I get messages from adoptees and their parents asking "How do most reunions go?" Our recent match (#251) was an adoptee born in Guangong Province but adopted from the Yiyang orphanage in Hunan Province. The adoptee was "living her best life," was married with a young son and another child on the way. And then she got a message from me letting her know that a birth relative of hers had been located in China.
What follows is an interview I did with her a few weeks after that initial message. Was she searching at the time of the match? How did she view her adoption? What feelings did she have for her birth parents? I don't know if the words will do this interview justice, but my conversation with her was deeply emotional and enlightening.
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| Adoptee's birth mother pregnant with the adoptee. |
Tell me about growing up and how you processed your adoption. How did you view your adoption--positively, negatively? What was the atmosphere in your home growing up?
I was always told, as a general narrative, that my parents wanted to have another child. My Mom was 39 and my Dad was 42. They had their own son together and she just was a bit too old to have another child.
And they had a family friend that had previously adopted from China and having a baby girl also sounded in the rounds of what they would like. And so they said, “If you would like a little girl, go to China.” And so I was always wrapped in a lovely story of, you know, my adoptive family wanted me.
When my mom went to the orphanage with my godmother, they offered her a different baby because I was sick in the orphanage. But my parents denied that offering, I guess. And so I was raised with that story too, of like, no, you really were chosen. I was viewed in a positive way.
I always knew I was adopted. You know, I was told I was adopted, but I think the first memory I have is coming home from, I think kindergarten or first grade, and there being another Chinese adoptee. And coming home and saying, “I saw someone that looked like me.” And that being a pivotal moment in my parents' minds as well, of, oh, she is starting to grasp this concept on a physical level too.
You know, I grew up in a really loving environment. My parents did separate when I was young, but they stayed cordial and made sure that that was not a negative impact in our life and that they were still going to show up to co-parent my brother and me.
How did your family handle the idea later of searching? Did you express the desire to find birth relatives? How was that handled?
Yeah, when I probably early adolescence, I had mentioned just the interest of, is it even possible? I think I had seen on “Good Morning America,” people that were adopted in the late 1990s or early 2000s, of them finding birth relatives in the United States that were also adopted. I remember being like, "Wow, that would be amazing to find a relative.” Basically, I guess, my assumption was, if I found a relative, they would have had to have been a adopted too. My parents were very positive about it. They were like, “you know, if you want us to try to look, we can." But then of course the question was like, well, how do you go about doing that?
And so it kind of just always stayed a fantasy and my parents were always supportive to answer any questions I had, but, you know, really, they were so transparent growing up that the story they knew was a story I knew. And I think there just wasn't much ability to facilitate the physical finding of birth relatives.
So were your parents in the search community at all? Were they in the old Yahoogroups or in the Facebook groups or anything like that?
My parents are not very technologically savvy and so it was not something within their realm of knowledge of how to do so. My father worked 60, 65 hours a week, and I was with my mom part-time. So I think the communication of how important I made it sound was like, it would be nice, but I didn't say, “Hey, can you go do this for me?” I knew about the “One Child Policy” and I didn't want to get my birth parents in trouble. I felt that heavy and I also felt that like, what does that do for an identity of who I am? I had never shown interests of wanting to go to China or learn Chinese. And so I think my parents and I, like I didn't directly flat out and say, “Please go do this for me.” And so they're kind of like, “Well, let's just balance our day-to-day life. And if you show more interest, we'll do more at the time.” But because they didn't, they weren't part of the social media, or, you know, really more than basic email, it just wasn't a thing they even thought of.
Did you go grow up going to FCC gatherings? And did you have any interactions with other adoptees, maybe from your travel groups or anything like that?
I do. So I was adopted with five other girls. For the first two years, we met up every year, but we all come from different financial backgrounds. We all eventually moved across the United States and it would be kind of, you know, back in the day, like letters in the mail. You know, here's a yearly letter that you send to these people.
And then once Facebook developed and I became about 15, I was like, let me just Google these people's names and see if they pop up. And so we are all now connected on Facebook. We don't really interact. I think every single one of us has dealt with the adoption very differently. I am closer to one of them than I am to any of the other four, and she, when I found out about my birth parents, before I sent out a generic mass message to everybody what had happened, I called her on the phone and was just like, “This is something you may be interested in.” I ended up talking to her mom, and she said that she's actually been in contact with you before.
They were hopeful, maybe one day it'll happen for their girls. And then I was just really fortunate that I actually grew up with a lot of adoptees from China, just in our community. And so I never felt a need to go to an organization and find other adoptees from China. My best friend is actually adopted from China, and we met in High School. So, I think that part was very fortunate that I just had the built-in community.
Okay, so you've grown up, you gone through your teens, early 20s. You haven't taken any active steps to learn about your orphanage or about any background. Did you know, or did you have an inkling, or did your family have an inkling of, the scandals that came about, in the China program? I'm trying to figure out where you were in the whole China adoption community as far as your level of knowledge and involvement.
I really was minimal. It was more because I went to school with a few adoptees, I just knew them, but they weren't part of a bigger community as far as I know. And then, when I got older, my brother ended up having a long-term girlfriend that was also adopted from China. So I got a little bit of her story.
I went off to Portland State University and met a couple more people that were adopted from China. And it was kind of like, “Oh, you know as little as I know about your story.” I don't think my parents knew about how much trafficking was done in China for a lot of these girls. And I don't think they knew the weight that it wasn't just birth parents that gave up their children, but it was some parents had their children taken from them. And that kind of heaviness, you know. We never would have expected that I was from a different place.
And so growing up the community was very small. So, it really wasn’t until I became an adult, and got married and had a kid of my own, that I was like, “Oh, I was watching another person that is from an Asian family, but is raised first generation American, and trying to find her identity with China and American culture. But she at least had an Asian family. And I was like, OK, that's still a unique thing, and then I can take my perspective of, Wow, I feel like I have less of an identity with China.
But my kid is going to be half Chinese, and what does that mean? And what is my responsibility? I think my parents, when I was little, because I didn't show interest and when they asked me and I showed disinterest, frankly, it was not brought up again because they kind of took it as, “Well, we don't want to push it on you. If you would like to be American, you want to be raised American, that's fine. One day, if you'd like to know more about you're upbringing, you know, just ask.” And I just didn't.
And so I think it was more due to just the unawareness of it all, and there was never that strong internal desire to know more because I accepted that I was adopted. I accepted that finding my birth family was a very slim chance.
When I was adopted, I was in a newspaper for the Asian Reporter, or my family was. And so I had that story that I always grew up looking at. So I had physical evidence to kind of flip through and to like read my story. And so, yeah, it was more a “Just build your own community” type of thing. I'm still not really part of an adoption community.
All right, so you're virtually 30 years old and you haven't had an interest to search for anything. How did you come upon a DNA test? How did that all happen?
When I was 17, I was diagnosed with Sjogren’s syndrome, and when I was 19, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. And being adopted, I had no idea how it came about, no medical history. And so 23andMe had a holiday special and I called my best friend, who was also adopted. I said, “Hey, do you want your Christmas present to be a DNA kit with me? And we just do it together, and see what we find?” And I think it was just an impulse. I had seen that deal before, but I was like, maybe one day I'll do it. I also did Ancestry a few years ago, but didn’t really find anything meaningful. Let’s do 23andMe and see if I can get some medical history. Just went out on a limb. There wasn’t any “ah-ha” moment of let’s find somebody. I just wanted to see if there were any genetic issues so I could let my son know.
I think it was really more of a motherly instinct in me. Like, let me get some information to give my kid.
And when did you finally submit the 23andMe test?
December of 2024, so just a couple months ago.
Tell me about your match.
It was bizarre. We were sitting in our living room. My husband, and our housemate, sitting in our living room, and I'm playing “Candy Crush” on my phone. Sports in the background, kid playing on the floor. And all of a sudden I just get an email that says, “Gang Fun Yu wants to connect with you.” And I was like, “well, that sounds like an Asian name.” Let's see what that is.
And it said, “Brother.” And I was like, hmm, brother! Are they adopted? You know, no profile photo, nothing.
I was just like, okay. I saw how much our DNA match was. I looked at my husband, and I just kind of asked, “The only way it would be a 100% DNA match is if you're identical twin, right?
And he's like, “yes.” And I then asked, “50% match is a full brother?” He's like, “yes.” And I was like, “I think they just found my birth brother.”
And then everybody, like, the room just kind of stopped. Like, the TV's was muted, we told Cadence, “Here's your toy. Entertain yourself for a few minutes, adults are gonna talk.” And my husband sat next to me, helping me look to the results. And he's like, “Yeah, that looks like a birth brother, a full birth brother.”
And I was like, hmm, okay. And so that's when I messaged you and I got your message back and I was like, okay. It was definitely with high skepticism of like, you know, “Who is this Brian Stuy, and what does he do on behalf of this person?” Because it was that level of, I think, processing and trying to process. I am a very anxious person and trying to practice a lot of my calming methods of don't get too excited too quickly. Don't get too nervous. Just be like, okay, it's okay to just feel feelings and process all the information. And it's okay to be excited and hopeful, but also like, this is like finding a needle in a haystack in a pile of needles.
And a thing that I don't know if I either convinced myself growing up or practically speaking and statistically speaking, the odds of finding your birth family after 30 years on a different continent is, it's crazy that DNA technology has gone that far!
And that's where a lot of my questions came from, because when I originally made my profile, I remember putting in a blurb and just never looked back at my profile again. Just, you know, it just kind of had been sitting there. I never shut it down just because leave it open, if something happens great. And so, yeah, after corresponding with you more, like, it kind of more and more sunk in. It's still just really hard to believe, because once again, I always felt I might find a sibling that's adopted. And so to know that my whole birth family is still in China, and there's a language barrier, there's a continent barrier, there's a financial barrier -- It completes a lot of the “what if” questions I had growing up. Because, as you probably are aware, giving up your child at two months is not typical back then. So there was always that, and I felt it viscerally with abandonment issues of being kept for two months with my birth parents. And then having my own son and looking at him at two months and saying, "Could I just put this baby somewhere and walk away?” I felt that pain for my birth parents. Also never really knowing, like, was it my birth mother that wanted to keep me? Was it my birth father? Was it they both wanted me, but the grandparents didn't want me? Not knowing that dynamic, but knowing through evidence, I was wanted by somebody in my birth family because they would not have kept me for two months otherwise.
And that was something that was very healing to get confirmation of. Not just me guessing, but to actually know that they didn't want to give me up. Also being able to tell my birth father that he made the right decision and the sacrifice of thinking that I could have a better life somewhere that's not with them. I couldn't do it to my own kid. You know, I'm 13 weeks pregnant right now with my second. And, you know, just that idea I found out all this information. When you sent me the photo of my birth mother pregnant with me, I sat there thinking, “I'm pregnant with your grandchild right now.” And that was the first thought I had. And that was a really big moment for me.
I just can't imagine all of the things that they had to miss when I grew up. And that me being their first kid, too, and I kind of wondered what she thought about me. “Is she being taken care of? If she's still alive and sitting without pain for so long.” Whereas for me, I knew I was alive and I knew that I had a good life, and there was always that want to be able to tell them that.
So that gave me a lot of closure to be able to look at my birth father and say, “Thank you. You know, you did save my life. And I was adopted by people that wanted me, that still want me.
I have a lovely older brother who is very, very close to me.” I think subjectively, where I was from, compared to where I live, is much more developed. I have a lot more. . . . I have a lot more tangible support for having fibromyalgia and Sjogren’s in the United States that I may not have had there.
I hope that answered some of it.
So you see this message, you log in, you see Birth brother, you're thinking, how is this possible? You start Googling. I sent you the article, the blog essay, to explain how this all happened.
Did you by any chance watch “One Child Nation”, or had you seen it before?
I had heard about it when it first came out and it was something that my husband was interested to see. I was like, I don't know if I want to. I felt like I knew enough for what I was comfortable with back then.
But that night we put our son to sleep and watched it immediately. And it was a very, like, I knew a lot of the information. It was a little more graphic than I thought it would be, but I knew that was the reality. I don't think I knew how large the numbers were of how many babies. And I think the . . . luck feels just like such a . . . It feels like an odd word to use. But the statistical improbability of survival back then and then surviving the orphanage and surviving being a teenage girl, and all those different things of mortality and, yeah, you know, luck, fate, whatever people believe in, it exists, and watching that documentary was very moving and kind of personally healing. It's okay to feel like I deserve a place here. I've dealt with a lot of OCD and kind of like -- survivor's guilt is a little bit strong -- but in that in a similar phase of like, well, since I was adopted somebody else wasn't. And that sucks. Yeah, and kind of searching for that extra meaning of life.
Interesting! Okay. So now you know that it's a real match. And so now you're having to decide first of all, you have your whole family to tell about the match and then you have to decide what you want to do with that match. Do you want to see them, talk to them and stuff? Walk me through the turbulence of those first two days or so after you got the notification and you’re trying to figure out how this was all going to go together.
Yeah. Well, first off, kudos to you for just getting back to me as quickly as you did with these emails. Because I think that was the biggest thing. I got the notification from 23andMe on Saturday, and then by the next day in the evening, I was texting with my birth father. Crazy 24 hours!
I think the first thing was, we wanted to see if my parents still had the finding document, because we had like the adoption papers and the naturalization papers, but I had never specifically seen that document. And so I called her and immediately just kind of explained, like, the base line, because at that point, we had just had a match and I was like, where we just trying to verify any kind of information. And then called my father and asked, mentioned it to him real quick, and he was like, Okay.
And then we went kind of radio silent on my parents for like a day and a half. And so they were like, “So, what's going on?” I was thinking, I'm not going to give an hour and hour up by hour updates because I'm an adult. I have my own life. I am processing this and I'm not needing my parents -- I don't want to process for my parents. Let me process and then let me tell my parents how I wanted to do it. I knew they'd have a lot of questions and I wanted to at least feel my own answers before I could go further. And so I remember the biggest thing is the energy in my house was just very supportive. My husband was very like, “What do you need? This is clearly a lot of information. How do you want me to support you?"
And so I kind of, like, I don't know. I feel like, yeah, that's, um keep going further with this, you know, like, once we kind of figured out everything was correct, it's like, “Yeah, Venmo him the matching donation. Like, let's see what comes of this. You know, like, let's see these answers.” I think we were sitting -- I was getting an IV infusion for my pregnancy -- and I got your long email with my story.
So I walk out of my appointment and I'm looking at my phone and my husband asks “Is everything good?” And I was like, I just got the whole story and more photos. And he's like, “Okay, do we need to go somewhere? Do you want to go to your parents' house?” And I was like, “Nope, we're just going to sit in the car for a second. I'm going to read it out loud, process it on my way home in the car, probably read again, and we'll go from there.” And the story just kind of like . . . half of it made sense of like getting that, yep, they wanted me. That feels there's relief there, like, wow, I actually have birth siblings. I went from the youngest to the oldest in two different families overnight.
And there was emotional processing of knowing my birth mother had passed, just because there is, I think in my head, if I found my birth parents, my assumption was she was the one that wanted to keep me the most, and she was the one that I wanted to give the most emotional empathy of what it must be like to give me up, and giving her the emotional closure that I am okay and yeah, just that I'm OK. And so that part, I’m still working through that I won't ever be able to get that closure and being happy and grateful for the family members that I did find, because I know there's a lot of sadness that my birth family holds. They also feel it on a deeper sense, I think, because they actually knew her, and knew all those years that she was looking for me. So there was just lots of emotions, a lot of shock, a lot of is this, how real is this? Like, tangibly knowing it's real and then letting that sink in that you actually found your birth family. And then getting a text in the first few times and just kind of, you know, it felt very interview like at first [with my birth family]. Like, I just want to ask you some point blank questions of who are, like, who are you?
You know, functionally, they're strangers. But. . . it has been clear through that you know them, that I was told about them for many years -- I was an idea of an older sister and a daughter that had been lost and was somewhere. They assumed I was in China. So somewhere in China in their head.
And that makes me happy that they get the closure of knowing, but that also makes me feel like, “Oh, wow, for so many years, you didn't know that I was okay.” And that's a weight to hold. In the same regard, I didn't know if they were okay, you know, when COVID hit and so many people passed away, it was a reality of finding my birth family that seemed even smaller then.
Yeah, it's just been a wild and fun ride.
I give you and Lan kudos for going on this adventure. You know, I know you guys started doing this for your daughters. And it is a huge honor to be somebody that you're willing to do this on behalf of.
You know, it's a lot of your time, an effort.
It is interesting. If you were to ask me, and we get asked this all the time, you know, by reporters or people doing documentaries or whatever: Why are you doing this? I can't come up with a real solid answer because there's so much -- there is a huge cost, okay? Lan, my wife, if for the past fifteen years, if she had just waitressed in a restaurant, we would have a half a million dollars in the bank, you know, and yet she has been just been working for free at her desk, 12 hours, 14 hours a day. And we ask ourselves this question, why are we doing this? We ask this question virtually every day of each other. Do we want to keep doing this? Why are we doing this? What is the reason to do this?
And I've come up with my answer. Lan's answer is similar but different. My answer, the longer I'm doing this, the more I migrate to Lan's answer.
I initially did it because I see you and all the other adoptees, very much like my daughter, who would like to know these answers. And so it's okay, you know, let's provide adoptees with the answers to their burning questions. They must have burning questions.
Well, time has shown me that many don't have burning questions. Most are living their lives. They're like, yeah, “It's all good,” you know? And then when they're faced with the opportunity to get answers, a not insignificant number, say “No thanks. This will be too difficult to process, I don't want to know.” And so that's, for me, as a person with the “Why” chromosome as a dominant gene, of course you want to know the information. As painful as it is, it's at least truth.
There’s so little in this world that is true that you can learn firsthand is true. I can't figure out the orbit of the sun. I have to rely on everybody for practically all my knowledge that I have in my brain. And so if I can come up with something that I can factually know is true about me personally, I would jump at it in a second.
I describe it like this: We have a key. When we sent the message to you, “This person would like to connect,” and you received it, we gave you the key. Our job is done. I mean, as long as you got it, you can now take it, you can open the door if you like, or you can put the key away, you can throw the key away, whatever! You have the key. And I'm not going to continue to push you and say, “You know, really, your birth family is struggling.” No, you have the power.
And so it gets frustrating. Lan's goal has always been from Day One: Bring peace to these birth families. And time has shown me, time and experience has shown me, that that is really the objective. It's no longer about finding our daughters's birth families. It's really, honestly, it's not even about necessarily helping the adoptees. It's just finding the child, finding some pictures and saying, “Your daughter is happy. She's not interested in meeting or getting in contact, but she's alive, you can know that she is OK.” So, when we get tired and want to just stop, we ask ourselves about all of the hundreds of birth families that then would never know what happened to their lost child.
That is what I felt when I had my son. I’m interested on his behalf and my behalf. Looking at my little kid I could never make that decision and I could never imagine how my birth parents could have made that decision, and not every single hour wonder what happened to me. And so to give that peace to them and see where this goes, is exciting. It's also a lot of nerves of just like, I don't get to just go to China when I want to see you [the birth family]. I mean, I barely see my best friend in Idaho, you know? And I'm just like, you're so far away...And so there are a lot of barriers. I don't think it'll ever be this Hallmark movie of getting to know them on this super interpersonal level of nitty gritty and fully understanding each other. But I think any amount of peace or acquaintanceship we can form is more than we had before. And yeah, that's enough for me. It's enough for me to even have some kind of ability to message them and be like, “Took your birth nephew to the zoo today. Here’s a photo enjoying the Giraffe.” I hope one day we can go to China and meet them. I know they would like me to come to China and we will see when the doors open for that. But being pregnant and about to have a newborn is not a time to go to China. So it'll have to be on the shelf for a little bit at least.
One last question: You set up a chat with your birth brother, and then you set up a video chat. What were the main takeaways when you got off the video chat? What was it that was the most prominent in your mind? Now I feel this, now I know this. What were the main takeaways?
I have never felt growing up that I looked like any other Asian person. I've always found certain things in myself, facial features, unique. The biggest takeaway was that I look at my birth sister and I'm like “We are related.” And it was very cool to just look at the facial features of somebody and be like, “I see myself.”
It was healing to see my birth father get slightly emotional as well, and just feel that want to know and just the interest. My birth brother had mentioned that he wants to make sure that I wear enough sunscreen and just like, the kindness to say that, and just like the level of sincerity and just caring to even make sure I'm getting enough rest because they do know I'm pregnant. And make sure I'm taking care of myself and just being like, oh, wow, like the feeling of, they love me and stuff like that. But I think there's that sense of being family, you love your family.
And for them, I can only assume it is easier for them to, I think maybe subjectively, to love me because they have been looking for me for so long, whereas for me, it's like, I've thought of you guys as a concept, but not as a, I haven't thought about loving my sister. I haven't thought about loving a birth brother like that. So there is an emotional disconnect that I'm catching up on, of the feelings and that I was kind of surprised by because I thought from my past, I get very attached, very quickly.
And this was actually one of the first times that I didn't get emotionally attached as quickly. I felt a little bit more level and in control of my emotions and able to process at a speed that didn't feel like my emotions were just taking me along for the ride, that I was able to be like, "No, it's okay that you're excited. It's okay that you're also apprehensive. It's okay if you don't have an immediate, ‘oh my gosh’ connection. And it's okay to just see them as kind, sweet people, and go from there, and it just stay there for a little while until you get to know them.”
It is very cool to know that I have birth family, though. When Cadence [my son] was born, the thing I would say to everybody around me, is “This is the first blood relative that I know of.” And although I have never felt adopted growing up, and a lot of times my parents forget that I'm adopted, it is something like, “Yeah, but by blood, like, you know, I talk about how my grandparents are Holocaust survivors and my mom’s from England. But, like, genetically, that's not true. And so it is very, very cool to now be able to say, “Oh, I actually do know other people I am blood related to.”
I just have that as a fact in my life now.
