The Altar of Abandonment, DNAConnect Match #99

The One Child Policy, or the One Child Suggestion as I like to joke seeing as even though the policy was at times brutally enforced, it wasn't always literal and tons of adoptees have found out they have multiple sisters living in China...anyway, the One Child Policy (OCP) affected many people in my age group.

I'm currently in graduate school and historically, American graduate school for STEM fields runs on 50% international students, mostly from Asian countries like India, Korea, Japan, and China. I knew about "hidden children" in China, those that had to hide for a bit or a long while under the One Child Policy because they were not the first born, but after talking with Simeng Dai, I realized there were more nuances about this "hidden" phenomenon than I had thought of before. For instance, obtaining fake documentation, the hukou, is relatively easy and many children were able to attend school with false documents. However, some things, such as studying abroad to an American undergraduate school require real documents, but apparently one can buy a real hukou when they are even twenty years old--become an international student at American undergrad and then apply for a green card.

Traditionally, the story went that hidden children were mostly girls--then again, the story also went that girls were being abandoned by the dozen, when in reality, the international adoption program from the very beginning (we're talking 1992) was in-part fueled by sourcing babies and trafficking them for profit. So...who can really say if the "story" we learn is really real? 

In the time I've been in graduate school, I have gotten to know one of the researchers in the other lab better. She's an international student who already has her PhD and is working as a researcher now. We went out for coffee just for fun, and I had absolutely no intention of talking about my "dark and depressing" past--but she was curious about where I was from in China, and it just sort of spilled out--

"I'm adopted."

I began by saying that I wasn't sure how much she was aware of the One Child Policy leading to international adoptions and shared that more than 81,000 Chinese adoptees lived in the United States alone. She was amazed the number was that large. Then, casually, she mentioned "Oh yeah, I remember the One Child Policy was very strict when I was younger. When I was five, my mom had my brother and he had to go into hiding for a bit." You know, as one does. 

Trevor Noah's "Born a Crime" seems mundane in comparison to the nation-wide child hiding phenomenon that was China in the 1990's and early 2000's. She shared what I already had learned, that sometimes the policy was so strict that people were lost their jobs as punishment. "Everyone wants a larger family, so some people risked it because having one child is just...lonely. But the economics...if you can't afford food, then..." 

I didn't mean to bog down the casual coffee small talk I had anticipated, but she was very understanding and sympathetic. She wanted to know if my parents now treat me well. She was concerned I wasn't getting enough Chinese food and told me where I could get some. I reassured her on both accounts that I was fine, that I grew up in a diverse neighborhood and I was plied with plenty of "authentic" Chinese experiences and food. It was touching that she cared so much and she was also almost ten years older, so I felt she was motherhen-ing me, rather than being judgmental. "I'm sorry that happened to you," she said, after telling her that I was initially told I was abandoned due to the One Child Policy. 

"Don't be, it's not true anyway," I said, and wasn't that a strange thing to share with confidence.

What happened to so many families because of China's hairbrained scheme to control women's bodies is not understood well be so many people. I feel like I am scraping the surface each time I accidently stumble upon yet another story. Growing up Chinese, adopted, and adopted from China were normal for me. Within my school district, my neighborhood, my community, I was normal. It is as I've been growing up outside my community that I've had to deal with so much ignorance. Whether it's just plain racist like a random woman shouting "fucking chink" on my way to work, or ignorance coming from my friend "Urgh, white people shouldn't adopt at all because they're white saviors. Just look at Angelina Jolie!" despite knowing many of these Chinese-adoptive-families personally and knowing we're just normal families and nothing like the archetype of either the religious crusaders or the white saviors, or just awkward comments like "Are you...together...?" "NO. He's my FATHER."

When I was little, I had no control over the narrative of the "abandonment story" and now that I am older, I have also no control over the narrative of the "human trafficking story." As DNA evidence rolls in, painting in the picture of what happened in China, I am starting to see that almost everything happened, every complicated twist and turn, everything! You cannot summarize this. You cannot simplify this. And furthermore, I care deeply what happened to me as an infant. Being a potential human trafficking "victim" matters quite a lot to me! Knowing I was tricked into being relinquished rather than abandoned, matters quite a lot to me! 

But that isn't for the news cycle to judge for me.

The news sees me as a displaced puzzle piece, fallen accidently off the boat called "China" and they want to see me in the context of a little lost log, drifting away on a current. They don't want to see that I am fully grown adult, that I have ideas and a life and career goals. While I want a birthfamily reunion with all my heart, I cannot help but cringe and feel utterly disgusted by the depravity of our news cycle to force adoptees to have reunions on camera, often before they are fully ready emotionally to have a reunion at all. The audience might feel that justice was served that a kidnapped child be "returned" home for a visit. But the reality is that the adoptee, like me, was just living her life, going to college, and was mercilessly hunted down by a news reporter for "good content" and ad revenue, yanked from her life and thrust onto the international stage...Her private family affair was now on everyone's television station, and even if she declined to be on tv, the story was already out there. Her name was known, open to the scrutiny of the internet. I had second-hand embarrassment just imagining how she could even return to school the next day.

As an adoptee, I feel that so much of my perception of my self-value and worth has been artfully carved for me by Chinese government propaganda and by the marketing departments of international adoption agencies. The false narrative of thousands of unwanted, healthy baby girls being dumped on the streets, does nothing but instill a deeply ingrained sense of worthlessness in adoptees. To learn that this was a nice cover up story for the commodification of human lives is very stunning...but that still doesn't mean I want neoliberal fascists to scream in my face "YOU WERE TRAFFICKED. YOUR PARENTS BOUGHT YOU." Because 1) That is incredibly rude and 2) My parents gave a mandatory donation to an orphanage...that is not the same as purchasing a human and 3) Who the fuck do you think you are to bully me about anything? You must live a very sad life to get your rocks off by harassing me.

DNAConnect has just reached 99 matches. I made an at-home documentary last year, and so there were approximately 72 matches at this time last year. It is simply astounding that so many lives have been changed, so many dreams come true. I live in a maelstrom of hope and depression. I want my birthmother so badly and still believe I am not enough, that she doesn't want to find me.

You don't understand that the abandonment story was like our cross, that the center of this Chinese adoption religion wasn't Jesus but the story of abandonment. As a child, adoptee introductions always went like this: What was your Chinese name? Your orphanage? Your finding spot? 

I was found under a tree!

At the school!

By the police station!

Even now, at twenty three, I meet adoptees and they say, "I was abandoned at the train station. Where were you found?" because they haven't heard the news. They aren't aware that the story has changed. They don't know their orphanage was implicated in multiple trafficking circles, that babies were moved hundreds of miles away for profit. They don't know. They regurgitate casually that they were ABANDONED.

Even though we were told birthparents had "no choice," the story of the One Child Policy implied that there was a choice. One Child Policy. One Child. They kept one and it wasn't you. That is a "choice." Even an abandonment implies a decision was made. They abandoned you. They didn't hide you.

The reality, however, is that many people did not have a choice. The baby was taken from the birthmother at birth and then the doctor said "the baby died," and sold the baby to the orphanage. The police took babies and sold them to orphanages, groups of police, all to take a baby the family tried desperately to hide. And honestly, there are so many families with more than one child way before the policy was lifted. People try to rationalize this by citing the oft quoted exceptions of being in the countryside, being an ethnic minority, or having the first child be a girl...but the truth is, the policy was enforced very unequally and very inconsistently. There is no simple truth, no simple rule, no simple conclusion. You will find "exceptions" everywhere you turn.

And so...I was raised worshiping the abandonment story, clutching it close because my finding spot was my one piece of truth (false) connecting me to my birthmother. I fantasized about her leaving me there. Did she cry? Did she say goodbye? And all these heritage tours with finding spot visits...cons. All cons. If the finding spot falls, what is left? I've been raised like a vine, wrapping around this story of worthlessness and abandonment, no matter how much my parents said "no choice" and "placed you lovingly in a place where you'd be found." The adoption community used the word "abandoned" and that is what I associated with myself at a young age. So when you take away the mold, what's left? Even knowing I was likely taken under false pretenses, tricked against my birthmom's will, what's left of me? When you remove the mold, the shape remains. It has taken many years to reorganize my sense of worth and even then, you cannot "fix" it, and it feels like a cruel joke to know that the factual element of such a conclusion isn't even real. 

Most adoptees, not just Chinese adoptees, feel worthless, but they weren't all raised on the abandonment story. It adds another layer.

So even knowing what I know now, it doesn't help. Even if my birthmom told me exactly what happened, I don't know if it would help. I think it would be anticlimactic. I would hope all my beliefs of worthlessness would fade away--but the reality is that they would not. This blog, which I began in 2019, was mostly based on the premise that adoptees are conditioned to continue to feel worthless. That society has trained the average human to tell adoptees they are "lucky" to even be alive and have a home, because we are owed so much less than children with parents who "wanted" them. It is an archaic cruelty and I wrote this blog specifically because I believed in innate worth by virtue of one's existence. And yet, I don't know if I will ever be complete if I do not find my birthmom. It is an unspeakable cruelty to tell adoptees they were abandoned when that is far from the truth and it angers me when I see adoptive parents spout these lies like they've been rehearsing for months, all because they've never bothered to look anything up, and refuse to believe the truth when they see it.

I am eagerly awaiting match #100 and planning meticulously my first return trip to China with my parents, and I feel that I might burst with emotion.