Adopted Chinese daughters seek their roots

by Guest Contributor Jae Ran Kim, originally published at Harlow’s Monkey

Patti Waldmeir with her daughter, Grace

This article comes via Financial Times (which in itself is interesting to me – a story about adoptees returning to their country of birth in a publication about the world of finance?). I have several thoughts about this piece, some of the language and themes I really struggle with and find incredibly problematic, like this: And one American mother who visited the orphanage squat toilet with her nine-year-old Yangzhou girl reports that the child gripped her hand as she perched precariously above the evacuation hole, and proclaimed that she was glad she had not been left there forever. Those of us who live in China (as my family does) know that squat toilets are a trial for any westerner. They are a wake-up call that, to those used to western toileting ways, China is still a foreign country. Yeah…moving on. One of the things I find most fascinating about this article is the idea that China seems to be bending over backwards to welcome “back” their “lost girls” (referencing the book, Lost Daughters of China here). The author of this article writes,

But now, as the balance of global economic and political power shifts subtly in favour of China, Beijing is reaching out to all these lost daughters – and welcoming them back home.China has invited thousands of foundlings back to their birthplaces for government-sponsored “homeland tours” which, like last year’s Beijing Olympics or next year’s Shanghai World Expo, give the country a chance to show off to the world. On one level, what the Chinese adoption authorities call “root seeking tours” – filled with extravagant expressions of love and kinship and lavish gifts for the returning orphans – are a transparent public relations exercise aimed at raising money for Chinese orphanages, justifying the decision to export surplus children and countering decades of unfair international criticism that Chinese people “hate girls”.

In a blog post I wrote, Client, Ambassador, Gift (based on Sara Dorow’s concepts in her book, Transnational Adoption: A Cultural Economy of Race, Gender and Kinship) I wrote from an adult adoptee’s perspective what it felt like to be “welcomed back” by the country that sent me away because they didn’t want to deal with my welfare or the welfare of poor/single women and families.

In the article, the author describes this scene:

which reminded me of the time I attended the 2004 Gathering in Seoul in which the Vice Minister of Health and Welfare said that he “loved us” and how the other officials there encouraged us to come back and “bring our families.”

I felt like they were saying, “hey, we didn’t want to support you so we found other families in wealthier countries to do it, and since they’ve got money, come back, visit our great parks and temples, eat our great food, spend lots of money on trinkets and show them what a great country we are! But forgive us, we love you, we really, really love you!”

In that older post, I wrote,

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