Jenna Cook, A 'Lost' Daughter Speaks, and All of China Listens. I went to China to find the birth mother who left me on a street corner. Instead, I became the focus of a nation’s buried pain. Foreign Policy, Mar 30, 2016. http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03 ... a-listens-adoption/
Quote:
"This was the summer of 2012, in the oppressively humid, industrial city of Wuhan, China. I grew up in Massachusetts and had returned to Wuhan with my adoptive mother in search of my birth parents.
"I believe my story resonated with the Chinese public because so many have relinquished children. During my search, I met with over 50 birth families – each of which had left a baby on one single street in Wuhan in March 1992. The implications of this are quite vast. What about other streets in the same month? What about other months? What about other years? What about the families who chose not to come forward?
"In 2012, when I visited a long-distance bus station close to the street where I had been abandoned, I asked one of the older workers if she remembered finding a baby nearby in March 1992. She sighed and recalled that, “back in the day,” she and her coworkers found abandoned babies in the station all the time. A retired policeman from the nearby police station agreed, saying abandonment was so common in that era that authorities would not even bother recording them.
"After an additional year of researching Chinese domestic adoption as a Fulbright scholar, I see how profoundly American views of adoption and family differ from traditional Chinese conceptions. In 2012, I found myself baffled by Chinese journalists' questions. * * * They'd also ask, 'If you find your Chinese birth parents, how are you going to rear two sets of parents into old age?' (American parents usually save for retirement and don't expect to rely on their children for financial support.)
"I now understand why my adoptive mother’s decision to join my 2012 search shocked the Chinese public. During my follow-up research, many mainland adoptive parents confided that they felt it was best if their children never found out they had been adopted.