Sky Series: Episode 4

Date: Sep 20, 2026 | Weather: Cloudy | Orphanage: Quzhou | Province: Zhejiang | Age: 30 | Chinese Zodiac: Rat | Matched: 2023 | Location: USA

Growing Up

Growing up, I always knew I was adopted. My mom and dad were so good. It's probably more my mom than my dad, but they gave me so many good resources!

We always read books about adoption. 
I feel like there's so much more available now, but there was this surprising amount back in the '90s for adoption. So that was something that I always just knew. I knew that I was from another mom and that she couldn't keep me and that's why I was adopted. I had a great family growing up. I came into the family with three older brothers, significantly older. 
The next oldest brother was 12 years older than I was. When I was around two years old, my parents adopted my little sister from China. Then, within about a year, they adopted my older sister, a teenager from China. So yeah, 
big family! There are actually seven siblings, and then there's one more adopted from China.


It might have been kindergarten into first grade somewhere around there. I started, I remember this pretty significantly. I was just like, “why?” 
I felt like my birth mom didn't want me. And I was sad about that. 
I was so happy with my life.


I grew up in Northwest Colorado, had the best family, so grateful for them, and I just had a good 90s childhood.. 
But I remember feeling like I just didn't belong. Not with my family, but just, “why didn't somebody want me?” My mom handled it so, so, so well. She had me talk to a school counselor who was actually also adopted, not from China, but she was an adoptee. So we could relate a little bit, and we talked it out. 
I don't quite remember everything that we said (it was so long ago,) but I do remember after a couple sessions, I was like, “okay, cool!” And I don't even remember where I ended up landing. My birth mom loved me and that's why I was adopted. 
I just was like, “okay, cool” and just carried on with my little life.


We all are trying to figure out our lives and do our best. That was the best decision for me at that time. I've since learned new information, right? 
So like everything so far that we’ve talked about is pre-reunion. Anyway, I was so content with that answer throughout my whole life. After counseling, I was like, “You know what? It's okay. I have been so blessed here,” and I think that's a very conflicting feeling. I'm sure we'll talk about that later, but it's just like, “man, there's a life I totally could have had somewhere else,” but also, I'm so grateful I was raised in the States.


However you view politics, I have so much more freedom here than I do in China. There’s just way more opportunity for education and business opportunities and work opportunities. I'm just so grateful to be here, and I know that not everyone might feel that way. It’s just that in my experience, I'm just so grateful. 
Lots of gratitude in my heart.


Was being adopted something that you and your siblings ever directly talked about growing up or was it sort of like, “Well, we all know. So there's no point in really talking about it?”



Oh, that's a great question. My older sisters were a lot more private and they would speak to each other in Chinese. 
I bet they had a lot of conversations. My little sister and I, not so much. I mean, we just knew we were adopted, we were Chinese, and we just went along our little lives. 
I'm sure this is so common, but, we just were cute little “whitewashed” kids. But my mom was so good about trying her hardest at teaching us culture. 
She brought home dresses that we would end up growing into on all her trips to China. We'd celebrate Chinese New Year together. She just tried to incorporate Chinese culture, mostly New Year's, into our life a little bit. I'm so grateful for her effort. 
My Chinese culture was not totally unknown, but there's so much more to it that I learned later, and still have so much more to learn.


Do you remember if there were other Asian people you grew up around in Colorado?


The part of Colorado where I grew up was not a very diverse area, but I believe my parents kind of started the trend of adopting, so I think they got me and then I grew up with a few friends who are also Chinese and adopted. They both moved away when I was pretty little, but I do remember playing with them. I actually got into contact with them again recently in the last few years. There were a few of us that were adopted from China in that area, but other than that, it was not very diverse. One of my best friends is Chinese and her family moved to our area, not adopted, but there were like three Chinese people. There weren't that many.



Do you remember wondering about that? Do you ever feel like people looked at you differently or did people generally understand adoption?


I know that people looked at us differently, not in a necessarily negative way. Maybe you’ve felt this way too, but I feel so American. But then people would look at me and they’d make fun of you as a little kid or something. So I remember being like, ”Yes, I know I'm different. I look different. But, like, I didn't feel different.” 
I had great friends who never really pointed too much out. If anything, I really started leaning into it because I just thought it was fun. It made me unique and 
I think when you're older, you're just like, "Oh, this makes me me." And it's awesome. It's very cool. 




So growing up, how did you think about being Chinese or Asian American or Asian?


I grew up in very white areas, both in Colorado and Utah. I really have a lot of self confidence, maybe too much. I was just very okay with being me. I kind of honed into Asian stereotypes, just because it was fun, and I was okay with it. One of my friends got me a bumper sticker and it said “female Asian driver.” Like, good luck, everybody else! I straight up put it on my car! I thought it was hilarious. I thought it was so funny, but I'm actually a really good driver. Put that on the record. I'm so good. 
Clean driving record here for everyone. I was also really good at math. I always excelled, I feel, in most subjects.


People would say, “she's a smart Asian over there, like, go ask her.” And I'm like, “yeah, do it.” 
I thought it was just fun. I ran for student counsel my senior year and my motto was something about an Asian invasion.


Dating, Family, and Love


I remember my little sister and I are both Chinese girls in Utah, and I don't know if you know anything about Utah, but it has typical pretty white people. Like, blonde hair, blue eyes, maybe some brown hair, blue eyes. I remember talking to my sister in our early 20’s and she was just like, “do you think people are going to want to date us?” 
Because we look different. And I remember talking to her, I was like, "Oh, I sure hope so!”


Now, we both are married and have the greatest husbands, both cute, little, white husbands. 
I love them. I love my husband and my brother. He's so fun. 
But it was just one of those things about dating. I realized I look so different from the typical girl around me. Is that going to be a good or a bad thing? But I really was okay with it. If I end up marrying somebody, they're obviously going to be okay with what I look like.


Birthfamily Searching and Reunion


After my little talk with my elementary school counselor and kind of working through some feelings.The question of “Why am I not wanted?” was solved. 
And I was like, “Cool! Now I'm great with who I am!” I don't know how many adoptees are pretty religious, but I am, and I love that. And I feel like that is truly what has really grounded me is knowing who I am and having a purpose outside of just genetics. 
So anyway, that's really important to me. But I think that's why I'm so confident and okay with who I am and I'm grateful for that.



I did a 23andMe DNA test after my husband and I got married. For me, I wanted to know health. For my husband, this was just for fun. I wanted to know where he was from and I wanted to know his genetic composition too.


At first, I only got fourth, fifth, maybe sixth degree cousins. I think my closest was a third cousin. 
I just ignored it really. But one day I was working and I was working from home at the time and I just got a notification from 23andMe. 
So I looked at it and then it said: 50% match. That's all it was. 
So far, I’d only gotten distant cousins and I would ask, “do you happen to know who your great grandpa is?” 
Like, what are the chances? So anyway, I was shocked! Some things are a blur on what exactly happened afterwards. But I was like, “Oh my goodness, what in the world?” I opened my profile and it said a 50% chance of a maternal link, so it was my birth mom that did the DNA test. It was wild. So I messaged her and then I received a message back from an organization called DNAConnect.Org. Volunteers had gone to China, collected my birthmom’s DNA sample, and uploaded it into 23andMe. So I got a message from DNAConnect.Org saying, “Hey, email us and we'll go through this process with you.” 
That was so mysterious. It was funky, but I was like, “Okay, done!”


But also, I have the blessing of knowing Mandarin, so I would message them in Chinese.


Wait, what? You’re fluent? That’s amazing! How and when did you learn?


I went to China when I was 12 to go find my roots, to see my orphanage, look at the police report, and try to figure out where I came from. But after I came back from that trip, I was like, I want to learn Mandarin. 
And my mom was like, “Done!” And somehow in our small little town, there's this cute girl that was Taiwanese and taught at the local college. So I was like 12, taking Chinese 101. and then there weren't enough people signed up to keep going. So we just hired her for private lessons. I did that for about a year and a half. 
Then I went to a summer camp at Brigham Young University in Utah. I live in Colorado. And it was called StarTalk and it was a three week long Chinese immersion program. 
So you learned a school year's worth of Mandarin in three weeks. 
It was a unit every other day. We were testing constantly and learning new things. So much fun. As soon as you enter the classroom, all you're doing is speaking Mandarin. So I did that two years in a row. Then, I moved to Utah and they offered Chinese at my high school, crazy enough, for one year. 
So I took Mandarin there. So I did a summer camp, school, another summer camp—and that was five total years or so of Mandarin. And then I went to college first semester, took some Mandarin there, and then I got called to serve a mission for my church. I went to New York City and lived in Chinatown and all my cute mission companions were from China or Taiwan. So for a year and a half, I studied Mandarin and I taught people about Jesus in Chinese and lived a very, very Chinese life, and it was a really cool experience! 
The highlight of my life, one of the highlights of my life!


I absolutely feel so blessed in a way. It's what I believe that God had set up my entire life for me to be prepared to probably meet them, and then also be able to communicate with them? That's amazing–only God's plan. It's really cool to be able to speak to them. My birth mom can't write, so she has to speak to me on WeChat and I can speak back. It doesn't happen very often to many adoptees who are in this situation. 
This is so special.


Going back a bit, my notification popped up and I messaged the DNA account in Chinese. They said, “email me.” 
So I emailed them. DNAConnect.Org is an organization that connects adoptees to their birth families. And then we ended up being in reunion. 
I called my husband, but he didn't answer. I was like, “I need you to answer!” I called my mom. She didn't answer. 
I was like, "What is happening?”


Anyway, my mom called me back and I said, “Mom, you're never going to believe this.” 
And she was like, “what?” I told her that I had a DNA match, my birth mother, and she gasped audibly so loud. It was just pure silence. I knew she was stunned, as stunned as I was. She said, "Well, tell me more,” and I was still in the middle of this process, but she was so excited for me. My mama has been nothing but supportive of me on this journey and I'm so grateful for that, because I know not everyone has that support system. Plus, it was so unexpected that I wasn't searching, but so crazy. So she has always been my number one supporter of that, and my husband is so wonderful. 



My older sisters were really excited for me, but I could tell they really wanted to find their own families too. They were like, “How did you do it? 
Tell me more.” I think they wanted it to be them. 
And there are a lot of parts of me that it's conflicting. I'm so excited to have them and I'm also like, man, I was probably one of the sisters that was okay not finding their birth families. I wish it had been a different sister that did, that probably needed it more.


We don't talk about it a lot. I think it's a little hard for them and that's totally valid. I think the earliest I've heard of an adoptee in reunion is someone born in 1990. And they're both 80 babies, like 86 and 87. 
So I don't know if it's in the cards, I pray for them all the time. I hope that one day, if that's what they want, that they'll find them.


I'm so grateful and I've just had so much and I wish that they had it. I really do, because I think it would heal a lot of them. I want that for them so badly.


Do you remember the story that you heard about how you came to be adopted to the orphanage? Was it the same story that your birth mother or birth parents had also shared with you?


Totally different. But I will explain it all. 
It's so, so different and I'm still figuring out what's true and what's not, but also, I'm never going to know fully. When I went to China, 
I was a 12-year-old. We did a little search, not for my birth parents, but just for where I came from. We visited my orphanage, and I remember the Chinese people there who were probably running the orphanage were so hesitant to show us inside, because we are American outsiders and they made sure there were no cameras. There were also no babies there from where they showed me. So I remember seeing inside the orphanage and being like, “wow, that's so crazy.” Like, “I lived here.” 
It was such a wild thing to experience.


From the police report, I'm from a little tiny village in Zhejiang. That's where my orphanage is. Then it was a two hour taxi cab and we ended up in this remote little village. We were with a friend who spoke Mandarin Chinese, so he was our translator at the time, and he went into this little pub and asked around.


All these cute boys, I remember, were just so intrigued. 
My dad, bless him, is not very tall. He's 5'9", but these boys were like, “oh my goodness, a white American person.” My mom’s a little shorter than I am and I’m 5'3". So it was just like, this was the first white people they've ever seen in their life and maybe ever will see in person. And my dad played basketball with them while our friend was asking about me. It was just really cute. 
I remember that very clearly. So our friend asked around about a baby being found 12 years prior, I was 12 at the time, so they're like, “does anyone remember this baby being left?” And somebody was like, “oh, I think I remember a baby being left on this lady's porch.” My dad and L, our friend, went to go find the porch and they're like, “this is where it is.” My mom and I were by the taxi and then they came back and they were like, “hey, we found the doorstep, where she was left.”


I remember walking on cobblestone streets. I wish I still had the pictures. I don't know what happened to them. I'm so sad. 
But anyway, there’s cobblestone streets and it’s a very humble living, and I just remember thinking, “Wow, I'm so grateful I didn't grow up here.” The opportunities I have in America with my family are innumerable compared to this. When we got there, this one guy said, “yeah, this is the doorstep.” They left and all these cute little boys were following us and we ended up knocking on the door and this cute little ancient, old lady, she just looked so old. 
I loved her. She answered the door and we were like, “Hey, do you remember a baby being left on your doorstep?” And so she said, “I do. 
My husband got her in the morning. We heard her crying and we brought her in, took care of her for a few days, and then nobody claimed her, so we called the police and they took her to the orphanage.” 
So that's what I thought my story was…and it still could be my story.


So this is where it gets funky. My birth family had put out an ad about 2011 or so, I think, within China (and a lot of birth parents did this) trying to find their kid. And in the ad was the story of what happened to me. So my parents, they took me to go get registered with the family planning government. When I was not quite a month old, but pretty close, my birth family took me to the registration office, and I guess the person who was there, taking care of my family, they said, "Hey, if you give me your daughter, the whole process will go faster and we'll be able to get it done." I was my birth parents' first child, which is rare. I have not found another oldest child, but if somebody reading this is, reach out to me. 
I would love to talk! So the official grabbed me and took me, and then they never brought me back.


Do you know if this was for the hukou?


I don't know. I have no idea. 
They worked for the government. I actually know two other girls who have been stolen too. One was stolen in my same town. Could have been my same person. 
Another girl was taken too, so it was not unusual. But it's not as rare as being abandoned, which is probably the majority of cases, but my case is not totally unheard of as well.



I think my birth parents were told that another family wanted me, and so the government just took me to give me to someone else. But my assumption is the story I was told could very much still be real. They somehow could have just dropped me off a couple hours away, just because they wanted to. And then I could have been found. I could have been with somebody else and then taken to the orphanage. 
Who knows? But as far as I know, I most likely was sold to the orphanage, because orphanages were profiting, were pretty much buying children, and then profiting off of international adoptions. In the harshest way, I was trafficked by the Chinese government, which is crazy.


Wow, so how do you even think about that? 
How are you supposed to even think about that?


Post- reunion, I've had so many conflicting feelings. It's been an interesting ride. 
I think that's something that maybe everybody goes through. I think you hear a lot of happy reunion stories, and a lot of people are really happy to find their family. I am so grateful and happy, but it wasn’t something I was searching for. So it just being thrown in my lap was a little crazy. 
I was six months pregnant with my first, so it was just an emotional time. I'm planning for this baby. 
Suddenly I have a birth family. It was almost Christmas, so it was like, “What is going on? What is happening?”



And so anyway, after my reunion process. In the beginning, it was so good. In a way, I got answers I'd been wondering about my whole life. 
Not to a point where it made me upset or anything. But I was just like, “oh, so what happened? 
Like, tell me.”


So I was looking for answers more than a relationship with my birth family. And I feel like now I am at a really good spot in wanting more of a relationship with my birth family. 
We were talking more and kind of getting to know each other a little more, but it's interesting getting to know people who have known about you their whole lives. And then me, who has known that I had a birth family, but I don't know, my life here was pretty good.


I didn't think about them as much as they probably thought about me, so that's been an adjustment for sure.


Do you know if you had any birth siblings?



I have three younger sisters and a younger brother.


Wow, that's so many people.


My family got so much bigger and I love it. 
I'm so grateful. My birth parents are still together, which is awesome. 
I have three younger sisters. I don't speak to them in English, 
I only speak to them in Mandarin. Occasionally I forget a word and I'll be like, “do you know that?” and she does, which is great.


So I was born in 96. I have a sister born in 97, another sister born in 98. And there's a little bit of a gap. I have a little sister born in 05 and a little brother in 06.


I grew up with so many siblings, so I always knew that I probably had a little brother because the One Child Policy is people wanting boys, but I love that I have so many birth sisters because it just shows me that I wasn't given up because I was a girl.



And I'm really grateful for that. I know that's like so many adoptees’ stories, but I am just grateful that that's not necessarily my part. Before knowing my birth family, I just accepted it, no matter what. I was like, “[I was left] because I was a girl.” 
And I was always okay with that. It's fine. I love being a girl. 
I love being a woman. That's a testament to me that my birth family did not care if I was a girl or a boy. Like, they were going to teach me, because I have three sisters and they were all brought up.

My birth family thought I was in China and that's a very common belief that I found from reunited adoptees.

I heard a story of somebody, where their birth parents gave them to an aunt and uncle, and they just put them up for adoption without telling the birth parents.

The birth family thought they were in the country this whole time and it's like, “no, you were not in the country.” You were somewhere else, all the way across the world.

Two of my birth sisters were teachers. One just left teaching, and now she's a tattoo artist. Like, yeah, she's super cool. 
And so, I can't even say anymore that I wouldn't have had an educated life. I used to think I wouldn't, you know, because of a situation, financials or whatever. I was also a girl. Did my birth parents even care about my education? But it's really cool learning about my siblings and talking with them. I actually, I mean, publicly and secretly, I actually really like talking to my birth siblings almost more than my birth parents, because there's something about a sibling relationship that's kind of cool. It's fun to get to know them and ask them what it was like growing up and different.


LOVE

How did you meet your significant other? 


He and I met at school in Salt Lake. We were living in Utah at the time.

He's from Pennsylvania and I was from a different part of Utah, but we were both in about the same area. 
I was just finishing up, so I did a two year applied associate's degree in social media marketing. He was doing a two year degree in business management. We actually met in our same religion class.

We were taking a class together owned by our church, and we needed to take religion classes every semester. 
We happened to be in the same class and it all worked out. It was almost my last semester. My last semester would have been in the summer, and he was coming back in the fall, so this was the last time we actually could have even met. I hadn't seen him the entire time we were there. He asked me out on a date on our last day of class.


I wasn't supposed to be in this class, but I ended up being in. So it was as if it were supposed to happen. We went on our first date, he left for the summer. He came back in September and we started dating consistently, and we just knew. 
We just knew it was right.


We've been together seven years, but married for a little over six. I have two cute little babies. I have a two and a half year old son, and then a half month old daughter.


How has being a mom changed or not changed your idea of love and family?


Oh, so much. 
Oh, my goodness, you have no idea the love that you are going to feel. I hope you experience it one day, and I hope everybody gets to experience this if they want to. 
It's just immeasurable. It is the greatest love that you can ever have. I love my husband, but my children, I love. 
I can't say “more,” but I gave birth to them. I went through a lot to get them here. It's really changed my outlook on parenting and being adopted. Knowing what happened, that I was stolen from my birth family, I had learned all this information and then had a baby three months later. Once I was reunited with my birth family, and I remember around the time he was about a month old, I was like, “wow, I cannot imagine you being taken away from me.” 
And I just sobbed.


And I was just like, this is so crazy. My poor birth mother. I cannot imagine all the pain and sadness she felt, because of how much joy and pure love and amazingness that you feel having a child. It has completely changed my outlook on how I parent and being as present and as good of a mom as I can. I know my birth mom didn't get to raise me how she wanted to and how she probably dreamed of her whole life, and then me being taken was just heartbreaking. So I do not take being a parent for granted. 
It's hard, but it is so, so, so worth it.


What would you say is your definition of family?


I think the definition of family is people who love you and who you love back. We've been raised with the idea that blood does not define family. So grateful for that because I have the best family here. I don't know about my Chinese family. I'm sure they're the best, too. 
I'm sure I am going to love them one day so much more than I do now. Family is people who love you and family comes in all shapes and sizes. 
They look so different and it can be filled with people who are not blood related at all. Then, I have my own little family, and I'm really grateful for that too. It's just so different being able to raise your own too, after being adopted. Like, 
I don't know. It's iso interesting. You finally have people that look like you. 



Like, I remember that was, like, so exciting to me, and I did not have babies just so I have people that look like me, just to make that clear.


I promise! I want kids to have kids. How exciting it is that we've grown up our whole lives without people who look like us, but I think I stand by my first definition. But boy, is it fun to have people related it to you by blood? It's so cool.

Do you have a takeaway message?

A key takeaway is that it's okay to have such mixed feelings, because I am learning more about other people's adoption experiences and journeys. Every journey looks so, so, so different. And in general, I'd say it's okay to process it in a way that's best for you. 



For me, it has taken three years to get to where I am, being okay with reunion and how I feel towards my birth family, but it's been a lot of a lot of emotions. I'm a pretty positive person. 
But there were a lot of nights where I was just partly angry, not even angry at them, but partly at myself for thinking I needed to process things a certain way and then just like.


A good message would be to take things one day at a time and process things however you need to process it. 
But especially for adoptees in reunion, who may not be expecting it like I was, just feel all the feels. 
I think when you're searching, you're prepping a little bit better, but I was not prepped. I was not prepared at all. And it's okay to only want information at a certain time, and it's okay to then start a relationship with your family gradually, whatever feels right for you. 



If you could go back in time and tell your five-year-old self something, what would it be?


A message I would give to my younger self, who was wondering where I came from, I would tell that part of me that it all works out. I know that's so general, but my five-year-old, six-year-old self would be so proud of who I am today. And who I've become: the mother I am, the wife I am, the person I am in general.