The Lost Daughters of China: Adopted Girls, Their Journey to America, and the Search for a Missing Past

by Evans, Karin

  “I feel saddened that my journey has ended,” she wrote on her blog, “but knowing that life is composed of many treks and journeys comforts me.”

  Fang planned to go back to China again next summer, maybe to Tibet, and back to see Little Yi. Again, she wanted to find some helpful things to do, to work in an orphanage again, perhaps. And eventually, she says, she’d like to do something that helps build a bridge between the United States and China.

  Such journeys will continue, each with its own timing, its own outcome. What lies ahead? Surprises, joy, sorrow, dilemmas—perhaps future revelations and experiences we can barely imagine. A picnic in a park someday with hundreds of adoptive families and a few honored guests—birth families from China? It could happen. Maybe we’ll all share some potato salad and dumplings and marvel at how we have been drawn together, finally, through the strangest of circumstances, the most beautiful of children. Maybe by dessert, we’d all be baring our hearts.

  China on the Move

  The country where all our children began their lives has continued to be the most rapidly changing nation on earth—even before the 2008 Olympics fever shifted construction and modernization into even higher gear. On the outskirts of major Chinese cities now there are U.S.-style suburban housing developments with Spanish-style luxury homes and names like Belvedere and Orange County, hardly distinguishable from their counterparts in California or Arizona. The Beijing Olympics has picked up the pace of foreign investment, and major global corporations have paid hefty sums for exposure to the Chinese market. While China’s poor continue to struggle, China’s upscale consumers can afford German cars and French wines, and the urban masses are a profitable market for McDonald’s and Coca-Cola. Hong Kong boasts a Disneyland, Shenzen a Swiss village.

  Despite the boom in China, some things unfortunately have not changed quickly enough. China struggles with some of the biggest challenges on the planet—pollution, poverty, the underlying pressures of the world’s largest population, and what seems to be more than its share of natural catastrophe.

  In 2007, scientists reported that the baiji, the magical white dolphin—long considered a harbinger of rough weather—was “functionally extinct.” Searches of the Yangtze that year revealed not a single creature, and researchers speculated that pollution and dense river traffic had finally killed off the dolphin—the first creature of its classification, “the great and ancient Order of Cetaceans,” to be forever lost to the world.

  If, when we adopted our first daughter, we could read about factories where young women were working unspeakably hard and long hours with little protection, a report ten years later in the New York Times underlined the same problems. While Americans were worrying about toys from China that contained high levels of lead, Chinese workers, often as young as sixteen, were facing far more serious hazards. In the Pearl River Delta region, our first daughter’s first home, the Times reported that factory workers lost or broke forty thousand fingers on the job each year. In Franny’s hometown, a chemical plant was making international headlines for its unsafe conditions.

  After attention was drawn to the conditions in sweatshops in the 1990s, there were some improvements in some places. But there are still grievous abuses and abysmal conditions, especially for young women—any one of whom might have had to make that difficult choice to relinquish a child; any one of whom might be the birth parent of a child adopted from China. One of the companies singled out for committing abuses was Wal-Mart. According to the Times report, teenage workers were sometimes required to work fifteen hours a day, seven days a week, in factories that supply Wal-Mart’s merchandise for the American consumer.

  The one-child policy is now well into its third decade. Some of its long-term implications are still just becoming clear. The director of China’s Family Planning Office has warned of a “population rebound” caused by the newly rich doing what they want in terms of having children, and by rural populations marrying earlier. Some demographers argue that the one-child policy has led to other problems—for example, too few children coming of age to care for a rapidly aging population.

  Jasper Becker, author of a major book on the Chinese famine, said in 2005 that it was still hard in China to talk about why girls were abandoned. But it seemed the subject was being discussed more openly, though the messages were mixed. China’s president, Hu Jintao, was reported to have publicly questioned the one-child policy. As has been the case since the beginning, enforcement of the policy is uneven. In some places it has been eased to the point of nonenforcement. In others, the harassing of women goes on. As late as August 2007, the Associated Press recounted the story of a woman forced to have a late abortion by injection. The Economist reported that some women were fleeing to Hong Kong to have their over-quota children.

  The newest wrinkle is a crackdown on the affluent. The province of Zhejiang has threatened to “name and shame” rich families who were simply paying the fines to have more children. In Beijing, officials also threatened a crackdown aimed at over-the-limit families among the rich and famous, who were not only ignoring the law, it was charged, but also, through their high profiles, setting a bad example for the rest of the population. In January 2007, reports came from Hubei province in central China that members of the Communist Party who had violated the one-child edict had had their party memberships revoked.

  During a news conference in February 2008, the vice-minister of China’s Family Planning Office said that the Chinese government now recognized the need for adjustments in the policy, but that changes would come “incrementally.” The next day, another official announcement threw that forecast into doubt, and in March 2008 China’s top population official announced that the one-child policy would stay in effect for another decade, at least—“to ensure stable and balanced population growth.”

  “The one-child policy was the only choice we had, given the conditions when we initiated the policy,” an official said, and added that while there could be some future changes to the policy, no one should expect it to come to a sudden halt.8

  The gender gap, meanwhile, continues to yawn huge—the most extreme case on earth, says Judith Banister, an American demographer who has done in-depth studies on China’s population. By 2007, the Chinese government was itself talking about the imbalance, 119 males to 100 females, according to the most recent national Chinese census—which translates to tens of millions of “extra” men. Discussions of what this means for China’s future ensued. President Hu Jintao announced a goal of correcting the imbalance to 107:100 by the year 2010, a goal that most demographers see as unrealistic, if not impossible. The government has now offered in some cases to pay families with daughters, and provide incentives. In the countryside, it is now increasingly common to see billboards—“It is forbidden to discriminate against, mistreat, or abandon baby girls”—and slogans praising the virtues of girls and offering encouragement to rural couples to value their daughters.

  In contemporary China, specifically Henan province, a new class of orphans has emerged—those rendered parentless by the AIDS epidemic that began when poor parents sold their blood and were infected with reused needles. The children who lost their parents were left to care for one another, living a hand-to-mouth existence, some of them infected with the HIV virus themselves. Many were ostracized. Half the Sky and other groups offered help to these children, building foster villages, getting the children to schools, providing badly needed medicines.

  On World AIDS Day, December 1, 2007, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao visited orphans in Henan, including children living at Half the Sky’s New Harmony Village at Shaodian. In a vegetable-growing area that had suffered because of public fear of AIDS, the Chinese press reported that the premier had his photo taken with a local farmer and announced, “You can [report] that the premier has eaten Wenlou’s vegetables today.” That same day, President Hu Jintao shook hands with HIV-POSITIVE people in Beijing and posed for photographs. A young girl from New Harmony Village spoke at the Internat
ional AIDS conference and was the subject of a Chinese television program.

  Perhaps the most stunning news of all came on Children’s Day 2007, when the Chinese government announced ambitious plans for the children living in the nation’s social welfare institutions. China’s president Hu Jintao pledged that the nation would take steps to ensure that orphans and disabled children could live “under the same blue sky” as other children. In partnership with China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs, Half the Sky was invited to create the first provincial-level Blue Sky/Half the Sky Model Center at a children’s welfare institution in Hubei, making the foundation’s education and nurture programs available to every welfare institution in that province. From there, the sky—literally—seemed the limit, as plans were put in place to build a Half the Sky Model Center and training facility in every one of China’s thirty-one provinces and municipalities over the next five years, with no halt until every child in a Chinese institution had as much comfort, schooling, love, and support as it was physically possible to provide.

  This coming year, Half the Sky is introducing its programs to five new provinces—Zhejiang, Guizhou, Liaoning, Sha’anxi, and Heilongjiang. The ultimate goal for Half the Sky—to change the face of orphan care in China, to make good on the foundation’s stated aims of providing a caring adult in the life of every orphaned child—is growing closer. The foundation has already fulfilled that promise to thousands of children, from the tiniest frail, newly found infants who were now cuddled in a nanny’s arms, to teenagers and older girls who were going out into the world with new skills and new confidence, thanks to the Big Sisters programs.

  In March 2008, for Half the Sky’s work in the children’s institutions of China, Jenny Bowen was among the recipients of the prestigious Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, presented by former president Jimmy Carter at Oxford University.

  And always, there is more money needed, more work to be done. When China experienced its coldest winter in fifty years as the New Year holiday came in 2008, several orphanages in south and central China were hard hit by snowstorms and sub-zero temperatures. As travelers were stranded, trying to get home for the holiday, traffic and cities came to a standstill. Power failures occurred. Supplies, including furnace coal, ran short. In many places orphanage staff were running out of food, diapers, coal, or water. In Jiangxi, the heating had broken in the infant nurture rooms and the rooms were icy. The staff had bundled all the children into one big room to keep them warm. Other places desperately needed food and diapers and warm quilts and clothing. As supplies dwindled, prices rose, and orphanage staff in many places were using their own money to keep things going. Half the Sky immediately began raising emergency funds for the children and trying to get as much relief to as many places as possible.

  “We as a community are going to take care of the children through these critical days,” wrote Jenny Bowen, asking the Half the Sky community to donate to a Little Mouse emergency fund (so named because it was the Year of the Rat).

  The Chenzhou institution in Hunan province, where 150 infants were being cared for, was particularly hard hit. The facility was without electricity or running water for two weeks after snow destroyed the city’s power source. A group from Half the Sky finally got through and managed to supply food, coal, blankets, and diapers. Richard Bowen—emeritus director of Half the Sky’s board, father to two little girls from China, and a filmmaker—led an intrepid 300-mile expedition to Chenzhou, taking a truckload of supplies to the orphanage in extremely difficult conditions. Navigating bad weather, closed roads, and the challenges of finding what was needed, Bowen and his little band found amazing generosity among the Chinese who were told of the plight of the children. (Bowen posted a full account of the journey on Half the Sky’s website, www.halfthesky.org.)

  Afterward, as he thought about the babies waiting at the institution, nearly hidden under piles of blankets and snowsuits, Bowen wrote, “I can’t shake the gnawing feeling that as the stars of this little drama, they remained blissfully unaware of the countless worldwide threads, the amazing generosity of donors abroad and their fellow Chinese who all contributed to this effort to make sure they would be okay now, so that someday they could thrive.

  “Half the Sky’s organizational culture has always stressed that, even though we care for children without families, at heart ours is an organization wholly about family. We’re all about embracing that irony and widening the definition of family . . . beyond bloodlines, beyond nationalities. It’s all about creating bonds of family where they once didn’t exist.

  “As I drove home to my daughters and wife, I [was] struck by the deeper meaning of this little adventure. Hidden from me till now, I realized how, in my own way, I became infected with the spirit of Chinese New Year. This holiday that puts family first, that says get home at all costs, your family’s waiting . . . I’m sure that’s what drove us up that mountain (even if those little family members didn’t know they were awaiting our arrival).”

  The orphanage director, Shi Xiangqun, responded with thanks: “In China we have an old saying: ‘A friend in need is a friend indeed, and love can help us out of crisis’. . . . In front of natural disaster, there is no nationality difference in terms of love. True love can melt ice and snow and all difficulties can be overcome.”

  In the wake of the devastating Sichuan earthquake in May 2008, adoption groups and charities, including Half the Sky, went to work again. Sadly, there was now another group of orphaned children to care for—those who’d lost parents in the quake. Special funds were set up to get help for these children, including foster care.

  In Berkeley, older girls held a bake sale to collect money, as did groups of adopted children elsewhere, who sent off what they earned to various charities doing relief work with the youngest victims of the earthquake.

  And so the links to China continue to build, made stronger all the time by the adoption movement—families around the world who can’t forget all the children in institutions who are also family, and people in China who will do what they can to help the children who wait in the orphanages, or who, like Kailee Wells, have been adopted and need some special help from people in their birth country.

  That Matter of Identity

  In 2008, the Chinese twelve-year calendar came full circle for Kelly, our older daughter, born in 1996 in the Year of the Rat in southern China. In 2008, when the Rat’s turn came round again, we celebrated at the home of our daughters’ Chinese “auntie.” Betty Louie, a dynamic, beautiful woman, had taken our family under her wing and folded us all into her large Chinese American family.

  We had found each other through luck. Carl Jung would have called it synchronicity, but given our experiences, it’s also tempting to credit that old red thread. Long ago while waiting for Kelly, I had gone to Grant Avenue in San Francisco’s Chinatown and paid a visit to one of my favorite stores, the Far East Flea Market. How could I have ever predicted that a few years later, another connection would lead us to the owner of that very store? But our dear friend Frances, after whom we named our second daughter, turned out to know a wonderful woman named Colette, who turned out to be the daughter of the store’s proprietor: Betty.

  “Amazing,” I said, when I heard this connection. “That’s where I got my favorite Buddha.” When the next Chinese New Year came, Colette and her mother invited us to their annual celebration. Betty, in her ebullient and gracious way, swept up our girls, showering them with Chinese red envelopes filled with crisp bills every time they wished everyone Happy New Year: “Gong hay fat choy!” The table was laden with delectable Chinese food and the evening ended with a string of firecrackers. Betty told the girls to call her “Aunt,” and invited them for a sleepover. “I think it’s important that they have a connection to the Chinese community,” said Betty. “I really want them to have a tradition that they can remember when they grow up.” What rare good fortune for our daughters—and for us.

  For the two Caucasians in our nuclear family,
our daughters’ connection to China and the Chinese American community has brought many unexpected gifts. Living in San Francisco, of course, makes it relatively easy to enjoy the riches of the Chinese American world, but our daughters led us to experience it on a different level. At the 2008 San Francisco Families with Children from China annual Between the Two New Years party, which was held at the Presidio this year, the Chinese consul general came to greet the adopted daughters of China, and San Francisco’s Chinese American police chief, Heather Fong, came and mingled with the girls. “Wow, that’s a pretty important job,” said Kelly. Fong, it was said, has family members who have adopted from China. When the San Francisco Symphony put on its Chinese New Year Celebration concert this year, it featured Carolyn Kuan conducting, Weishan Liu playing the gu zheng, and Jiebing Chen playing Bach on the two-stringed Chinese erhu. “I don’t think I’ll try playing that,” said Franny. It was a rich afternoon of East-West music, and presented several more great role models for our daughters.

  The wider Chinese American community has also reached out specifically to the adopted children. Betty Louie was all for this. “Adoptive families visiting San Francisco with little girls from China come to my store all the time,” she said with a laugh, “but I tell them that’s not enough.” The Alhambra, California, Chinese community invited two FCC San Diego families to ride on its float in the 2008 New Year parade, and FCC children and families also marched in the Holiday Bowl Balloon Parade. In New York City and Chicago, families and their adopted children have marched in the annual Chinese New Year’s parades. In San Diego, the FCC group holds its annual Chinese New Year celebration at the Chinese Community Church facilities; members of the Chinese American community attend as honored guests. The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association sent a troupe of lion dancers to this year’s party. “We feel very fortunate that so many of the Chinese community here have embraced us with open arms,” said mother Marty Foltyn, mother of twelve-year-old Miranda, who came home from China in the group with Kelly. “It is so amazing, and an utterly unexpected connection that I never imagined when we went to China ten years ago,” said Foltyn. Miranda, she added, now wants to be a lion dancer.