese adoptee friend group, and there's a very strong inkling that one of them was cribmates with me in the orphanage. She actually lives in Houston, and then there's another girl that lives in Atlanta who was on our adoption trip.

We have another and then her parents were friends with other people who adopted kids from China, and there was me and my sister. My friend, who I think was my cribmate, which we're pretty sure about, we always joke about that, and we say we've known each other longer than we've known our parents.

We would hang out all the time when we were little, and we'd hang out every Christmas. Our tradition was to build gingerbread houses every Christmas, and we called ourselves the Chinese sisters, because we were all adopted from China. We're still close today.

When my dad passed away, that got us closer and my cribmate was a good rock that I had to talk to about losing a parent because she also lost one of hers. That's not something that a lot of people understand is losing a parent at a young age. I felt that made us closer for the time that I really needed it.

Have you ever felt yourself wanting to make more adoptee friends?

If someone's like, "Hi, I'm adopted, and I'm like, "Oh, I’m adopted too.”  Like, I'll be friends with them, but I don't think that I'm going to depend on them. I think it would just be like, “We're friends because we're friends, not because we're both adopted.”

 Like, I have all of these other things in my life, but I’m also adopted. Like, being adopted was never that big in my life. It was never “I’m adopted,” and then I’m “Me.” It was always "Me,” and then all the way down here, “I’m adopted,” too.

I feel like a lot of my non-adopted friends do try and support me as much as they can, and while they don't understand, they're as interested as I am whenever I'm saying like, “Oh, I'm curious about this.” One of my friends has a degree in behavioral analysis. I was telling her about my feelings and she was like, “I just read an article about how Asian adoptees have attachment issues.”

I was like, “What?” and then she was explaining this article to me. I was like, “Wait, why does that sound like me?  Why do these sound like things that I have?” My friends do their best to understand. They do a great job at listening.

What was it like growing up in Texas?

I hate Texas. There’s a lot of racism here and I've been a victim of that. I live literally 15 minutes away from the city of Houston and I still got tons of racism and stereotyping growing up, and even to this day, COVID was so bad. COVID was so bad because of the racists. They didn't care what Asian you were. I could have been Korean, or Vietnamese, and they still would have been like, “Go back to China.” Like, they did not care. It angered me. It upset me. I mean, I didn't take it personally. I was okay, but it angered me because I was like, “You don't even know that I was raised in a household that's almost exactly like yours.” I have two white parents and while they did try to show my sister and I Asian culture—like we did Chinese ballet and stuff like that in Chinatown every weekend and went to Mandarin classes that did not work— I still grew up in a very, very, very white household.

It annoyed me because these people would be racist towards me, and I would feel like, “You know nothing about me.” If you only knew I grew up almost exactly like you. I thought that was so mind boggling that they could do that to someone that they just don't know.

One of the hardest parts about losing my father is that a few months before he passed, he told me personally that he was excited for my sister to move back home after graduating college. He said he wanted to “protect his girls,” because of the racist interactions we have dealt with and just in the world today people are getting more comfortable being openly racist. It broke my heart when he passed away because all he wanted to do was protect me, my sister, and of course my mom from the world and have all of his girls under the same roof again.

Dating and Love

 Oh, here's how it goes. I've always been into white men, always had white boyfriends, and that's pretty much it. I kind of went along with everyone thinking these white men were hot when I was younger.  But it's not like I would not date a white man. I just feel like that's what is drawn to me more, and that I am drawn to more.

What's really hard about being into white men and this might be a little weird, okay? So, I worked at a bar as a bottle service girl, with the sparklers and stuff. My entire job was about my looks. And I felt like many men, specifically white men, had an Asian fetish.

I'd talk to white guys at the bar and I'd be like, “Okay, yeah, sure, here's my number” because I thought they were normal people.  And then they would text me and it was all about me being Asian. It was very hard to decipher between who liked me for me and who just had an Asian fetish.

At the same time, I have chronically always been into white men. People call that the “Oxford Study” and you know what? That pisses me off so much. There are a lot of Asian people dating white men, but we don't have to name it like that. It's 2026 and the world is so blended. There are different cultures and different ethnicities dating each other.

Birthfamily Searching - Thoughts and Feelings

When you were little or when you were adopted, was there a story that your parents would tell you about how you came to be adopted?

When I was a little kid, I would get the question all the time and people would always ask me when did your parents tell you that you were adopted? And I would always look at them and be like, it's kind of obvious. I don't look like them. It was always such a very open conversation in my family. Like, if we ever had a question about it, it was answered.  It wasn't hidden from us.

I understood it better because my sister and I would celebrate our Gotcha Days. My parents would celebrate them when we were little kids and they would get us presents, like a cute journal or some candy.

 I don't know who brought me to the orphanage. I do know that I was in a fishing village. I was found in a fish market. When you're abandoned as a baby in China, they put it in the newspaper.

A finding ad?

Yeah, a finding ad. When I was adopted, apparently there was this guy who would go back and he found my finding ad and then found where I was, and took a picture of where they found me. I don't know where that is. You would pay him to go do this and he'd go do it for like multiple people. I don't know where this picture is.  I want to try and find it but that’s pretty much how I know it is a fishing village.

I would like to go back and visit the area I’m from. The buildings look so cool. It's very serene. There's trees and mountains. No one ever wanted to tell me that this is where I was. I mean, I could have Googled it myself as a little kid, but I just didn't, and I did as an adult, and I was like, "This is so cool."

Have you ever done a DNA test or wanted to find any other relatives?

My sister and I both did 23andMe. I feel like that's what a lot of Asian adoptees do, especially for health reasons.  I paid extra to get our health information, because we don't know anything about our health and lineage.  So even if it's just a little bit and it's not full in-depth health details, even just a little bit could help. The closest relative I found was a second cousin, which meant we shared a great grandparent.  She also lives in Atlanta. We chatted and stuff like that after we matched with each other, and we still follow each other on social media, but we don't really talk that much.  

What if you found out you had siblings in China?

If my biological parents kept some of their kids, just not all of them, and I wasn't one of the ones that was kept. I think that would honestly probably add to my abandonment issues.  The choice was made, but, I mean, I'm so grateful. I love living in America.  I love being an American, and the life that I have been given, but I feel like that'd be really weird if I had other sisters that lived with them. I 100% think I have a brother. If I had a sister and she was adopted into a different family, then I'd be like, “We need to meet up.” Because she went through the same thing as me.”

What if you found out your birth parents never made a choice to give you up, but something else happened? Like you were taken from them?

Actually, I have heard of that. I watched a video about a girl and she was adopted, and all this time her family in China thought that she went missing and had been trying to find her. She was adopted and thought that her family gave her up. I remember seeing that literally a few months ago.

That kind of changes everything, because then my birth family would be like, "Where is she?”

But at the same time, I am fine with “Ignorance is Bliss” and not knowing.  I have my assumptions that it was the One Child Policy and that my birth parents wanted a boy. I'm fine with that. It's enough explanation for me and it's enough explanation for everyone that hears it from me. If I started getting into all the other things, I think that would make it a little more confusing for me and for other people.

That might change as I grow up. But at the same time, it's like, “What if they aren't alive anymore? What if I put in all of this time and effort and they aren't alive anymore?  What if I put in all of this time and effort and money and they don't want to meet me?” It's a fear thing.

Do you have any takeaway messages? I usually ask for a takeaway message and also how you define family.

I think that every story is different, and adoption is a beautiful thing that can happen, especially if it's blending cultures. While I might not know a lot about my culture, I know a lot about my family's culture.

Family doesn't have to mean you’re blood related. So I think of my friends as family because they're close to me, and they help me out and I love them. Family is whoever is in your life that makes you happy and who supports you.

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