Bei in Jiangxi, China before we met her. 2001.
(click image to view larger)
Bei, proudly made-up for a cello concert, December 2011.
Bei just returned from the Teton Science School, her first multi-day trip away from home. She had fun, but was also homesick, which is both upsetting and endearing for us parents. We're happy to have her home. I've been meaning to repost this blog entry that I wrote when we lived in China in 2005, and this seems like a good time--I'm too busy with work to create much in the way of new posts until the semester ends. This post first appeared in my China blog, and was recently published in Alice Renouf's book, "Yin Yang: American Perspectives on Living in China."
Adoption in China
Part of our motivation for coming to China this year
was, of course, that this is our daughter Bei’s home country. The Chinese are immensely curious about Bei
and they are surprisingly confused when they see her with us—two obviously white
parents. There is little shyness in China about
staring, and people stand on the street looking back and forth from Bei to
Ellen to me in confusion. If it is just
one of us with Bei they may ask if the absent parent is Chinese. The relief of understanding a mystery leaps
onto their faces when we tell them that Bei is adopted (“Ta shi shou yang de.”
– “She is adopted.”) and the reaction is always a thumbs-up or an expression of
how lucky Bei is, to which we reply that we
are the lucky ones.
During our train ride from Shanghai
to Kunming we
passed directly through Bei’s hometown just after dawn on a dreary Sunday
morning. Feng Cheng is a small,
nondescript, typical southeastern Chinese city, with concrete apartment
buildings and stores surrounded by rice paddies and, in this part of the Jiangxi Province, coal mines. Evenly spaced trees line the highway that followed
the railroad tracks, and a few trucks and bicycles moved along it in the early
morning. I snapped some blurry photos
through the train window to save for Bei, who was still sleeping.
In one field I saw a man with a little girl about Bei’s age
and, as we passed, he hoisted her onto his shoulders for the walk back into
town, much as we often carry Bei when she is too tired to walk. I couldn’t help but think about how easily Bei
could have been that girl, living an utterly different life in China, instead
of sleeping through the dawn in a soft sleeper train bed with two American
parents. And I couldn’t help but imagine
that somewhere in that town, maybe even within sight of the rail line, Bei’s
birth mother was busy making breakfast, unaware that the one-day old girl she
had left at a Feng Cheng school gate in 2001 was passing through town and
dreaming four year old dreams in English.
It is not just foreigners who adopt children in China, and it has been interesting to learn that
adoption here is viewed quite differently than it is in the U.S. One of the most surprising things that we
have discovered, initially through conversations with our friend Wei Hong in
Shanghai (the wife of our American instructor there) is that, in China,
adoption is often a huge secret that is kept from the adoptive child for as
long as possible. In fact, it isn’t a
stretch to imagine adopted people living their entire lives here without ever
knowing that they were adopted. And
remarkably, according to Wei Hong, who has an adopted cousin, everyone else in
the family and in the family’s social circle EXCEPT the adopted child knows
about the truth.
Of course our philosophy in the U.S. about sharing the adoption
story is quite the opposite—we start talking about adoption and birth parents
from the earliest opportunity so that it ISN’T a big surprise for the
child. Our thinking is that if the
child is aware of adoption from the beginning, they integrate this identity as
they grow up with their adoptive parents and they avoid dealing with an
unanticipated sea change in the context of their lives upon discovery of their
history. And of course there is an implicit
understanding by us that adoption is not shameful or something to be hidden
away.
So why do the Chinese take the opposite approach—hiding this
enormous truth, the mother of all elephants in the closet?? I can speculate based on a few conversations,
some reading and the results of an assignment that I gave my second year
writing students here in Lijiang.
One obvious hypothesis is that there is a sense of shame in China about
adoption—aren’t big secrets often related to a need to hide something shameful? But if this were the case, why would everyone
except the child be let in on the
secret? This suggests that perhaps the
parents are not themselves ashamed, but feel that the child’s very history
might be shameful for the child. To
them, keeping the truth a secret may be a design to protect the child.
Protecting the child from shame by keeping the secret may
have something to do with trying to save “face” for the adopted child. The concept of face in China is more important than it is for us in the
U.S.
(though we do have it), and perhaps there is some feeling that an adopted child
would experience a loss of face upon finding out about her history. This does not seem like a huge stretch. In the book, “Encountering the Chinese – A Guide for Americans,” the authors (Hu
and Grove) put it this way:
As people grow into
adulthood, they gradually adopt certain claims regarding their own
characteristics and traits, and they learn to make these claims, implicitly and
sometimes explicitly, to others. People
also learn to recognize other individuals’ implicit claims about themselves and
to accept (or in some cases to appear to accept) those claims…This set of
claims, or line, of each person is his or her face.
Face is important in China because of the nature of
social relationships here (according to Hu and Grove). In
contrast to the relatively transient social relationships in the U.S. and some
other western countries, the Chinese are strongly tied to their families and
social groups for their entire lives, with relatively less mobility than
us. As a result, it is critical to
maintain these relationships which means maintaining a stable self image –
“face.” In a sense, losing face means
losing your status in your entire social support group – being exiled.
But does this really apply to the dilemma of whether to tell
a child about adoption or to keep it a secret?
It seems to me that if a child’s identity includes early knowledge of adoption,
that there is no issue of “face” since there would be no catastrophic change of
self image (loss of face) for the child within the child’s family and social
group. So maybe this concept doesn’t explain
the issue after all.
The explanation offered by Wei Hong for the secrecy in her
family was that the parents feared that if a child knew she was adopted, she might
love her parents less. This viewpoint is
supported by at least some of the students in my classes who, aside from representing
the relatively rare slice of the Chinese population that goes to college, come
from all over the China
and offer a geographic cross-section of Chinese thinking among their generation.
Ying Zhou Na (Sandra – Class 4),
a Chinese student, explains it like this
(unedited):
If I adopt a child, I
won’t tell her that she is adopted. I
think it is not necessary to tell her who are her birth parents. I also can give her a warm family, as good as
her birth parents could do. I’m afraid
that she will be sad at hearing the news that she is adopted. She may keep silent to us later. To keep secret to her is better than to tell
her the truth, I believe. Personally
speaking, I don’t want to tell her the truth either. As I consider that it may affect our close
relationship.
The writing is a little clumsy, but you get the idea. And this sentiment was expressed by many
students in my classes.
But other students refute this and suggest another reason
for keeping secrets that seems to come closer to the heart of the issue for the
Chinese I’ve talked with.
Wang Hai Lian (Shannon – Class 4) writes (again, unedited):
By tradition, Chinese
parents always not tell their adopted children who are adopted. It is not because they are afraid the adopted
children loved them less, but it will be hurt the children’s heart and do harmful
of children’s growth. In my opinion, if
the family have several children who are birth children and adopted children,
the parents should not have to tell the child who are adopted. If the family have only adopted child, maybe
they have lots of adopted child, the parents should have had to tell the
children. Even if the children and
parents were become close friends maybe child could keep touch with birth
parent but they always loved and close with their adoptive parents. I known my uncle have two daughter. So he give his little daughter to other
people who haven’t child. After fourteen
years, my uncle went to her home and wanted her called him father. I don’t know when her adopted parents told
her that she were a adopted child, but her only told my uncle: “I only have one
family and one parents. I never know you
and never wants to know you.”
Many students shared this opinion. To tell a young child the truth about
adoption would break the child’s spirit and taint their view of the world. All
children should see their world as a beautiful and happy place with no lurking
shadows to darken their days. To these
students the illusion of a perfect world for a child is the most important
thing. This central philosophy of a
sacred happy childhood was repeated in paper after paper as well as in class
discussions. When a child is young,
their ability to cope is low and adoption truth could be catastrophic. This, of course, assumes that adoption, while
fundamentally devastating, can perhaps be swallowed when a person grows to
maturity with the strength built upon an idyllic childhood.
The majority of students felt that eventually, an adoptee should be told the truth. When pressed, they surmised that “eventually”
meant when they were fully mature adults.
Zoe (Sui Shanru) Writing Class 5 summed this view up like
this:
I think adoptive
parents should tell their child that she is adopted when she is old
enough. After all, the adoption is a
fact that they must face. So, we must
tell them. But we must choose a suitable
time at the same time. Because, in my
opinion, they are pure when they are young.
They should live happily. We
should make them believe that the world is wonderful. The persons around them are kind and love
them. I also think a little child don’t
have the ability to distinguish right and wrong. They are easy to do something wrong. If they know the fact early, they may be
self-abased. And they will think, “Why
my birth parents abandoned me?” So they
will give up themselves. They can’t
understand even though their birth parents had some difficulties that they are
reluctant to discuss or mention. So, as
for this question, I think the adoptive parents should tell their child that
she is adopted when they grow old enough to think deeply.
Hou Jun Ping from the Gansu Province
agrees:
For my part, I think
adoptive parents should tell their child the truth. The child has the right to know everything
about himself. If I were a adoptive
mother, I would tell my child he is adopted.
I won’t tell him when he is young. One of my aunt’s daughters was
adopted at 2 years old by another aunt.
My aunt is kind to her and kept the secret for a long time. At last, my aunt told my adopted cousin the
truth. My cousin said, “Mum, I knew I’m
not your birth daughter early, then I was unhappy. Now I understand you. I’m your birth daughter and you are my birth
mother.” Now my cousin has two [sets of]
parents. She lives a happy life. The adoptive parents should tell their child
that she is adopted.
But an adopted girl (Chinese name) from one of my writing
classes refuted many of the arguments of her peers:
By Kenny (Peng Yan) Writing Class 5:
In my opinion,
adoptive parents should tell their children that they are adopted. Because when they grow up to be a teen, they
must think lots of things that making them very sad. But if they told their children the truth
when they were a small child, it might be a habit: [become internalized] they know they are adopted but they don’t
care.
It is just my opinion,
because I am a adopted child, too. I was
very young. I learned the truth by my
mother. Although sometimes I am sad that
I was adopted, I knew that my adoptive parents love me very much, especially my
mother. She makes me very happy and I don’t
feel different with others. I appreciate
her of course. I love them as if they
are my birth parents.
Zhang Lu Yan supports this idea but describes a more
ambitious course of moral and political development for her future adopted
child, a “brave boy”:
If I had an adopted
child, I would tell him that he was adopted.
I said “he” because I had a wish that one day I could adopt an African
boy. I want to adopt an African boy because
there are many kids homeless and ill or starve to death everyday in Africa. I want to
adopt a boy because I think boys are more brave than girls. I will teach him everything when he is
young. I want him to be tough-minded. I want him to be responsible. I want him to have strong self-respect. So I teach him at his youth. When he grows up he should be prepared to
face himself, to face his country and to devote to his country. Thus, I will tell him that he is adopted with
no hesitation. It’s my choice to adopt
him, but it’s his choice to decide what he can do to the world when he can rely
on his own effort.
As westerners steeped in individualism, we have confidence in the
strength of our children and in their ability to grow strong in the shelter of our
love with full knowledge of their adoption histories. Life books, adoption stories, heritage camps
and early musings about birth mothers are part of our roadmap. And of course for us, this system feels like
the right path. And I think it is. But as I glimpsed the little girl and her
father, walking home between rice paddies outside of Feng Cheng in southeastern
China,
how could I know what her life might be like? For me and Ellen, and Bei, the train left
Feng Cheng on it’s way west to a different life.
