Five Years in Reunion as an International Adoptee

I am a Chinese International Transracial Adoptee. I reunited with my biological family five years ago. Five years ago already, and going on six years soon. Some days it still feels surreal and other days it feels like I have always known them. 

Six years ago, if you asked me when my birthday was, I would have said December 5, with an uncomfortable feeling and painful reminder of my unknown past. Now, I answer the same question with a pause of whether or not to share my birthday is July 16. If you asked me six years ago how many siblings I have, I would have said half the number I have now. 

 As a child, and even in my teenage years, I was told and convinced that if I was still in China I probably would not have made it through school. I would not have the same opportunities if I still lived there. I might have been hidden or, even yet, maybe not alive. I would not have had the medical care I needed. Being deaf, I would be rejected by society. I would have been poor because my family was assumed to be poor and would not have a “successful” or “happy” life. I wrestled with this supposed “truth” and “luck” I had over the years.

The wonders and beliefs continuously changed through different seasons of life. Sometimes, I could only hold anger because there was no other identifiable feeling. I often became numb and would find myself assimilating to the beliefs around me: “lucky”, “chosen”, “thankful”, “grateful”, and “God’s plan” even when I did not feel like those comments were true. Other seasons, I missed, grieved, and carried the weight of the ambiguous losses alone. 

The experience of the unknown often leaves uncertainty, anxiousness, fear, and confusion. As a child, the unknown was not concrete. The differing answers about my birth parents and my past were what I had to make sense of why I was here. My understanding of my past was based on many different theoretical situations and imaginary scenarios of what possibly happened and a few documents with almost no information. Not even my birthday or finding spot was known to be exactly correct.

In addition, these unknowns also impacted how I viewed myself the way I did. It made me wonder what my parents looked like as I saw friends with their parents. It made me wonder about concepts such as nature vs nurture. At doctor’s appointments I would watch again and again as a long diagonal line would make its way across the medical history forms followed by a written “unknown” across the document. In school I remember learning about China during history class. I would always feel every pair of eyes glancing towards me as the only Chinese student. I could feel part of me wishing I could feel connected to what I read and shame for not. Learning about genetics and family trees in school would only reaffirm the unknowns, and this time to teachers and classmates who I wasn’t always comfortable sharing. 

As a child I remember fantasizing of reuniting with my birth mom (and rarely my birth dad). For the most part, when I imagined my birth mom, her face was blurred and yet I found comfort in imagining  her. I imagined her holding me during days and nights, especially when I was sad. I would imagine her saying “I wanted you… I never wanted to give you up…I love you.” One of my favorite childhood movies was The Parent Trap (with Lindsey Lohan). I would creatively hope for all the possibilities of running into a sibling or even a twin.

I can still remember the day, March 31, 2018. I received a text from a biological cousin, thereafter my biological younger brother, Yujie and following, my biological older sister, Jianfei. Seeing their photos and exchange of messages through WeChat/Weixin (China’s messaging/social media app) were unexplainable.

Let me rewind a few months. January 2018, I was looking over my 23andMe account. I had the 23andMe account for a year already. Every few months or so I liked to click on “DNA Relatives” to see if any new close relatives were added. The closest “DNA relatives” I had were 4th cousins, up until January 2018. I noticed I had a new DNA match with a 3rd cousin. We shared 0.53% DNA to be exact. Not much closer to a 1st cousin or sibling and not much shared DNA at all. Nevertheless I decided to reach out to this cousin anyway. It turned out she was an international student from China. We exchanged multiple text messages. I also connected with her mother, my Ayi (阿姨). Ayi was determined to find my biological family. She asked some of her family who resided near the city of my orphanage. Initially Ayi thought she found my family. A father who worked in a factory, a mother who stayed at home, and a daughter who was already married. The only information I had was a possible finding location and an unknown but supposedly estimated birthday. This information was an estimate but enough to know this information did not match that of their lost daughter. I had been through this type of situation already and at this point grieved more for this family than I did for myself.

Ayi was steadfast to still find my biological family. She reached out to a news reporter. During our interactions on WeChat, I called the news reporter Uncle Zhou (周叔叔). Uncle Zhou formulated the article and uploaded it on 12-15 different news websites. In the first two to three weeks alone, over 15-18 million people read the article according to Uncle Zhou. The 15-18 million people were, in initial perspective, astounding, yet the thought of 15 million people was minute compared to the 57.37 million people who lived in the province and the 1.4 billion people in China. Ayi was able to contact the “prefecture-level city” of my orphanage and the surrounding areas. The following days a few people contacted me to share that they read my article and wanted to help find my biological family. One person reached out as well, convinced we were siblings because he felt we looked alike. We messaged for days though at the end the information did not align and I had a gut feeling he was not my brother.

One month after the article was posted, I received an unexpected message from a supposed cousin (my father’s sister’s son). He soon after shared the contact of my potential brother and sister. Around a month later my parents and I finally connected on WeChat as well. For almost two months we exchanged photos, brief recorded videos, and messages. I felt 99% sure this was my biological family. In May 2018, DNA results were confirmed. My family was found.

For a little over 20 years My ba (吧) and ma (妈) believed that I was still in Zhejiang Province, only a few hours away from them. It was evidently shocking that I was 6,500 miles away in the United States when they came across my article. They rejoiced and cried for this long desired connection. I was elated in gaining two siblings too: Yujie, my brother (弟弟) and Jianfei, my sister (姐姐).

Since finding my birth family I have had opportunities to video chat, message, and reunite in person with my parents and siblings. In midst of the deep gratitude and thankfulness there are also complexities and multiple layers of multidimensional loss, grief, shame, pain, cultural differences, and language barriers that are continually navigated. We have since shared some tears and even more laughter. There have been seasons of daily contact and other seasons of weekly contact. We have exchanged conversations and learned to appreciate each other’s presence without words. My sister and I continue to share a special relationship, and we share secrets like sisters would in some ways. We share mutual understanding on some similar experiences in our lives. During the times I have visited, I love stealing her clothes and seeing her yell at me and getting to be the “irritating little sister.” I am very thankful I have known her through her singleness, dating, marriage, and now having a son. My younger brother and I have similar personalities: caring, reserved, peacekeeping, and thoughtful. We share a mutual enjoyment for basketball, food, boba, and outdoor adventures. I appreciate our exchange of conversations through WeChat and his sincere check ins. 

Though it’s an “Asian thing” to rarely say “I love you”, I have witness and felt more and more over the years the love of my ba and ma through their care, worry, and their quality time through video calls. They take time to check in with a message of “how is work?” and “are you healthy?” and “Don’t eat too much fried and spicy foods.” and “dress up… wear nice clothes…Find yourself a boyfriend” (*Currently rolling my eyes on this comment*). The times we have been together in person consist of parties, family gatherings, outdoor adventures, shopping, appreciating village life, spending time together, and learning the necessary chores and some cooking. The relationship with my birth family has evolved and continues to evolve into one that has grown with learned trust, grace, and forgiveness.

Personally, my reunion brings waves of joy and/both bursts of sadness. It brings hurt and/both healing. It brings a sense of closure and/both a thousand more questions. It brings concreteness to ambiguous loss. It gives me a greater understanding for beauty of my people and the brokenness of my birth country. It allows me to further understand and grieve the actions that occurred to me and to my parents. The connection with my birth family permits opportunities to process and forgive in ways I had not yet done.  It broadens and changes the perspective of how I view my past and the first chapters of my story.

Meeting or reuniting with a biological sibling, parent, uncle, aunt, cousin, or grandparent brings a broad range of emotions for each adoptee who does experience reunion. Adoptees might describe reuniting with family members as surreal or even a nightmare. Being in a reunion is filled with moments that will forever change their lives. It shares complexity and often closure… a collision of fear and courage… heartache and happiness. Sometimes it allows an adoptee to feel relieved and other times confused. Reunions often provide answers and clarity to the past unknowns. For intercountry and transracial adoptees, there can be cultural differences and language barriers. Reunions can create at times a feeling of lack of belonging in either family. It can open an entire door of risks and what ifs. Sometimes it can fill a hole, and other times can make the hole a bit bigger. Finding family members can feel like finding the first chapters of our story. The anticipation and intensity of knowing what happened prior. The beginning pages could be crinkled, stained, smudged, ripped in multiple pieces, and contain some illegible sentences and paragraphs. At the same time the long-lost pages have been found.

Beyond the complexities of the unknowns or reunions there is comfort knowing that God can be the author of our story if we allow Him to be. We are not defined by our beginnings. Our beginnings impact us and shape us, BUT God is our potter. How even more can He shape us, mold us, and transform us. (So incredibly thankful that God created us intricately with phenomena such as neuroplasticity.) We are God’s handiwork.  Isaiah 64:8 is written, “Yet you, LORD, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.” He says we are His and never will he forsake us. There is reassurance and encouragement for this truth as we continue our life journey.