The Adoptee Claimed by 50 Families

What a beautiful day! Perfect for a riveting blog post.

I came across this article after a fellow Chinese adoptee posted it on one of the adoption online group pages. Reading the title, I was alarmed and prepared to read about a poor girl’s story about being horribly ambushed by fake Chinese families who identified her as their daughter. My friends have gone by to China to search for their birth families and there have been many scary stories of human trafficking, kidnapping and family-wrongdoings where families convince the adoptee they are her family and then people never see her again. It’s a scary and real thing that I was unaware of until a year ago. That is one of the reasons why I am waiting until DNA testing banks are available to the public in China. Surprisingly I read a really beautiful and insightful article that had no trace of disturbing actions, but just pure love.

The article is about a Chinese adoptee who goes back to China to find her birth family. I was again, pleasantly surprised to find out the girl is Jenna Cook, one of the teenage adoptees that was featured in the documentary Somewhere Between. For those close to me, you know that Somewhere Between is one of my favourite films. It captures the true struggles of identity, strength, and hope of four teenage Chinese adoptees living in the US as they go about their daily lives as an outsider. I highly highly highly recommend this film (you can find out where to watch it and more information on my home page under Adoption Movies). In the film, Jenna really struggled with who she was and who she could have been. She couldn’t quite grasp letting go of her birth family and, I personally felt, that she harboured a lot of anger, confusion and despair against her past.

*The One-Child Policy that was implemented in 1979. It was the Chinese government’s attempt to control the population growth. While it did somewhat control the population, it created severe anguish and anger as the policy caused forced abortions, infanticide, forced sterilization, and physical harm to families. Notwithstanding the mental aspect of having to give up your child. Only last year in October has it changed to a Two-Child Policy. But that’s for a completely different blog post that I will write about.*

Jenna is now 20 years old and while studying at Yale University, she is given a travel grant to China to begin searching for her birth family. She thought of it as an academic exercise, but was also deeply curious to what she would find. She and her Mother handed out flyers of Jenna at different ages with the little information they had about where she was dropped off as a baby. Upon seeing the flyers, many locals began sharing their stories of neighbours and friends they knew who had to give up their baby. Jenna and her Mother were bombarded with online messages from people after her flyer ended up in the local newspaper of her birth town.

'"Their reactions were really polarised," says Jenna. Some people said: 'This is fantastic that you're searching and I hope that you're able to find your parents and that your dream comes true.' Others would say things like: 'This is such a big mistake, you're wasting your time and energy.' And: 'You're so ungrateful to your American family, you need to go back to America right away.'"

Among those, birth families were claiming her as their daughter. She narrowed it down to 50 families who had all left a baby on the street where she was found in 1992. How sad is that? 50 families, in one year, said they had to give up their baby on that one street. One street in one year=50 children. Think of how many families gave up their baby in a whole city, let alone one street. Wow, very disturbing and sad to think about.

Naturally, Jenna was shocked that the families were coming forward because it was illegal to abandon a baby during the One-Child Policy. She began to meet all the families, one-by-one each day. She mentally prepared herself for disappointment and strictly tried to go into each meeting with an academic mindset. She worried that they wouldn’t remember her because boys were favoured in the Chinese culture, hence the majority of abandoned babies being female. She found the opposite to be true.

"'They all remembered their babies forever - it was this experience that they really regret and that they would never forget."'

*Cue waterworks*

I don’t think may people can relate to the feeling of knowing that your birth family will always remember and treasure you in their hearts for their whole lives. Reading this, made me (obviously) emotional. Because many adoptees are adopted when they are younger than two (from my experience), we grow up with no recollection of our birth families. It’s almost like they never existed because we don’t have any memory of them and the family we know now, is who we identify as family. Sometimes, we think that our birth families may be out there… but, it’s just such a large quest to find them that most of us don’t think it would be possible to ever reconnect.

One story that made my heart lurch was,

'“One woman brought a piece of delicate red-and-blue cloth that she had carefully kept - it was the material she had made her baby's suit out of. ‘She had kept these scraps for 20 years like a memory of her daughter. And she always dreamed that when they would meet, her daughter would have the clothes and she would have the scraps - kind of like a lock and key.’

Sadly, Jenna did not recognise the material. 'I just remember shaking my head, I had never seen it. And the poor mother just collapsed. She was so devastated.’”

Wow, break my heart into a million pieces why don’t you? The emotion captured in this photo is so intense that I can feel the Mother’s anguish.

Jenna did DNA tests with 37 of the willing families, but they all came back negative. For the duration of her trip, she volunteered for the orphanage that she once lived in as a baby. Obviously, Jenna was slightly devastated because she had a slight hope that she would be able to find her birth family. But, she believes this experience has helped her,

'"Before, there was always a small part of me that felt like there was something I could have done 20 years ago to have changed my fate and then I wouldn't have been relinquished by my family,' she says. 'But after meeting the birth parents I realised it was really out of my control.’

As an academic, it has changed her outlook completely. 'It's a totally different experience to read in a history textbook about the one-child policy and read that parents abandoned their children or committed infanticide,' she says. 'But to meet people who have really lived that experience, and to see their great regret, and their great love for this baby - it's just something that's indescribable."’

This article gave my heart hope and trust that my birth family will always remember me. Sometimes adoptees have a hard time wondering if their birth family ever thinks about them. Scared to think that they were forgotten the moment they were abandoned. It is evident in Jenna’s experience that they all remember their baby and always will. It makes me happy knowing that one day, maybe I will be able to meet my birth family and I know that they’re holding me close in their hearts every day.

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