by Lucy Coleman
A Biochemistry major with a minor in Chinese, Lucy Coleman wrote this essay for Nick LoLordo’s “Generation Gaps” class.
My journey to accept and appreciate the adopted Chinese American immigrant part of my identity started one night after stumbling across the film One Child Nation, a 2019 film that strongly resonated with me. “I was born in China in 1985, a time when China’s population crisis was making headlines around the world,” says a woman near the start. As I sat on the couch late one night watching, I could not help but wonder how I fit into this supposed community. From my eyes to my skin to my hair, I am a Chinese girl, but I was afraid this identity would remain only skin deep. Out in public, I watched with wide eyes as children half my size spoke effortlessly a language that was foreign to me but also one I wished I could understand. But when I heard those words from a woman who looked like me, I finally saw myself on the screen. Yet as I watched, I sank into the couch, shame creeping over my skin. From the moment I landed in America, I launched myself headfirst into Western culture, but my heart knew my Chinese culture had been left behind. I waded through life feeling that I had one foot in each country, and this felt like a burden instead of a strength. Now I know that if I had kept ignoring the invisible strings pulling me back and forth between my birthplace and my home country, I would have always remained halfway.
I was born in China in 2003, a time when China’s population was 1.288 billion–still too high according to officials. In her dissertation “Imagining Kinship and Rearticulating Immigration: Transnational Adoption from China from 1882 to the Present,” Yanli Luo, a Chinese born and raised student at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, unearths the meanings of and complex information surrounding transnational adoption from China. For thirty-five years in China, families were only allowed to have one child. As a national attempt to curb population growth in China, the one-child policy has had deep-rooted effects on China itself and the young girls who were left behind. In particular, China’s response to the population problem created issues of abandonment in these young girls and veiled the social and political forces that ripped families apart. The most notable consequence, however, is a disconnection of the abandoned girls from the heritage and culture of their birthplace as many of them from 1980 to 2015 were adopted out of the country by affluent Western families, the majority coming to America (Luo 3-15). Today, this cohort of adopted Chinese immigrants scattered around the world has unique experiences compared to their typical first- or second-generation immigrant counterparts. These adopted and non-adopted immigrants are the same in racial and ethnic appearance, but the similarities end there. Cultural influences, upbringing, political views, religion, behavior, and speech all separate the Chinese immigrant from the adopted baby, and it proves difficult for adopted children to connect with their roots beyond the narratives their adopted parents constructed.
The question of how adopted children from China in America can form relationships with immigrant generational narratives that they themselves do not identify with becomes increasingly complex. It is first necessary to explore the current dialogue surrounding adoptees from China who live in America and the individual struggles that separate their experiences from other immigrants. Through this lens, it becomes more obvious how films like One Child Nation can evoke in me pain and longing to uncover what I’ve lost as an adoptee yet also guide me to a place of appreciation for and connection to my own deep heritage. Due to this film and similar media, I now question how other forms of representation of Asian Americans in American popular media can rewrite the dominant discourses surrounding adopted children from China and provide a way for adoptees to connect to the greater Asian American communities. This connection paves the way for adopted children to feel welcome in spaces where there are Asian Americans and begin a journey of self-definition in order to accept and cherish their unique identity.
The group of adopted children from China transcends generational categories. They form their own unique group that is separate from immigrant communities, Asian Americans born in the United States, and Chinese citizens. Generationally, adopted children from throughout the thirty-five-year period of the one-child policy are more similar to each other than they are to immigrants and children of immigrants their age. Jada Bromberg, who recently graduated from high school and wrote the essay “Trauma, Identity and Love: Being Adopted Didn’t Give Me a Better Life, but Changed My Path,” is active in adoption and mental health organizations to raise awareness about trauma that adopted children experience and advocate for better education on adoption. She is part of the largest group of adoptees from China that occurred roughly from 2000 to 2006.
Yet adoptees who were born much earlier fit into this group culturally too. In her essay, “Personal Essay by a Chinese Adoptee: I Returned to China to Find My Biological Family and Discover My Cultural Roots,” André-Anne Côté described her experiences growing up as an adoptee from China and how she had returned to her hometown in China with the desire to learn about her culture and find her birth parents. She was born in 1985, but the feeling of an invisible wall between her and other Chinese people echoes Jada Bromberg’s sentiments of feeling different. Côté, in her search to understand her background, has since researched Chinese adoptees returning to the mainland and has helped form organizations by and for adoptees as well as make connections to younger adoptees all over the world.
In their essays, both of these women show that adoptees from China of all ages can relate to each other and each person carries a nuanced and indispensable story that uniquely ties them all together. These stories begin at a very young age as most adopted children were adopted when they were around one year old and almost all were adopted when they were younger than three years old (Luo). Living all their lives that they can remember in a different country than they were born in, adopted children take up the customs and mannerisms of where they live just as any other child would. This is what makes them the most dramatically different from other immigrants who were born in China but moved when they were older. In contrast, second-generation immigrants in America also grow up in the same generation as adopted children from the 2000s on, and they will likely share the same taste in music and knowledge of popular culture and consume the same media as people of the same generation do. However, very few adoptees learn the language of their homeland, and if they do, it is through their own work and studies in contrast to children of Chinese immigrants who commonly speak Chinese at home as a second or first language. Adoptees will also have little to no exposure to cultural food, traditional holidays, and generational customs passed down from parents to their children (Miller-Loessi and Zeynep). It is truly the cultural upbringing and background that differ between adopted children and first- or second-generation immigrants, and each small piece of the rich Chinese culture that adoptees lack exposure to builds a wall between them and children of immigrants who were born in America.
Adoptees are left with the efforts of their adoptive family to introduce them to their Chinese heritage. Many times, such efforts are nonexistent or are simply a product of stereotypes of China leading adopted children to feel isolated and believe superficial stories about their adoption. Currently, parents of adopted children, specifically white mothers, create the majority of adoption narratives, from writing books to telling their story in newspapers or on television. Many of these parents have the sentiment that girls in China were suffering and that they, as affluent Westerners, could save them (Luo). In her examination of white adoptive parents’ imagination of adoption, Luo describes different types of stories produced by adoptive parents. These “narratives juxtapose an ahistorical, patriarchal, premodern China as the producer of the abandoned girls and oppressor of Chinese women, with an affluence, modern, free, bright America as the provider of a permanent home and the humanitarian care-giver for Chinese orphans” (166). While parents of adoptive children are serious about constructing narratives about adoption for their children, they are often artificial and do not represent the whole truth (Miller-Loessi and Zeynep). The stories are composed of the same somber beginnings and happy endings that many associate with adoption.
“A mother carefully wraps her newborn baby in a blanket and gently places the baby in a basket at a park or church. Once found, the baby is quickly brought to safety and care in an orphanage” (One Child Nation). This is the story André-Anne Côté was given in 1985. This is the story I was given in 2003. This is the encouraging, heartwarming story that One Child Nation debunks with the truth on the one-child policy, propaganda, and baby trafficking in China. These uplifting narratives are “imagined” and born of idealism and myth (Miller-Loessi and Zeynep). In addition, white adoptive parents often construct a narrative that adopted children are not immigrants, establishing an “immigrant-adoptee dichotomy” that makes it more difficult for adoptees to recognize that they share experiences and beliefs with other Asian immigrants (Luo 235). Also, many families with adopted children do not welcome the truths presented by One Child Nation and instead prefer to believe the incomplete, oftentimes inaccurate, and racialized discourse surrounding adoption from China. The falsified stories hide this uncomfortable reality from adoptees and their parents.
Such abandoned baby narratives that overlook the truth were popular in the 2000s and contributed to the accepted views of white adoptive parents. White adoptive parents mostly fit into the same generational category and are influenced by how they grew up and society at the time. Due to this media exposure and children’s books about adoption, the upper middle-class white adoptive parents during this time held onto the savior attitude and hero relationship between them and the suffering babies in China (Luo). This gets passed to their adopted children, who do not have the opportunity to explore their identity in modern, more inclusive, and diverse societies. The savior attitude and lack of Asian American representation, however, is a characteristic of the past. Current and future generations of adopted children can break these views by creating a new dynamic of Asian Americans in American society and stepping up to claim part of that identity, no matter their upbringing.
It is difficult, however, to rewrite these harmful narratives in a predominately white society, a space where I did not feel welcome or represented as an Asian American. I never saw myself represented in popular media and felt that I had to ignore my ethnicity to fit in. My experience is shared among many adoptees from China. Jada Bromberg talks about the lack of adoption awareness in schools and how she felt dismissed and like her upbringing was unimportant when talking about adoption. While growing up in a majority white American society, I also failed to see people who looked like me on television or in advertisements. In “Playground lost: Television, video and Chinese American children’s imaginative play,” Shu-Ling Berggreen’s study on Chinese children’s interaction with media, she highlights the “under-representation of Chinese characters in American media… [which] provides no role models for Chinese children in their play and no inspirations for White children to include Chinese characters when creating media-related play.” Similarly, it was hard to connect to my Chinese heritage and process my multicultural identity when I was never exposed to other Asians and Asian Americans in everyday life or in the media I watched at home.
Being adopted is part of an identity that should not be hidden or discarded. Fortunately, adopted children who live in Western countries are stepping up to advocate for adoptees and provide ways they can connect with each other and their culture. Jada Bromberg’s advocacy aims to help adoptees with the trauma they face. Lynelle Long, an intercountry adoptee, created the online space Intercountry Adoptee Voices to provide a community for adoptees to share the experiences they face with each other and the public. André-Anne Côté is also part of this movement as an adult who still advocates for adopted children. When Chinese adopted children and their families acknowledge this important fact about themselves and their children, the children have a safe space to explore their unique Chinese heritage and country of citizenship. Yet acknowledging the adopted identity of children is not enough to support their unique identity and Chinese heritage as these resources are not widely known or accessible to all adoptees.
Because adoptive parents are the first resource adoptees can turn to when they begin to question their roots and identity, they can help facilitate their children’s connection with their heritage. While many adoptive parents support generalized ideals of adoption, there are others who see the need for their children to form real connections with Asians and Asian Americans. A white mother of adopted children from China and Korea stated “’the children need real contact with Asian Americans, not just waiters in restaurants or on Chinese New Year. And they need real validation about the racial issues they experience’” (Clemetson). Another mother of an adopted Chinese girl feels strongly about giving “love, honesty, and unconditional support,” stating to other adoptive parents that “Our teen daughters have the right to their own truth, their own story, and to have control over the next steps in their lives” (Gabeler). However, when adopted children do not have this support, they must look for ways to connect to their heritage outside of family influence and often on their own.
I found this connection through a film that has the power to bond the Asian American community and include adoptees. One Child Nation, directed by Chinese-born Nanfu Wang, paints a poignant tale of the severe consequences of the one child policy in China. It shows that the promising new lives of the abandoned babies did not come without a cost. The film focuses on the chilling effectiveness of Chinese propaganda during the one-child policy, but it also opens the door for conversation on adopted children from China and their desire to learn more about China and their history. It is a film I wish I had seen earlier. While it is uncomfortable at times, the documentary uncovers the lasting consequences of China’s one-child policy. In “One Child Nation: Movie Review by a Mom of Daughters from China,” B. Gabeler speaks to fellow moms of adopted girls from China in a review of the film: “This film, and all it reveals, is not going away; we must sit with our near-adult daughters and watch One Child Nation together… They deserve parents who are strong enough to be open-minded to new truths and willing to be there with love, honesty, and unconditional support.” Having this film and support from role models in my life would have opened the door for me to process emotions about being adopted and not have dealt with resulting difficulties on my own.
This film was only the beginning of my journey to understand where I came from, but it was the starting point I needed to realize that I could do more to connect with my heritage. Although there are many opportunities to incite a desire to learn about one’s background, popular media, specifically films, can serve as the launching point for adoptees to connect with their upbringing and feel welcome in the larger Asian American community. A good complement to One Child Nation is the more recent film, Found, that follows the story of three adopted girls from China in America who find they are related and journey to China in search of their birth parents. Documentaries like One Child Nation and Found are among the very few films that depict transnational adoption from China with experiences from adopted children. They show adopted children and the real experience of adopted children from China trying to find their birth parents or other biological family. Both paint emotional pictures of the experience of being adopted while also highlighting perspectives of Chinese citizens. The interviews with parents and siblings of children left behind may be the most heart wrenching and emotional moments for adopted children to watch. Parents shared stories about the care they took when leaving their baby, siblings expressed guilt for being the one who stayed, and a young girl learned English to be able to communicate with her twin sister after finding out she lived in America (One Child Nation; Found). Lynelle Long, an intercountry adoptee, described One Child Nation as “deeply emotional” and noted, “I was left with a strong impression of the heartbreak the grieving, sad families in China experience.” Found normalizes adoption and gives others a voice to raise awareness about adoption. Together, these documentaries provide the most relevant representation for adopted children to connect with others and explore their intersectional identities.
Yet the intersectional identity of being ethnically Chinese but culturally American is not the only identity one should explore. When trying to connect to the greater Asian American community, adoptees should educate themselves on the narratives of first- and second-generation immigrants to understand their stories better. The Joy Luck Club, based on Amy Tan’s novel by the same name and released in 1993, is one of the very first popular films centered around Asian American experiences that allows adoptees and Asian children born in America to see and understand the immigrant experience. This film follows four Chinese women who moved to America as adults and their four daughters who were born and raised in the United States. The movie is filled with self-narratives of the mothers intertwined with their daughter’s lives in America. Hardships of life and immigration resurface as the main theme, and the film focuses on how that affects the mother-daughter relationship. As one of the first and only films to highlight Chinese American immigrants, it gives a glimpse into Chinese history and the experiences of immigrants and future generations. The film also highlights immigrant communities in America and how children of immigrants are shaped by their surroundings and Western influence. These immigrant generational narratives are important to understand and consider when introducing adoptees from China as both adoptees and first- and second-generation immigrants alike share sentiments of feeling outcast in society, disconnected from their ethnic origin, and detached from the experiences of their parents. This film is a starting point for the exploration of these similarities and a bridge to help connect all Asian American immigrants.
Furthermore, The Joy Luck Club highlights Asian American experiences in a way that is useful to adopted children and Asian American communities; in particular, as an emotional, bittersweet, and beautiful melodrama, it translates Asian and Asian immigrant issues into the American conversation. As an adoptee from China with little knowledge about China, this film gave me what I had been missing growing up; it gave me a glimpse into Chinese history and culture that my family could not. Asian American television critic Inkoo Kang argues that we shouldn’t think of it as “the first and only and instead [should] start to think of it as what it has been all along: a brave and beautiful film in a canon long overdue for more.” The film has so much to offer as a tale of Chinese history, dedication to mother-daughter relationships, and emotional drama. And, although this may not be the purpose for the movie, The Joy Luck Club offers an otherwise unattainable view of Chinese immigrant experiences for girls who were adopted from China as babies.
Furthermore, for someone with no other exposure to Chinese culture and history, The Joy Luck Club has the power to expand the views of someone interested in the Chinese American immigrant experience. Films like The Joy Luck Club opened up a space to talk about Asian American experiences, but greater Asian American representation in popular media like television and movies is needed to further the efforts of creating a welcoming community for Asian Americans to thrive in. A more recent film, Turning Red, is a Disney animated film about a young Chinese Canadian girl who discovers she turns into a red panda when she gets too excited. Turning Red is a family film that tackles generational trauma, mother-daughter relationships, and coming of age while being fun and entertaining. The main character, Mei, struggles between living up to her mother’s expectations and following the path she wants. For example, when Mei and her mother are reconciling with each other after they have both made mistakes, Mei tells her mom “I’m changing, Mom. I’m finally figuring out who I am, but I’m scared it’ll take me away from you” (Turning Red). This popular Disney movie is the media that Shu-Ying Berggreen’s study on Chinese representation in media cited as missing. While it has relationship and family issues anyone can relate to, subtle elements of the movie like steamed dumplings, worshiping elders and ancestors, and Chinese language television pay tribute to customs Asian Americans are more familiar with. These small elements spread the everyday cultural differences of Asian American immigrants to non Asian Americans and adoptees alike.
One Child Nation, and many other films, touched me in ways I could not explain. It is a fact of human nature that people form communities with others like them. When immigrants move to America, they live with, do business with, and spend time with people who share their culture, identity, and language like the four Chinese women who formed the social club called “The Joy Luck Club” after moving to the United States from China (The Joy Luck Club). Yet as Miller-Loessi and Zeynep note, the experience of adoptees “is so unlike that of ethnic Chinese with Chinese immigrant ancestors that the adoptees form a distinct group in themselves.” Many adoptees, no matter where they are from, do not have this community they belong to. There is no automatic category they fit into. They do not have connections to immigrant communities like their second- generation immigrant friends or are influenced by the lack of diversity in their neighborhoods and communities (Clemetson). Adoptees must do the work themselves to find a place of belonging. However, even with great effort, this task is difficult to accomplish. Another barrier to acceptance of an adopted identity is the lack of knowledge about this identity and how it makes a person unique. Facebook communities, online forums, and meetup groups exist to provide support and a place for families to connect.
Yanli Luo examined blog posts from the blog Confessions of An Adoptee, where adoptees share their experiences, pain, and hope. Grace Madigan, an adoptee from Anhui province in China wrote in an article, “as I talked to others who shared the same experience as I did, I began to feel comfort in the shared confusion and struggle to understand who we are.” While the opportunity to talk to other people who have similar experiences is crucial for adoptees to understand their identity, many do not have these opportunities. That is why popular media like films can provide a way, however small or insignificant, for adoptees to believe there is a place they can belong. It is an entry point to a greater discussion about intersectional identities, homelands, and cultural heritage. “[The film] truly challenged the narrative I was told about my own adoption story and made me question what I thought I knew,” says Shelley Rottenberg, an adoptee from China, about One Child Nation (Long). Without this opportunity to explore identity without judgment, many adoptees would not feel comfortable reaching out to other people or exploring new forms of media that represent them. These documentaries on transnational adoption from China and the stories of the adopted children provide a starting point for adopted children to get involved in exploring their adopted origins and Chinese heritage.
Yet it is not enough to simply acknowledge this identity or even take a homeland trip back to China. Mckenzie Forbes, an adoptee from China raised in Virginia said, “When I am around other Asians, I feel a connection that I don’t feel around other people. I can’t explain it exactly. But I think it will be fun to meet other people and hear their stories” (Clemetson). A true relationship with other Chinese immigrants and generational narratives of Asian Americans comes from a deeper connection to the stories of immigrants and their experiences. While adopted communities are supportive and help adopted children discover their past, the goal is not to isolate adopted children as an exclusive group. Grace Madigan wrote that she finally “felt like [she] could—and wanted to—accept [her] identity as an immigrant” when she protested a travel ban to support immigrants with other Asian Americans. Asian American representation in media and mainstream culture like this can help connect adopted children to the Asian American community to help them find a deeper connection with people who share their heritage.
Media is a crucial bonding element between various communities. It has the power to tie immigrant communities, second generation immigrants, and adopted children together to form a more unified and supportive community. These films helped me to look past the outdated stories of adoption that were passed to me by well-meaning parents. An exploration into the rich history of China and events that led to transnational adoption can help adopted children fulfill their desires to learn about their roots. It will also help to “break the adoptee-immigrant dichotomy” Yanli Luo cites as a barrier to understanding the complex history of immigration from China. Overall, this can be achieved through seeking out diverse media that represents the Asian American community to help adopted children form meaningful relationships with Chinese immigrants and modern Asian American communities. Media is something that children can turn to for support and comfort like the comedic relief and coming of age story in Turning Red. As I listened to recent Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh say in her acceptance speech for Academy Award for Best Actress in Everything Everywhere All At Once, “For all the little boys and girls who look like me watching tonight, this is a beacon of hope and possibilities,” it gave me hope that other Asian Americans are watching and believe that they have safe places to explore and question their identity as an Asian American. The search to understand one’s background and identity is a long journey that involves stepping out of one’s comfort zone and putting themselves in new places. As a Chinese American adoptee, there are many places I can now call “home.”
One Child Nation, the documentary I found, was the first one to open its arms and welcome me into an unknown yet rewarding space where I could find meaning in my identity. After becoming inspired to understand my identity through the films I watched, I began to seek out opportunities to learn more about Asian culture. I attended Asian cultural events like Lunar New Year, ate at Iftar celebrations with my friends, watched Japanese studio films, and explored the rich Asian cuisine of my city. In my classes, I connected with other adoptees from China and asked them about their experiences, surprised to find we had many similarities and differences. It took, however, a catalyst for me to embark on this journey of weaving together my background, heritage, and immigrant identity. I hope that films can be a catalyst for others to feel seen and to be proud of the intricate narratives that make them an individual. Through documentaries, melodramas, Disney movies, and a growing sense of belonging, Asian American communities can create more homes for adopted children like me.
Works Cited
Berggreen, Shu-Ying. “Playground Lost: Television, Video and Chinese American Children’s Imaginative Play,” Asia Pacific Media Educator, issue 5, 1998, pp. 68-91. https://ro.uow.edu.au/apme/vol1/iss5/6.
Bromberg, Jada. “Trauma, Identity and Love: Being Adopted Didn’t Give Me a Better Life, but Changed My Path.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 29 Nov. 2021, https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/11/27/adopted-children-live-trauma-rejection-but-education-can-help/8736589002/.
Clemetson, Lynette. “Adopted in China, Seeking Identity in America.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 23 Mar. 2006, https://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/23/us/adopted-in-china-seeking-identity-in-america.html.
Côté, André-Anne. “Personal Essay by a Chinese Adoptee: I Returned to China to Find My Biological Family and Discover My Cultural Roots.” NüVoices, 18 Nov. 2018, https://nuvoices.com/2018/11/18/personal-essay-by-a-chinese-adoptee-i-returned-to-china-find-my-biological-family-and-cultural-roots/.
Found. Directed by Amanda Lipitz, Netflix, 2021.
Gabler, B. “One Child Nation: Movie Review by a Mom of Daughters from China.” Lavender Luz, 22 Nov. 2020, https://lavenderluz.com/one-child-nation/.
Kang, Inkoo. “It’s Time to Forgive The Joy Luck Club.” Slate Magazine, Slate, 17 Aug. 2018, https://slate.com/culture/2018/08/the-joy-luck-club-needs-to-be-forgiven-by-asian-americans.html.
Long, Lynelle. “One Child Nation Review: Intercountry Adoptee Voices (ICAV).” InterCountry Adoptee Voices (ICAV) , 27 Aug. 2021, https://intercountryadopteevoices.com/2020/05/27/review-one-child-nation/.
Luo, Yanli. “Imagining Kinship and Rearticulating Immigration: Transnational Adoption from China from 1882 to the Present.” University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, PhD Dissertation, 2017, Scholar Space, http://hdl.handle.net/10125/62069.
Madigan, Grace. “Identifying as an Adoptee and an Immigrant.” The Seattle Globalist, 14 Dec. 2017, https://seattleglobalist.com/2017/05/31/identifying-adoptee-immigrant/65348
Miller-Loessi, Karen, and Zeynep Kilic. “A Unique Diaspora?: The Case of Adopted Girls from the People’s Republic of China.” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, vol. 10 no. 2, 2001, pp. 243-260. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/dsp.2011.0057.
One Child Nation. Directed by Jialing Zhang and Nanfu Wang, Amazon Studios, 2019.
Turning Red. Directed by Domee Shi, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, 2022.
Yeoh, Michelle. The 95th Academy Awards, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 12 March 2023, Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood, Los Angeles, CA.