Greatness: Chinese Adoptees in the Tokyo Olympics 2021

This year marks what seems to be a record number of Chinese adoptees competing at the 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games.

Morgan Holder - gymnastics (USA)

Maggie MacNeil- swimmer (Canada) South China Morning Post article

Li Xia - ice hockey (adopted by USA couple, but will compete for China)

Iker (?) - gymnastics

Many of the news stories regurgitate mainland Chinese news articles which must toe the "official" and falsified story of thousands of unwanted, abandoned baby girls lining China's roadsides/hospitals/finding spot in the 1990's and 2000's due to the One Child Policy. 

The discerning reader might realize that censorship is very much alive, as is ignorance, and might question then why human trafficking took place all over China to meet international demand for Chinese adoptees due to the falsified story of child abandonments. For instance, why in the years before my orphanage joined the trafficking ring were there only twenty adoptions a year and then immediately after joining the trafficking ring, shot up to over 100 a year, and then in the years directly after the Hunan scandal broke onto the international stage in 2005, went back down to single digits? And why was this pattern repeated over and over and over again all over China?

But I digress, back to the Olympics.

I personally know fifty Chinese adoptees in-person, that is, and know or know of many more online. There is not a lot of overlap between the adoptees I know in real life and those that populate the adoptee groups on Facebook/social media. I mean to say that you cannot allow the internet to become the representative "adoptee."

I know myself and my own experiences, but I don't dare to generalize to everyone, but maybe there are people out there like me who think the way I do. Who knows?

My academics were my athletics. Growing up, I was exposed to many cultures and yes, even Chinese people, some of whom were newer immigrants and some of whom were in America for many generations. Not every Asian person is smart, not every Asian person cares about academics, and not every Asian parent is a tiger parent--clearly, one can simply talk to my idiot ex-boyfriend and realize not all Asians are smart--but for me, I did feel the need to compete at a higher academic level. I took all honors and AP classes, and not because my ego needed stroking, but because I knew I could do it and because I was "just as good," as all the other Chinese kids. I was just as smart, just as talented, just as good. I could do it. 

The Asian and even the Chinese diaspora in my area was NOT a monolith, and there were plenty of people who weren't in AP classes and who cared more about sports or were what some Americans might consider "not Asian enough." It was a diverse area and people weren't walking, talking stereotypes. I enjoyed having that experience in hindsight, and I can also admit to myself that I was competing certainly in things I thought my birthparents might value, as my parents repeatedly told me they couldn't care less what my grades were. I had an innate drive to make the honor roll like all my Chinese American friends. I was motivated to not "waste" my second chance at life (or some orphan Annie bullshit) and I was very, very determined to just "be enough."

I cannot say that these adopted Chinese athletes have only achieved inhumanly amazing heights because they are trying to prove something. I cannot say that they are all motivated by fear and safety, the way I was, or that they are trying to show the world, to borrow a line from Miranda's Hamilton:

"You're an orphan. Of course! I'm an orphan. God, I wish there was a war then we could prove that we're worth more than anyone bargained for."

Yes, orphans and the Olympics make great headlines for NBC (see previous rant on why such a headline is insulting and ridiculous). Even so, I think after talking with some other Chinese adoptee friends that there is a common feeling of being so good that your parents won't think of giving you up. That there's something more, something extra you need to be to prove you're not a worthless orphan. Maybe you weren't enough back then, when your birthparents couldn't keep you (the Chinese government wants us to believe we were abandoned, but clearly that was not the case in the vast majority of China's international adoption program, but it doesn't mean you can't still feel emotionally abandoned). But if you try hard enough, jump high enough, swim fast enough, get enough awards and accolades and make it to the TOP, maybe that's enough. Maybe other non-adoptees don't need to make it to the top, but even the top can still be "not good enough." Because there's that feeling of inherent worthlessness that comes with being told you were abandoned.

So no, I can't psychoanalyze every high achieving adoptee in the world, but every single time in undergraduate college, when some white professor would give me a stink eye for getting an A+ (because I was a unidimensional Asian cookie cutter stereotype who memorized facts instead of deeply learned material, who had a tiger mom, who had no personality, who ruined the curve for all the nice white kids,) I wanted to scream in her face that it wasn't so much that I was chasing a gold medal for my insatiable ego, but that I was running away from a monster I couldn't quite name, and that every second it was gaining on me, and couldn't she see that I was working so much harder because I was fucking scared of never being good enough?

But what's so wrong with wanting gold anyway? And having an ego? And working hard for something you want? What on earth is so wrong with that?

Nothing.

I feel sorry for the Olympians now who are under the world's eye. The comment sections are filled with ignorant comments about adoption, about charity cases, about adoptive parents and abandonment. More fake news is being spread when the story of abandonment is reinforced, and yet, maybe it will force the Chinese government to openly admit to their people that babies were being internationally adopted, as many birthparents seem to think their babies never left the country. It is difficult to see so much ignorance play out, on every level. Outrage and misdirected outrage for facts that aren't really true.

It is astonishing.