Toughest learnings as a Chinese TRA
8/3/25 Younger reader guidance recommended
I have been inhaling various media as I learn more about my biological heritage and adoption journey. Let's discuss some of the toughest learnings from the past year and change that I have come to realise on the adoption journey as a Chinese TRA (transracial adoptee).
For example, the one child policy. I was vaguely aware of the policy at a younger age but not deeper implications on communities and on my own life. Through the adoption journey I have come to the reality that I am one of ‘China' s lost girls’. The policy was further unethical in that the society norms were (and still are) highly patriarchal. Leading to abandonment, abuse and infantiside of girls.The policy was enacted in 1979 and fully repealed in 2021. However, in the interim of 2015 forward, it advanced as a two child policy ending in 2021 as a three child policy. Family planning was brutal in monitoring family sizes. Resorting to forced sterilization, employers monitoring female employees menstrual cycles, secretly implanted IUDs and more. There were exceptions to the laws that were tightly monitored. The second (third and so on) children were still often outcasts in their community, regardless of legal registered status.
Different exceptions were enacted at different times but to name a few;
If both parents were only children themselves
If a first child is handicapped
If a family can prove their child died in the 2008 earthquakes
If the family is of a minority ethnic line
Rural families with a first born daughter could try for a son
Also, before coming out of the fog I had never given a thought to my beginnings past that my (birth) parents could not care for me so I was adopted. I never questioned the how or why of it all, let alone the subsequent documentation. Through many first hand accounts, research and with a better understanding of China’s political climate at the time of my birth and adoption; I have begun to ask more questions.
One such question is my story of being found abandoned at a train station. Earlier on I figured my family had left me at the station, hid, waited for me to be found and gone home in the same city. However, after reading Messages from an Unknown Chinese Mother by Xinran, I am hit with the realization that my family may have traveled away from their home city to hide my birth and abandoned me at a stopping point on their journey home. Many couples hid what was referred to as out of quota births from family planning officials. From hiding in other cities, using a childless family member's name and much more; all in hope of keeping their children without repercussions.
I have also come to recognize that within my adoption city and orphanage documents were often falsified to make a child ‘eligible’ for international adoption. Many children have the same finding dates, locations, assigned birthdays or circumstances. Few local places were commonly used as fillers in documents for abandonment locations such as the orphanage steps, street markets and yes, the train station.
Meaning that my finding location may not be part of my story at all. Unlike many adoptees I did not come to the orphanage as a newborn, it is estimated that I was two months old and through personal deduction I was likely premature.
The difficulties with this is immense because people were incentivised and rewarded for reporting out of quota pregnancies, births and children. Others were taking advantage of a broken system in coercing families to sell them their children, then selling that same child to an orphanage for profit. This was most active in the years between 1992 - 2015 when international adoption was seen as most profitable to the country. It came down to supply and demand. Where the children came from was often not questioned by orphanage officials. Was this my story? I may never know.
This is not saying that adoptive families, mine included, intended to take a child from their biological families. The information they were provided at the time depicted an orphaned child with no known extended family ties. They did the best they could with what they had. Only now as more studies are explored can we have adoptee centered discussions.
Looking back on the journey thus far, I don't think the biggest change has been acknowledging my adoption. Instead the reckoning of a changed identity and the possibilities of what would or could have been and can be. This phenomenon is often referred to as a ghost self within the adoptee communities.
I can't say I have gotten definitive answers and I may never get them. Accepting this is difficult. However, I am grateful for growth and a new understanding of myself.
I am speaking from my own life experiences and opinions as a transracial adoptee. Please recognise everyone is entitled to their own views and may have different experiences.
#adoption #transracialadoption #chinaadoption
