Origins

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Being adopted from China is like being an endangered animal, without the endangered part (well, not yet).

cs Nov. 22, 2024

There is only my voice whispering for the release and return of Chinese Adoptees back to the sweet smelling tea olive trees of the Guilin mountains. I think of our little spirits embodied, removed from our blankets of monsoon season and sent off to a foreign but abundant enclosure that is the West. Sacred Grottoes of Yunyang await my return but for now we I’ll visit through photos taken by missionaries from National Geographic.

June 2000 Photograph by my parents of a fisherman at People’s Park in Nanning from my adoption.

sometimes I wonder if my mother tongue, culture, country, sense of self was traded for weekly dance lessons, public school lunches and college loans, american freedoms and antidepressants

China’s One Child Policy, was enacted in 1980 and ended when the “radically progressive” Two Child Policy, set in place in 2016. In May of 2021, China introduced a Three Child Policy before ceasing all international adoptions in September of 2023. (Made widely public in October 2024)

An estimated 160,000 Chinese children, mostly girls but also boys, have been adopted into families all over the world since China officially opened its doors to international adoption in 1992. Approximately 82,000 of these children have been adopted to the United States alone. https://chinaschildreninternational.org/who-we-are