Sky Series: Episode 6

 

Date: Sep 26, 2026 | Weather: Stormy | Orphanage: Yueyang | Province: Hunan | Age: 31 | Chinese Zodiac: Wood Pig | Matched: 2019, 2025** | Location: USA

** 2019: match to her birth sister who was also adopted to America, 2025: match to a non-adopted birth cousin who did 23andMe whose family moved from China to California. 2025: Nanchang Project helped connect her with her non-adopted birth sister who lives in China

Congratulations on your DNA match by Nanchang Project! Can you tell me more about when you matched with your birth family?

I matched with my biological sister in 2019.

Oh, my goodness.

Yes. I don't know how much detail you want, but I'll give a condensed version.

All the details.

So I was going into graduate school, and then I got the notification. I'm like, “Oh, on 23andMe, here's your biological sister.”

Her [adoptive] mom messaged me because at that time since we was managing the DNA account.

Is your birth sister also adopted?

Yeah. So, technically, that's the first match. But if we're talking about my birth family, then my second cousin on my birth mom's side showed up in 23andMe back in January of 2025. I hadn't checked my 23andMe account in a few months because I was like, “Oh, I'm sick of all these sixth cousins. It's not leading anywhere.” But then I finally logged in, and my cousin was in the system.

I reached out to Cassidy Sack from Nanchang Project just because we had met each other at the Chinese Adoptee Conference in Philadelphia.

I had helped her when they were in Yueyang and was sending Nanchang Project people who had messaged me in the past, looking for their lost children. So I think over time, she and I just kept in contact.

I had waited a month because I messaged my cousin on 23andMe back in January. She wasn't on the app anymore. It said she had not logged in since six months ago. I'm like, “Oh, my God, of course it happens during the time that I don't check my app!”

But anyway, Cassidy used her connections to call my cousin, and my cousin picked up the phone. Because my birth cousin lives out in California, Cassidy called and said, “Hey, there's a cousin match in 23andMe and they're just trying to contact you,” and my birth cousin was like, “Oh shit, this is like a scam.”

She took a look at the 23andMe app and then she messaged me back, and the next day we hopped on a Google Meet!

She said, “Oh, hey, I talked to our other cousin, who is out in California, and her parents are actually coming from your hometown.”

Our cousin's parents were able to help them determine who would be the birth family that gave up kids, and then I think after that they were like, “Oh, yeah, we found your potential family.”

So then I reached back out to Cassidy, and she sent out a DNA test to my birth sister, my older sister, and she did the DNA test. I think this was the first week in March of 2025, and then April 20th, the match came back confirmed.

What an adventure! This is so cool. When you got the confirmation that the birth sister did the DNA test, it came back as a match. How did that feel for you? What thoughts did you have also?

Well, I think prior to waiting for the results, we had all communicated through WeChat. So my cousin made a small group the two cousins out in California. Then they put me in a group chat with Cassidy, their searcher Wendy who does the DNA testing, and then my older sister in China.

But in the meantime, before we got the DNA test confirmation, I had already been talking to my potential older birth sister.

She was like, “I will tell you everything once the DNA is confirmed,” but we were still chatting on the side as if we had already matched.

When Cassidy told me, “It's your sister.”

I was like, “Oh, thanks for telling me.” It felt very—It didn't feel real, or maybe it felt real to the point of, “Oh, I had already established communication with my family.” So hearing the actual result, I was like, “Oh, yeah.” Subconsciously, I already knew. That was my family.

But of course, I didn't want to overly invest in case it was a false match.

In the end, I was like, “Oh, well, even if it's not my family, I also have other family members that I can connect with.”

So I don't think it was this big hurrah, like, “Yeah, you did it.” It was more just like, “Uh, okay. Wait, great. Now I can actually breathe and learn more about my family.”

Can you tell me about your family members?

Yes. So my older sister is turning 33 this year. And then it's me, so I'm the second.

And then five years later, my sister was born, but she also has autism. And she had gone to live with a different family in China. And then I think she came back to our family when she was 12 years old.

I don't know the exact birth order, but it might have been my sister (also adopted) out in Arizona.

And then we have another sister in my father's village, who was adopted out. And then I have my younger brother, who's, I think he's 19 now, but he's in college.

Wow. How many people was that?

Six.

Woah! So how does that feel?

Yeah. I mean, I grew up an only child, adopted.

So I think it definitely was like, “Oh, wow.” I hope that I actually look like those people because I've always had those questions, as probably every adoptee does, of like, “Oh, who do I look like?”

But when I got the pictures, I didn't look like any of them. It's crazy. I think even my birth mom, so she's the oldest, and then she has two other sisters. I think I kind of look like a blend of all three of them, but they also look drastically different.

So I'm like, “Okay, maybe that's just how our family is,” in terms of not having a strong resemblance.

So, yes, that's the nuclear family.

How do you feel?

Yeah, I mean, after meeting them in February of 2026, I've talked to them pretty frequently, and sometimes we'll hop on video calls, even though we can't really speak the same language. We'll just stare at each other and try our best using Google Translate to talk to each other.

So I think it feels like a very close relationship despite the language barrier.

My older sister who lives in China, she's the one who speaks English, so it's really easy to talk to her because she did all of the translating once we went to China in February.

But I guess I should also mention—my sister who was also adopted to another part of the United States. Her parents are also fluent in Mandarin. So when we all went to China together, we had many translators.

Wow, that's amazing. How was it? Well, how was it initially meeting your birth sister (also adopted) from the United States?

A: Yeah. So it was a little strange because when we initially matched, her family was already planning this vacation out in Asia. They went to several different countries.

And they're like, “Oh, if you want to come in on the tail end, we'll go to China and do the whole search.”

But my sister didn't end up going on that trip. So I just randomly showed up in China, and my boyfriend at that time had come with me, and we all met at Changsha, Hunan and that was the first time we'd ever met in person.

For more context, we have differing political views, but I figured, I need this opportunity to really see if there could be a relationship there, despite our differences.

That sounds very difficult to navigate.

Yeah. And it's gotten more complicated as time has gotten by.

I think it was fine that my sister didn't go, given the severity of her intellectual disability, because I did end up going. So my sister’s adoptive parents and I went to China in November, right before the pandemic hit. And then I met my adopted birth sister in January, out in Arizona, and that was the first time I met my birth sister.

It was a very overwhelming experience where she just wanted to be next to me all the time. She was always hugging me. I get that probably from her experience that was her trying to connect with me. So I think it was trying to define a balance of letting her express herself in the way that she knows, me trying to be understanding, and her ability to communicate like this. It's nonexistent.

She can have small conversations, but the texting is usually like, “Hi, hi, how are you? Good.” And then she'll send me random photos of her that she makes with AI, or she'll send me Disney YouTube videos. And I'm just like, I don't know.

I've already had to, I guess, process the grief of that relationship back in 2019, realizing “Oh, I'm not going to have a close sister bond in the way that other siblings might have.”

It's really illustrative of how people don't always know what they'll find on the other end. And even when we do sometimes know, it may not be what we expected or envisioned or hoped for in some way.

I was just wondering, was there a certain story in your head or narrative of what your parents had told you about how you came to be in America and in their family? Did that match up really well with what your birth family also recalled?

So my adoptive parents here were told that I was left on the front doorstep of the orphanage. You know, the cookie-cutter story that's told to adoptive parents.

But my adoptive parents here, they've always been upfront with me about being adopted, as long as I was able to comprehend what it was. So there was never a question in my mind that I was adopted.

Are they Asian?

No, my dad's Portuguese and a bunch of other mixed things. And then my mom's French Canadian. So they're both white, but they went through adoption because they tried to have kids for 10 years and couldn't biologically.

I don't know if I've ever intentionally searched, because in 2019, when we went to China, that's a whole story within itself, but cutting it down: we went to the orphanage. The security guard was like, “Why are you here?” And then they saw me, and they're like, “Oh.”

And then this random person walking by was like, “Oh, hey, I know the orphanage director.” She called her up, and the orphanage director came down and gave us a tour of the orphanage.

I got to see my file. She created documents for me to put my DNA in the Chinese police database over there. That was closure for me, and like, “Okay, if it happens, it happens. If it doesn't, it doesn't.”

I had also met my foster mother, the one who took care of me, which we’ll get into. My foster mom had put a card with her name and her two sons' names in my clothing when she gave me to my adoptive parents.

I was able to use that information to connect with her and have people—I think it was the ICSA. I don't know, just some random person outside of Nanchang Project who is also part of helping adoptees connect with their birth families.

They were able to locate my foster family on WeChat, and I talked to her son, and he was like, “Oh yeah, my mom doesn't have WeChat.” But we had coordinated, like, “Hey, I'm going to be in China this time. If you're around, I'd love to see you.”

My sister's adoptive parents in Arizona had actually hopped on a three-way call with my foster mom, but because of the dialect, it was so hard to get a full translation.

But then, after going to the orphanage, being treated to a meal by that random stranger and the orphanage director, she said, “Oh, I know your foster mom. Do you want to go meet her?” So she called them, and they're like, “Oh yeah, here's the address.” The guy who randomly walked by was like, “I'll go with you as a translator.”

I met my foster mom in person. She gave the whole story of, “Oh, I wanted to keep you, but because I already had two sons, I couldn't.”

She had taken care of other babies, and I guess it was kind of alternating who would be in her home and out of her home in the orphanage.

I had posted on Red Note the whole 20-minute conversation that my boyfriend recorded at the time of meeting my foster mom, or the whole translating. And my birth family saw it, not before the DNA match with my cousin, but afterwards, once we established that, like, you're actually family.

So my birth family added me on Red Note and watched the video, but at that time, they didn't know, or I guess they didn't speak up in the origin story of how I even came to be adopted.

But essentially, my birth mom moved to a different location where she gave birth to me. I stayed with her for 30 days, and then my cousin on my dad's side of the family was trying to locate a family for me to go to.

And that's where my foster mom comes in, but I think it was her sister who showed up and said to my birth family, “Oh yeah, we'll take care of her.” But my birth family was not aware that they already had two sons, or else they wouldn't even have adopted me to them. I was born in October, so I stayed with my foster mom until November, but then I was adopted out by March to my adoptive family.

So my birth family had already always told the foster mom, if our daughter ever wants to know who we are, you have our names, and you know where we live. Here's some clothes. But my foster mom never disclosed that information to us.

So when you met your foster mom in 2019, she didn't disclose that she knew your birth family and how you came to be in the orphanage? So you didn't really go from birth parents to orphanage and then orphanage to foster family. It went birth parents to foster family to orphanage.

Yeah. So my birth family didn't really discuss further details about all of that until after I left China in February. And that's when my birth dad got really mad about it, because my birth parents wouldn't have given me to my foster mom knowing that situation, because their hope was always for me to stay in China.

So my family's trying to tell my birth father that it wouldn't really help the situation if you try to show up angry at the foster family’s doorstep, just because they probably had a lot of influence in this whole Hunan Scandal situation.

So, yeah, I think it was just very strange that, I guess, even though they knew all the information and they watched the video, they didn't really discuss it until after they met me.

I feel at peace with it though, now, but I think it was a lot of emotional intensity following the in-person visit.

Yeah, of course. So 2019, you've already matched with your adoptive sister here. You both go to China to meet—well, no, you go alone. You meet your foster family. You talk with your foster family's son on WeChat. The foster family doesn’t tell you anything that they know, even that they know a lot and who your birth parents are. Then you went back to China in person with your sister from Arizona and her adoptive parents in February of 2026?

So my boyfriend now, he came with me.

Different boyfriend?

Yes, different boyfriend. Which we'll probably get into the whole love, family section of that story. Yeah, we went to Hong Kong a few days before to just adjust. My sister and her adoptive family met us there. We did the whole Disneyland and just being tourists to adjust to the time zone. And then we spent five days in my birth family's home in China. They had showed us prior that they renovated all the rooms. They put in an American toilet, so we felt comfortable staying with them.

Do you know if your parents were really supportive of you making all these connections? Did their support matter to you?

My mom here, her initial reaction to my adoptive sister in Arizona who I matched with in 2019, was, “Are you sure? How do you know that this is real?” She had a whole skepticism of DNA.

That didn't necessarily take me by surprise, knowing who she is as a person.

To clarify, both my adoptive father and mother here have given me unconditional love and have been completely supportive of anything that I do in life along the way.

So I think a lot of it was coming from fear and insecurity, and they are all feelings, which they definitely talked about more as I've expanded along in my journey.

But I think that my mom here has talked a lot about feeling like I'm replacing them with the birth family. I was like, “I don't know. That's not how it is. You're the one who's raised me my whole life. You're your mom.” But she's also struggled a lot with whenever I'd say, “Oh, you know, like my mom in China.”

She's like, “Birth mom.”

I was like, “Okay. I see that it's a sensitive labeling.”

But I think she's gotten better with that too, because she's like, “Oh yeah, you know, I've thought about it and I want them to call me adoptive mom.”

So she's just in her own journey of her experience, which I know her upbringing impacts a lot of her own feelings, since her family was never the type to be warm, fuzzy. They never said, “I love you.”

Okay, so we're going to do a little full circle here. How is life growing up? Were there other adoptees around? Other Asians?

I grew up in Massachusetts in one of the beach towns right before the bridge to Cape Cod. I think I could count how many Asian people were in there on my hand, maybe both hands.I did try to keep in contact with a few of the girls that I was adopted with. There were ten of us.

One was like half an hour away from me in Plymouth. Good old Plymouth Rock, where the pilgrims came. The other ones were farther than 30 minutes, so that was definitely hard. The families that all traveled together, they tried to do reunion gatherings, and we definitely did as babies up until toddlers, but then it kind of fizzled out. In high school, there was one with four of us, and then I've only really maintained consistent contact with the girl who was from Plymouth.

I feel like I avoided everything relating to Asian culture, in general, in my childhood. My parents would try to take me to China Children's Day, which was a celebration of Chinese culture, and I told my mom, I think when I was four or five, “I don't look like these people.”

I had issues ever since a kid with my identity, but I definitely also had a lot of abandonment issues. I think a lot of it was just suppressing the culture, assimilating, getting through, whether this was subconscious or conscious.

But I never really had curiosity or passion to be connected to my Chinese culture. I think that even extended until my college years, and even now, I feel like I'm still kind of trying to understand what feels right in terms of thinking how I could connect to my Chinese heritage.

Was there any acknowledgment of the fact, like, “Hey, we're all adopted” with your adoptee friends? Or was it just something known? And was there ever any time where people felt like asking deeper questions about how people felt about it versus keeping it a little more surface, like, “Oh, what's your orphanage name?”

I don't remember any conversations like that at all. I think when we did meet up, we played dress-up, or if it was for a birthday party. There was never any discussion around us being adopted. I think it was just known. I think those deeper conversations about it happened in college and later on.

I think if I had those more meaningful conversations, it would have been something like, in my mind. But I think, yeah, once we were in college, there was just more space to go, like more reflecting or life experiences that really affected us in thinking more about our identities and being able to relate on that level.

But I think at least the two or three girls, maybe I've talked to two other girls from our group, quarterly, once a year.

They're just so involved in the phase of their life that identity or adoption, it comes up briefly, but not to the point where we're deep diving into feelings.

Was there a time where you ever felt your identity start to shift, or have you felt pretty consistent about maybe not wanting to engage as much in Chinese culture and then gradually or suddenly thinking about, “Hey, maybe there's something more I want to explore here”?

I feel like I've been—this is not the right word, but it's just what I'm going to describe it. I've been in a privileged situation where I have not encountered negative comments about my identity or people telling me, “Oh, you're not Chinese,” or stuff like that, because I've always been in suburban Massachusetts when I went to college.

I feel like a lot of it was more of the internalizations of how I felt about myself. So people didn't have to say it. I was already saying it for me.

Because I went to a local state university for undergrad. And one year I had joined the Asian Student Union, which just brought together all of the foreign exchange students and then the handful of other Asians who were coming from abroad.

I was dating the president of the Asian Student Union, so when we broke up, I stopped going to that. But even then I was like, “Oh, I wonder if these people are judging me because I don't know anything about Chinese culture, or can relate to them in the way that they've had their own life experiences.”

But I think throughout childhood and adulthood, I didn't even celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival that just happened. I never really celebrated Chinese New Year. Nothing relevant to my culture.

So I feel like connecting to my first sister in Arizona, I think that was the more in-depth connection I felt because her family knows how to make jiaozi, and she was teaching me how to do that.

And then meeting my birth family, I'm like, “Oh shit, I should probably know more.” I don't.

So yeah, I think there’s a lot of judgment for myself of like, “Oh, I don't feel Chinese enough to really be a representative of our birth family,” even though I understand logically the circumstances of this is just the way it is of being an adopted person. I didn’t necessarily have parents who pushed the culture and they were kind of going at my pace of whether I was comfortable or not comfortable with going to events related to my culture.

So yeah, I think now in this part of my life, I definitely feel more of the push to be connected to my Chinese roots and background, but I've never had those questions of, “Am I Chinese American? Am I Asian American?”

I've always just told people when they ask me. It never is more defined because I've never had those experiences where maybe people question my identity or say like, “Oh, well, if you were a Chinese—”

So it's been not escalated or a hot topic.

So if I got this right, you'd say you're in a mostly Caucasian suburban area throughout your life. And then when you say you haven't really gotten comments, does that mean primarily you haven't gotten a lot of comments including white people judging you and Asian people judging you?Is there more fear from one side or the other? But since you grew up in a primarily white area, it wasn’t the Asian people who weren’t there making those comments.

Yeah.

Okay, so that's kind of right?

Yes. Nailed it.

I think it was more into adulthood where I started to experience exposure to life experiences where I'm like, “Oh shit, other people are confirming what I believe about myself.”

So I did go to grad school at VU, but it was the year of 2019–2020, so it was during the pandemic.

I was taking public transit and a grandma come up to me speaking in Chinese. I'm like, “I don't know what you're saying. I'm so sorry.”

I think that was a really defining moment.

One of the dates that I had gone on with a Portuguese guy was like, “Oh, you're a bad Asian. You don't know how to use chopsticks.”

Then I remember in high school, we all had to do like a “Who are we?” presentation. And I remember putting my photo up there and just sobbing in front of the class. I'm like, “Oh, God, this is terribly embarrassing.”

Like, things I've never really had to confront so directly, like, about my identity and about being adopted.

It was senior year. We just talked about our family origins. I just remember it was in my business class, which seems very weird, but everyone did their whole life story presentation.

I think those were like the three memories that come to mind, where identity was more of, “Ah.”

 But I definitely went to therapy in grad school when I got the DNA connection to my sister because I was like, “Yeah, I feel like I'm going through a quarter-life crisis.”

Do you feel like whatever you felt internally, could you describe that a bit? Just because I know a lot of people probably have gone through similar things, or it sounds the same, but it's actually quite different. And so I want to hear how you would describe yourself.

I'll describe it from, I guess, during the DNA match to reunion with my birth family, because I feel like that's probably the most intense part of the inner monologue that I have with myself.

I think there's just like a lot of survivor's guilt. That's the best way to describe it.

Are you the survivor?

Yeah. Because I feel like in the adoption community, so many people have put in so much time and effort to do searches for their family, and they don't find them, or they're still searching.

And for me, it's like, I have that picture-perfect experience that most adoptees might want. I'm not trying to make assumptions, but the way that my reunion has gone, it's been so positive.

And so healing in the sense of my birth family acknowledging my abandonment issues and giving me words of comfort and validation of what I'm feeling in the moment.

My aunt even, when she came to visit, she wrote me this long-ass letter in Mandarin, and then she sent me the English translation on WeChat.

But I just think, to go back to your question of the feelings that I had about myself, as much as I feel healed from my abandonment issues, I still feel like I'm holding myself to high expectations to be more—I don't want to say Chinese—but to take more initiative.

Because I think of my birth family, they don't necessarily have the time to learn English. So a lot of guilt comes with not taking the time to learn the language.

I'm like, my brain's so fried because of the profession that I do, so having to dedicate time to learn the language is something I want to do. I do Duolingo, but that doesn't do shit.

But I think it's just a lot of, “I am in enough of a privileged situation, so I should be the one doing the work to be more in touch with my culture.”

And then with the whole part of, I guess, knowing how to cook Chinese food. I don't know how to do that stuff from scratch. I'm sure I could follow a recipe. That's not difficult.

But I feel like the nuance of learning it from your birth family, learning it from someone who is Chinese, it's so different than just printing out a recipe online.

So I feel like growing—or still living, because I still live with my parents at home—living in a suburban community, I have to put in the time and effort to travel to Boston.

Do I go to Chinatown to be immersed in the culture, or at least make time to do specific activities where I could learn more about my culture? I haven't done that. I haven't done that my whole life. So I think it's just like survivor's guilt. People dream of doing this or they push themselves to be part of the culture. And here I am kind of content. Well, I'm not content, but a form of content of not doing more, even though I should be doing more. But the “should” is me putting the pressure on myself.

It's still this very in-between phase of not knowing what is enough or what is—when am I being too complacent with my identity or my culture, who I am as a person? So I feel like there's a lot of conflicted thoughts going on in my brain.

It definitely sits more in the back while I'm at work, because I have to, but on the weekends I'm like, “Oh fuck, it's already Sunday and I didn't do anything really related to my culture.” So I guess it's a lot of pressure that I put on myself.

How's love going?

Yes. So my current boyfriend lives in Somerville. So that's where I am now.

So definitely gives me more opportunity to connect to culture. But we've been together for, well, at the end of this month, it'll be 16 months together. We met on Hinge.

He's met my birth family. He's met my family here, the U.S. I met his mom recently. They live in South Carolina, like his family does.

It takes more planning. But yeah, we are at a good spot in our relationship.

Definitely the next move would be us living together. But I think a lot of that is just dependent on if he has to move down to South Carolina, then I will go, or if not, then I will come up to Boston. Hopefully, the spring or summer of this year. Yeah, I mean, I think I definitely see my anxiety and abandonment issues come out, even though this is the healthiest relationship of my—it's definitely gotten better over time. I'm not actively nervous. My nervous system isn't as on edge. But I 100% know it stems from the adoption trauma, but also past relationships that I've had.

Do you identify with a particular attachment style? Would you say stuff about your adoption has ever affected the relationship? Like, in general, maybe not specifically? Or do you think of them as quite far apart and there's not really a big overlap here?

Well, I definitely have anxious attachment within all relationships. But I think a lot of it is the fear that they're going to leave me or I'm not good enough. So I think that was more intense at the beginning of our relationship, and on top of distance, since he lives in Boston and I live like an hour south. That was hard adjusting to like, “What are you doing?” when we're not together.

And he also travels a lot for work. So he's flying to Chicago. He's never in one place for a longer period of time. But I feel like his communication has definitely been the part that helps calm myself down. He'll call me, we'll call in the morning, he'll FaceTime on my lunch break. We'll FaceTime every night. He sends me updates during the day. So I feel like that's kind of helped me unlearn the trust issues that I've developed in my other relationships. So overall, I think he's just been willing to help me with my anxiety and saying it's us against my anxiety.

So it always feels like a team, that it's never going to break us apart.

Yeah. I love that. What do you say—if somebody else were reading this and they're like, “Damn, I feel like I'm in the same situation. I have the same feelings”—have you found that there's anything in particular that has helped for you, or that you would give advice on?

I go to therapy, girl. Go to therapy.

I've written in an app on the phone all of the wonderful, positive experiences that we've had throughout our relationship and kind of really reminding myself, like, “Okay, this is someone who's consistently shown up for you in all these different ways.”

Just because things change, even though I get that visible, like, “Oh my God, something's off, something's wrong,” it still shows up, but I think it's still less intense.

So I think it's just a lot of practice, and the more that we go through certain life experiences and nothing happens, it really tells my body it's okay to give me little thoughts. They can also go.

Thank you so much for being on. I usually ask for a takeaway message at the end of these. Do you have a takeaway message for anyone reading this?

Clarity has been transformative in releasing the years of existing in the unknown.

Note about the cover photo: A nor'easter hit the northeast of the United States around Sep 25, 2026. The beautiful sky hours before the storm was captured from Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey. Episodes 6 and 8 took place on Sep 26 and Sep 27, respectively, so their cover photos feature the pre-nor’ester skies.