About Me

Hello, I'm Yuna and welcome to my Online Journal!

In 1979, China introduced its One Child Policy in an attempt to curb its population, and in the words of Lisa Ling from 2005, this resulted in baby girls being "abandoned, aborted, or hidden." In response, the world flocked to China to adopt the babies quickly filling the orphanages. Each orphan received an official abandonment document sanctioned by the government, stating where and when and by whom the baby was found, since babies had to be abandoned in secret (due to the law) and couldn't be taken directly to the orphanage by the birthparents. And thus the story went: you were abandoned because you were born a girl, left in a cardboard box in a public place so that the police could find you in the morning and bring you safely to the orphanage. And then you were adopted. 

China's adoption program was lauded as one of the "cleanest," free from corruption from its earliest days and driven by a need where babies were not allowed by the Chinese government to grow up with their birthfamilies. The first cracks in this façade began to show in 2005, with the Hunan scandal bringing to light the first of many inconsistencies in the Chinese adoption program as a whole. The story is complicated and it is not helpful to label who the good guys and the bad guys are. All I know is that there is a mountain of untold and unacknowledged suffering and that women and babies got the short end of the stick in history, again.

As far as Google is aware, China opened its international adoption program in 1991. I was adopted in the 1990's, joining an already solid foundation of adoptees in my neighborhood and my family. Like most of these Chinese adoptees, I live in the United States. I grew up in a diverse, middle-class community where I was exposed to many cultures and people. I strongly identify with being Asian-American, was never teased or called names for my ethnicity, and was never ostracized for being an adoptee. As a result, I know my experience will differ from many others--but it isn't a rare experience, I don't think, because there are so many adoptees I know who grew up in similar situations.

This blog made in 2019 is an online space for me to share my thoughts, opinions, and revelations about adoption as a lived experience, concept, and event. The theme is human dignity and worth--what is intrinsic to every human, including adoptees, by virtue of their existence. My experience is not representative of the population. Even a case study is only a sample size of one.

Contact Me

hellonoblesoul@gmail.com