Sky Series: Episode 7
Date: Sep 27, 2026 | Weather: Cloudy | Orphanage: Dianbai | Province: Guangdong | Age: 28 | Chinese Zodiac: Ox | Location: USA
Growing Up
Can you describe for me how you grew up, what kind of community you had, and how you synthesized your Chinese adoptee identity?I grew up with a really strong sense of Asian American identity. I used to take it for granted that I grew up in a really diverse area with many Asian Americans and Chinese adoptees, but after living in other parts of the US and talking with so many other adoptees, I've come to realize just how special it was. I'm not sure if it was entirely the location or the time period, but I think it was a kind of golden age in its own way.
There were a lot of meet ups through formal FCC (Families with Children from China) events, but also just through local gatherings, holiday parties, and orphanage reunions. We had Chinese language school on the weekends, where I also took dance and art class. There were also various Mandarin language teachers I remember my mom taking me to as a young child, with other adoptees and their parents. We also remained close for many years with a group of about seven other adoptees and their families from when my parents travelled to China to adopt me, although we aren’t as close anymore. I think our parents thought we'd be at each others weddings and live out the fairy tale of having China sisters, but realistically, people are friends because they like each other, not because they have a single trait in common. I think we just grew apart. As children, my orphanage group never really talked about adoption because we were just kids and having fun.
One thing I will be forever grateful for was this incredibly sweet Taiwanese American family who lived in the neighborhood. The family ran this fully Chinese adoptee dance troupe called the Mei Mei dancers that was just really special. We performed in Philadelphia and all over the place with these lovely costumes. The family also invited us over to their house outside of rehearsal to make origami, dumplings, and spring rolls. It was honestly very touching how my local community in seemed to embrace us and just roll with the sudden influx of Chinese adoptees. I can't stress enough just how normal being adopted was.
Did you ever feel like you were more of a Chinese adoptee than a Chinese American, whatever those identities mean to you?
I felt that I had a distinctly Chinese American upbringing. I always was surrounded by Chinese adoptees, but a lot of my friends were (and are) Asian American and I think I always felt as Asian as they were, even if I didn’t have the same experiences. I think Chinese adoptees in America have a certain type of identity that say, an adoptee in another country may or may not find relatable since they may have their own version of what that means. In that sense, I do think that my Chinese adoptee and Chinese American identity go hand-in-hand — being an adoptee is just another way of being Chinese American for me.
It wasn't until undergrad that I really experienced racism for the first time and also a lot of bullying, very specifically about my being adopted. My academic achievements sometimes felt minimized because people assumed I was just smart because I was Asian. I grew up in a pretty competitive academic environment, so I knew plenty of very high achieving people from all ethnic backgrounds. To hear a stereotype like that in college felt so outdated, and really made me understand so much more how insidious and subtle racism can be. It's not always someone shouting in your face. Sometimes, racism can be as subtle as someone suggesting that you don't work half as hard for what you have because everything is easy for someone Asian.
Being in this not diverse and incredibly narrow minded environment made me gain a new perspective and compassion for others, adopted or not, who might have grown up in a place where “different” made you a target.
For me, college was an experience and a lesson that, even though I may feel very confident in who I am, very confident in being Chinese American and Asian American, very confident in being an adoptee, that there will be people who project their own confusion onto you. I'm proud of who I am, but because others may not have been able to grapple with multiculturalism or the concept of multiracial families, I had many people in college suggest I was the one struggling to find my own sense of racial identity when nothing could have been further from the truth. I did end up joining the Chinese club in college, which consisted of many international Chinese students, rather than Chinese Americans. I learned a lot from them, but mostly it reiterated my sense that I was Chinese American and not so very much from China Chinese. It was an interesting experience, but I don't think I would say I felt I "belonged" more in that community than I do with the Asian Americans here, even if other students couldn't tell us apart.
How would you say your relationship to the Chinese adoptee community has changed over time?
Over time, I’ve absolutely become more curious about other adoptees and their experiences. A lot has changed from when we were little to now, and people have such different experiences growing up, becoming adults, even finding birth families. I’ve met many adoptees who have had vastly different experiences than me, and I have this new curiosity for who and what defines this community.
My parents always were very open about my adoption. I remember I kept this little picture book by my bed that my parents and other adoptive parents had ordered custom made for their kids. Your parents would send in the names of your family members, finding spot, etc. and receive this picture book that basically describes your personal journey to the orphanage and your family.
You have to understand, when you've been told that your birthparents didn't want you and wanted a boy, and that there's this whole One Child Policy, it becomes very difficult to wrap your head around why birthparents would be searching for their kids at all. It just doesn't make sense: If they didn't want us, why were they searching? Unless of course, the first part wasn't true. We just had been so convinced as a community that even when I was confronted with actual evidence that all was not as it seemed, I still couldn't fathom that birth parents could still want us, still love us. It makes me feel incredibly indignant at the unfairness of it all.
Did you end up doing a DNA test or searching for your birth family?
I did take a 23andMe test and uploaded my DNA to GEDmatch. My parents and I each paid half for the 23andMe kit and my parents sent this big announcement in the family group chat that I was going to do DNA testing to search for relatives. They had always been supportive of my search, so I'm really grateful for that support. I don't have any close relatives at the moment on 23andMe or GEDmatch, but at least I know I tried. Who knows, maybe I'll find a sibling one day who also got adopted.
I don't give up hope, but I am just realistic that I may not have a match in this lifetime. That thought is pretty sobering, but realistic.
Tell me more about that. What was the trip like and what thoughts or feelings did you have during it?
I went with my mom and dad and it was also my first trip back to China since being adopted. So it was part search trip and also part “homecoming.” We intentionally stayed at the White Swan Hotel in Guangzhou, where I had passed through as a baby, and where so many of us had passed through as babies.
I just had this surreal feeling of, “Oh my god, I'm back. Oh my god, I have baby videos of me standing in this spot looking at this fountain. I have baby videos of me wobbling around this hotel.”
I remember crying a lot and feeling very alone in China. The announcement that China had ended its international adoption program also came when I was in China, so that was very emotional to process. It was also just very heavy to hear that a lot of what I learned from One Child Nation, was all too true.
The birthparents I met helped me to understand what happened to them and how my story was connected to theirs. Birthfamilies asked me about how I grew up, and if I had a happy life, and they were worried that their kid would be ashamed of them if they were poor. Although, I should mention, many birthfamilies who were once poor when we were little have since come into financial prosperity. Many people also wondered if I had birthmarks. They remembered such tiny little details about their children.
And they missed their children, desperately, in a way that made me feel like such an inadequate placeholder for their child. So many birthparents asked me why I had come back alone and where all the other children were. Why was their child not coming back for them? I didn’t feel like I could give a suitable answer.
If you ever matched with your birthfamily, what would you first want to ask them?
Of course I would want to know my origin story and what happened to me, but to be honest, I really just want to ask, “Did you love me? Do you love me still?” And…I already know the answer to that. I know the answer is, “Yes.”
We used to have a lot of Chinese adoptee get togethers at a dim sum restaurant called Joy Tsin Lau in Philadelphia's China Town. Unfortunately, it isn't there anymore, but it was so much fun as a child to have the food carts come around. My parents would remark on all their favorite foods they had in China when they went to adopt me. Their favorites were these scallion dumplings called jiu cai jiao (韭菜饺). I tried making them once, but even though they came out a little funny, my parents still ate them all. I'm always on the hunt for those every time I visit another China Town. It's this distinctive chive, garlic flavor in fried rice dough that brings me this sense of nostalgia for a time I can't even remember. I like to imagine it is what "home" in China would have tasted and smelled like.
Did you ever feel like you were more of a Chinese adoptee than a Chinese American, whatever those identities mean to you?
I felt that I had a distinctly Chinese American upbringing. I always was surrounded by Chinese adoptees, but a lot of my friends were (and are) Asian American and I think I always felt as Asian as they were, even if I didn’t have the same experiences. I think Chinese adoptees in America have a certain type of identity that say, an adoptee in another country may or may not find relatable since they may have their own version of what that means. In that sense, I do think that my Chinese adoptee and Chinese American identity go hand-in-hand — being an adoptee is just another way of being Chinese American for me.
It wasn't until undergrad that I really experienced racism for the first time and also a lot of bullying, very specifically about my being adopted. My academic achievements sometimes felt minimized because people assumed I was just smart because I was Asian. I grew up in a pretty competitive academic environment, so I knew plenty of very high achieving people from all ethnic backgrounds. To hear a stereotype like that in college felt so outdated, and really made me understand so much more how insidious and subtle racism can be. It's not always someone shouting in your face. Sometimes, racism can be as subtle as someone suggesting that you don't work half as hard for what you have because everything is easy for someone Asian.
Being in this not diverse and incredibly narrow minded environment made me gain a new perspective and compassion for others, adopted or not, who might have grown up in a place where “different” made you a target.
For me, college was an experience and a lesson that, even though I may feel very confident in who I am, very confident in being Chinese American and Asian American, very confident in being an adoptee, that there will be people who project their own confusion onto you. I'm proud of who I am, but because others may not have been able to grapple with multiculturalism or the concept of multiracial families, I had many people in college suggest I was the one struggling to find my own sense of racial identity when nothing could have been further from the truth. I did end up joining the Chinese club in college, which consisted of many international Chinese students, rather than Chinese Americans. I learned a lot from them, but mostly it reiterated my sense that I was Chinese American and not so very much from China Chinese. It was an interesting experience, but I don't think I would say I felt I "belonged" more in that community than I do with the Asian Americans here, even if other students couldn't tell us apart.
How would you say your relationship to the Chinese adoptee community has changed over time?
Growing up, I felt surrounded by Chinese adoptees. It made me feel like it was completely normal, and since we all relatively had the same background, I think it made me feel complacent in my own knowledge of the Chinese adoptee experience. I did various adoptee camps, adoptee meet-ups, language programs, etc. and had my orphanage group that had five reunions every year, even though we ultimately grew apart. I think it was just a lot for me, maybe a lot for any child. I'm happy I had these experiences though, because otherwise I would have wondered about how these experiences would have been if I never had them.
Over time, I’ve absolutely become more curious about other adoptees and their experiences. A lot has changed from when we were little to now, and people have such different experiences growing up, becoming adults, even finding birth families. I’ve met many adoptees who have had vastly different experiences than me, and I have this new curiosity for who and what defines this community.
I still want to belong to the Chinese adoptee community, whatever that means, but I’ve come to the conclusion that communities are made of individuals. I've always said this, but I'll say it again: We aren't a monolith.
I keep going back and forth on this idea of community. In the times that I don't always feel like I belong, is it that I am not a part of the community or is it that I redefine, ever so slightly, the definition of that very community? (i.e. My existence means I belong, and therefore the definition of community bends to envelope me.) Wanting to belong is a very human desire, but I think it is just as well that we create the community where we find belonging, rather than trying to join what we believe is the official Chinese adoptee community. Through connecting with so many other adoptees, I've come to realize that the diaspora is so much more diverse than the sometimes monolithic experience presented online.
Birthparent Searching
Tell me about your adoption story or how your parents described your origin story growing up.My parents always were very open about my adoption. I remember I kept this little picture book by my bed that my parents and other adoptive parents had ordered custom made for their kids. Your parents would send in the names of your family members, finding spot, etc. and receive this picture book that basically describes your personal journey to the orphanage and your family.
It begins with this illustration of your birthmom and it says she loves you very much, but couldn’t keep you. So then your birthmother abandons you in a safe place for you to be found by the nice police, who bring you to the orphanage. The next page would be about how your mom and dad loved you so much that they came to China to adopt you and everyone loves you in the family.
I would read this little picture book religiously. At the time, it just never occurred to anyone that this “fairytale” of being abandoned was just all fabricated.
About six years ago, I made my own corrected version of that storybook, about how I likely came to the orphanage, once I better understood what had occurred in China. I am still searching for my birthparents, so I don’t know my story for sure, but I would love to be able to update it some day with the real story.
How was that process for you — was it easy to update the version of your origin story in your head when you learned more about Chinese adoption?
I think during the pandemic, I had a really big awakening. Not only was I coming out of the fog (which is term used in the community for realizing that adoption actually affects you and has this lasting impact) but I was stuck at home.
Just timing wise, this was also around the time when One Child Nation was also being published or had just recently been released. When the documentary first made its rounds, I had this kind of ambivalent, if not resistant, feeling to it. I was really annoyed at this point, especially after what happened to me in college, that so many people thought they knew my story and had the audacity to tell me about myself, with the presumption that they knew more about me than I did. I didn't like the idea that something or someone else could redefine my story and redefine who I was.
So for a year, I just did not watch it. I knew about it. I heard about it and I just, I didn’t want to watch it.
But with the pandemic, I didn’t really have an excuse anymore that, “I was pressed for time.” So I watched One Child Nation, and I was just completely blown away. It really hit home for me that this was part of my story, that my Chinese adoptee world was just the aftermath of what was essentially a horrible, traumatic experience for thousands of women.
I thought I knew my origin story by heart: I was abandoned. I was a girl. I was not wanted. They wanted a boy. You're not going to find the truth and you're not going to find your birthparents. End of story. And even if you want to find your parents, good luck, China is too big.
And now I'm being told hundreds of people have discovered the truth and reunited with their birthfamilies, and learned that nothing was as it seemed in so many cases.
It felt like my entire origin story was “nursery rhyme washed.” So I did have an incredibly difficult time swallowing that pill, realizing that maybe I wasn't abandoned. Watching One Child Nation, as harsh as it was, was a really big turning point for me. It made me want to search harder for my own birthparents and help others do the same.
On that topic, have you ever wanted to search for your birth parents?
When I was younger, I was always curious, always wanting to know who my birthparents were.
I never gave up my desire for finding my birth parents. I had a lot of fear that maybe they didn't love me or didn't want me or wouldn't want to find me again, but I always wanted to look for them, despite this fear.
About six years ago, I made my own corrected version of that storybook, about how I likely came to the orphanage, once I better understood what had occurred in China. I am still searching for my birthparents, so I don’t know my story for sure, but I would love to be able to update it some day with the real story.
How was that process for you — was it easy to update the version of your origin story in your head when you learned more about Chinese adoption?
I think during the pandemic, I had a really big awakening. Not only was I coming out of the fog (which is term used in the community for realizing that adoption actually affects you and has this lasting impact) but I was stuck at home.
Just timing wise, this was also around the time when One Child Nation was also being published or had just recently been released. When the documentary first made its rounds, I had this kind of ambivalent, if not resistant, feeling to it. I was really annoyed at this point, especially after what happened to me in college, that so many people thought they knew my story and had the audacity to tell me about myself, with the presumption that they knew more about me than I did. I didn't like the idea that something or someone else could redefine my story and redefine who I was.
So for a year, I just did not watch it. I knew about it. I heard about it and I just, I didn’t want to watch it.
But with the pandemic, I didn’t really have an excuse anymore that, “I was pressed for time.” So I watched One Child Nation, and I was just completely blown away. It really hit home for me that this was part of my story, that my Chinese adoptee world was just the aftermath of what was essentially a horrible, traumatic experience for thousands of women.
I thought I knew my origin story by heart: I was abandoned. I was a girl. I was not wanted. They wanted a boy. You're not going to find the truth and you're not going to find your birthparents. End of story. And even if you want to find your parents, good luck, China is too big.
And now I'm being told hundreds of people have discovered the truth and reunited with their birthfamilies, and learned that nothing was as it seemed in so many cases.
It felt like my entire origin story was “nursery rhyme washed.” So I did have an incredibly difficult time swallowing that pill, realizing that maybe I wasn't abandoned. Watching One Child Nation, as harsh as it was, was a really big turning point for me. It made me want to search harder for my own birthparents and help others do the same.
On that topic, have you ever wanted to search for your birth parents?
When I was younger, I was always curious, always wanting to know who my birthparents were.
I never gave up my desire for finding my birth parents. I had a lot of fear that maybe they didn't love me or didn't want me or wouldn't want to find me again, but I always wanted to look for them, despite this fear.
Back then, we didn’t have the kinds of tools that we have now, like commercially available DNA testing kits. It wasn't until 2013 that DNAConnect.Org came online essentially. It was really the first of its kind at that scale that really matched Chinese adoptees to their birthfamilies. There's been more since then, like Nanchang Project, but that was really one of the first powerhouse organizations I remember.
I watched closely and carefully for the first maybe five years that DNAConnect.Org was in operation, just feeling skeptical, and unsure of what was happening. Essentially, I was questioning if they were legitimate, and this was all before I watched One Child Nation, which really convinced me that they were the real deal.
You have to understand, when you've been told that your birthparents didn't want you and wanted a boy, and that there's this whole One Child Policy, it becomes very difficult to wrap your head around why birthparents would be searching for their kids at all. It just doesn't make sense: If they didn't want us, why were they searching? Unless of course, the first part wasn't true. We just had been so convinced as a community that even when I was confronted with actual evidence that all was not as it seemed, I still couldn't fathom that birth parents could still want us, still love us. It makes me feel incredibly indignant at the unfairness of it all.
Did you end up doing a DNA test or searching for your birth family?
I did take a 23andMe test and uploaded my DNA to GEDmatch. My parents and I each paid half for the 23andMe kit and my parents sent this big announcement in the family group chat that I was going to do DNA testing to search for relatives. They had always been supportive of my search, so I'm really grateful for that support. I don't have any close relatives at the moment on 23andMe or GEDmatch, but at least I know I tried. Who knows, maybe I'll find a sibling one day who also got adopted.
I don't give up hope, but I am just realistic that I may not have a match in this lifetime. That thought is pretty sobering, but realistic.
At the same time, I also firmly believe that if you want something to change, you have to go out there and change it. So that led me in 2024 on a trip to China with my family to search for my birth family, but not just my birth family, but other people's families too.
Tell me more about that. What was the trip like and what thoughts or feelings did you have during it?
I went with my mom and dad and it was also my first trip back to China since being adopted. So it was part search trip and also part “homecoming.” We intentionally stayed at the White Swan Hotel in Guangzhou, where I had passed through as a baby, and where so many of us had passed through as babies.
I just had this surreal feeling of, “Oh my god, I'm back. Oh my god, I have baby videos of me standing in this spot looking at this fountain. I have baby videos of me wobbling around this hotel.”
I remember crying a lot and feeling very alone in China. The announcement that China had ended its international adoption program also came when I was in China, so that was very emotional to process. It was also just very heavy to hear that a lot of what I learned from One Child Nation, was all too true.
The birthparents I met helped me to understand what happened to them and how my story was connected to theirs. Birthfamilies asked me about how I grew up, and if I had a happy life, and they were worried that their kid would be ashamed of them if they were poor. Although, I should mention, many birthfamilies who were once poor when we were little have since come into financial prosperity. Many people also wondered if I had birthmarks. They remembered such tiny little details about their children.
And they missed their children, desperately, in a way that made me feel like such an inadequate placeholder for their child. So many birthparents asked me why I had come back alone and where all the other children were. Why was their child not coming back for them? I didn’t feel like I could give a suitable answer.
How could I explain how adoptees felt abandoned by their birthfamilies who never wanted to leave them? Or explain that adoptees were busy in their lives and weren’t interested in finding their birthfamilies? Adoption is so very complex and every adoptee feels and thinks differently. How do you even begin to explain that to birthfamilies whose last memories of you were you stolen by a midwife after you were born? It's just so heavy.
We did manage to match other adoptees to their birthfamilies on that trip and being able to help those adoptees reunite really made the whole trip worth it. It just comes with so many complex emotions, because I had to accept before the trip that I was doing this for others, not myself, but there's this tiny hope that just won't die that one day I'll find them.
I keep telling myself to just accept that I may not have a reunion in this lifetime, but then I just feel like I'm forcing a part of myself to die. I've tried very hard, but I still have yet to successfully convince myself to give up hope.
I'm still searching, and I'll continue to search and help others to reunite, as long as I am able.
If you ever matched with your birthfamily, what would you first want to ask them?
Of course I would want to know my origin story and what happened to me, but to be honest, I really just want to ask, “Did you love me? Do you love me still?” And…I already know the answer to that. I know the answer is, “Yes.”
So it would be, I think, maybe a waste of a question. I also think that maybe that's all I really need to hear. And maybe that's all I'm ever really chasing.
I wish I could tell my birthparents, “I love you too.” All the volunteer work I do to help reunite birthfamilies and adoptees is all a love letter to my own birthparents, whether or not they will ever know it.
Do you have a takeaway message for anyone who is reading this?
I'd say to keep an open mind and an open heart.
An open mind because Chinese adoption is steeped in layers of truth, but there is only one truth no matter what we choose or are led to believe.
An open heart because the world is so much better than what it seems at times. I have been astounded time and time again at the generosity, community, and compassion from others to help adoptees find family. Many of the most ardent helpers to find other birthfamilies for me or search for their lost daughters were other birth fathers, despite what we know about the patriarchy and the traditional preference for boys. Many of the volunteers were random passersby who simply wanted to help, open up their homes, and feed us.
I also want to add that sometimes it can seem like we adoptees each have a unique origin story and that our journeys are uniquely ours, special and solitary. But the more I learn, the more I realize we can learn from each other and we can help each other, not in spite of, but because of our differences, and because of more similarities than we may even know.