China's Stopped International Adoptions: A Chinese Adoptee's Perspective - Part 2

Part Two

TW: Mention of suicide, self-harm

The main concern I have seen raised after speaking to several of my peers is that we, the 150,000 collective, some of whom are no longer with us as adoptees, have a tendency to be left out of the narrative. We are forgotten again. Many adoptees are susceptible to rehoming after the legal papers are finalized (second chance adoptions, unregulated groups on Facebook and other social media sites, source: Karpoozy), and several are assaulted, abused, and murdered by their adopted families (Source). Many of us even still lack citizenship (Adoptee Citizenship Act). Will anyone remember us? If we are unable to be with our biological families and the people who promise to love us forever may or may not abandon us again, these anxieties and unknowns persist. We will be footnotes in a textbook. If anything, we are a small smudge in history. Insignificant.

I’ve recently discovered that the Chinese Reunification Database has also become available to us as adoptees. This database has made it possible and financially accessible for adoptees to search for their origins and biological families. Then, the news of the closing hit. We have no idea what this could mean for the future travel of adoptees wanting to return to China for heritage tours or birth searches.

I was fortunate to see my original paperwork at my orphanage in 2014. I remember my first visit back to China 10 years ago. I was 19 years old, the summer after I finished my freshman year of college. I had gotten an internship to work at a foster home for special needs children over the summer in Beijing. I was nervous about my visa application going through because of my adoptee status. Would they accept me? Would they be suspicious? I remember returning to my orphanage. They still had my original file.

I worry about the future now. If I am able to go back, or if my file will be destroyed. If China forgets I exist. If they will pretend I don’t exist or never existed. I’m that abandoned child again. I worry about my mother, wondering if she thought about me. That first connection and first wound. If she still thinks about me the way that I think about her. And then there are the injustices our parents faced. As more evidence comes to light with the Family Reunification Database, we learn horrific stories of gender-based violence, domestic abuse, kidnappings, abandonments, and other traumas. How can all of these horrors be held within a single being, let alone a child? And yet, here we are. And what will happen to those of us who will brave the reunification journey? Who is searching and willing to be vulnerable all over again? Will we even get the chance? Will there be another hidden cost of this geopolitical proxy war?

I worry about my adoptive family, too. It’s a complex relationship, to say the least. I worry about my mother’s feelings. I carry the weight of the pain and loss she went through before she held me. Of the hope and dreams she had for me that had been modified as I grew out of the overarching adoption narrative, she had also been fed by society.

My heart breaks for women. At the heart of the matter is that we are beholden to such violence of whims and pressures of societies beyond our own agency. I hope that one day, we can grow beyond what was prescribed to us based on what our sex was at birth.

I hope to hold space for so many in this time of confusion and injustice. Hold memory for all we have lost and the many futures that could have been. I mourn so much and feel as though I am enduring a perpetual state of grief, yet there is so much strength in this community. There is a resilience that goes beyond words. Adoptees thrive in places we are not meant to live. We find each other in hopeless places. We are beholden to a tradition threaded throughout time, raised among strangers, and that produces an inner strength that knows no bounds.

Read more in Part 1

Reposted from: Hannah's Adopted Thoughts in An Injustice! on Medium

Instagram Handle: @endlesswanderer

China's Stopped International Adoptions: A Chinese Adoptee's Perspective - Part 1

Part One

TW: Mention of suicide, self-harm

On September 4th, I received a notification on Instagram titled, “China’s closed international adoptions.” it was 11:00 PM. Immediately, I texted my closest adoptee friends I had met throughout the pandemic, connecting through various channels and groups like Subtle Asian Adoptee Traits on Facebook and other online and in-person communities. We were all passing along the news, checking in on each other’s mental well-being, and focusing on how we would enter this new era. I hastily posted a thrown-together thought on an Instagram caption calling for community and solidarity during this time.

According to most estimates, China has sent approximately 150,000 of its children overseas throughout its international adoption program (BBC) over the last 30 years, with almost 83,000 of those children being sent to the US alone.

My attitude around and about adoption has changed significantly over the years. From the pride and joy of it all to the rebellion of being touted as a “China doll,” to the rejection of colonization, to the reclamation of my Asian identity, to the radical formation of my own adoptee community, and finally, the realization that we belong to ourselves as Chinese adoptees, can I sit at the intersection of mental health, a survivor of separation trauma, a survivor of geopolitical proxy wars, gender violence, high-control religion, self-harm, racial violence, and so much I cannot list or even begin to describe that has been inflicted upon my soul and etched into my body.

For those who don’t know me, I’m Hannah, Pastor’s kid, mental health advocate, social worker by education, nonprofit girly by trade, and coffee enthusiast by night. I grew up in Waco, Texas, and now live in NYC. Welcome. My own story began in 1994 in the Anhui province; my parents, unable to conceive, prayed for a child and, through God’s grace, were able to adopt a child. Me. Or so the story goes. The story that I was told. That I have been given by them, by the Church and community I grew up in, and by the conservative White majority Texas society into which I was thrust at seven months old. I’m not here to bash religion, politics, or even racial identities. I’m here to point out the reality that they exist. That was simply the context in which I was brought up with no racial or genetic mirrors, no linguistic or cultural bearings, and frankly, a little xenophobic rhetoric sprinkled in here and there by local news media and ignorant elementary schoolyard bullies.

I spent my teenage, identity-forming years coming to terms with a Major Depression Disorder diagnosis before I turned sixteen. I would later find out that Adoptees are  four times more likely than the average population to attempt suicide. I was not unique; I had my first attempt in my senior year of high school. Now that I am nearing my 30th rotation around the sun, there will have been at least two more scares and one hospital visit in my life.

I made my way out of “the fog” of adoption when I began to question the sincerity and ethics surrounding overseas mission trips of various evangelical churches, much to the dismay of my evangelical pastor father. I continue to stand by my convictions to this day as I work towards the moral and ethical safeguarding of vulnerable populations throughout my career. As there was no one to safeguard me.

Read more in Part 2

Reposted from: Hannah's Adopted Thoughts in An Injustice! on Medium

Instagram Handle: @endlesswanderer