By Jas Santos and Yuqing Wang

With special thanks to Kyaira Boughton

UPDATE: China’s Foreign Ministry announced Thursday, September 5, 2024 that foreign adoptions of Chinese children will no longer be allowed. Adoptions in process are now canceled. According to China’s Children International, 160,00 Chinese children have been adopted abroad over 32 years since the opening of international adoptions. This ban introduces the end of an era and the closing of a diaspora of international Chinese adoptees.

HUANGGANG, China – On January 1st, 2016, the resounding cracks of fireworks signaled a new dawn for millions of Chinese couples. As the world welcomed the new year, tens of thousands of Chinese netizens took to Weibo and WeChat to express their elation over the lifting of China’s 35-year-old one-child policy. The national mandate imposed strict regulations on family size, permitting only one child per couple. The repercussions of having more than one child were dire, with penalties sometimes exceeding multiples of a parent’s yearly income, along with steep threefold fines for each additional child. Consequently, many Chinese parents feel compelled to abandon their children to evade punishment when faced with unplanned pregnancies.Since the late 1970s, China has experienced a surge in abandoned children, particularly girls who were often less desired for not being able to carry a family’s name. While the policy prevented an estimated 400 million births and curbed China’s population growth, beneath its success lay irreversible consequences for a generation of orphaned children and adoptees who have now grown to be adults. 

Returning to the Huanggang orphanage in Hubei, China, Duke Kunshan University (DKU) junior Skylar Veazey is confronted with scant documentation of her life before she was adopted around the age of two. “Some orphanages have nannies that take care of a big batch of kids. Mine was quite a small orphanage. A lot of those people, their intentions are different. In my situation, it might have been more for the money because I was not picked up a lot as a baby,” Veazey shares, referring to the range of caregiving conditions within China’s state-run orphanages. 

Between 1999 and 2013, Veazey was among the 70,000 Chinese adoptees granted permanent homes in the United States. For these adoptees, the home or school environment serve as important stages for connection with their Chinese heritage. Raised in a loving single parent home in Golden, Colorado, Veazey attended a local school where she caught occasional glimpses into mainland Chinese culture through annual intercultural festivities. Now in their twenties, Chinese-American adoptees, like Veazey, have since returned to China to fully immerse and reconcile pieces of their identity. 

DKU is home to a global Chinese diaspora community of over 40 and continuously expanding. Among them are transnational adoptees, as well as the later-generation sons and daughters of Chinese immigrants from countries such as Malaysia, the Philippines, Germany, and the United States. They have returned to their ancestral homeland to deepen their understanding of mainland Chinese culture and reality, which they have only glimpsed through the narratives of older generations and the customs adopted by their local community. Although their physical features allow them to seamlessly blend into the local crowd, the unique identities of diaspora members often become apparent through their interactions. 

DKU Global Health senior Jordan Knight, born in Hunan, China and currently residing in Charlotte, North Carolina, is one of the adoptees striving to reestablish connections with her Chinese heritage. “I think I definitely knew I was Chinese, but when I was younger I would draw myself with blonde hair and blue eyes,” Knight said, explaining that her mother had these features that she once wished for herself, though she was acutely aware of her own differences since she was a child. Knight recalls how her mother consistently immersed her in Chinese culture, frequently participating in week-long Chinese celebrations, such as dragon boat races and mid-autumn festival performances, with other adoptee families. “I started learning Chinese when I was five years old, so I have a long background of learning Chinese.” 

Knight’s decision to attend Duke Kunshan University, a joint US-China liberal arts institution based in Jiangsu province stems partly from her desire to explore aspects of Chinese-American identity. “I also knew that I wanted to go to China, at least for some type of study abroad semester. I was a freshman in high school when my sister came home and was like, ‘there is this really cool school in China built for people that want to learn more about Chinese culture while still having that American feel to it.’”

Just over a decade old, Duke Kunshan University, established in 2013, is among the first of its kind in Chinese higher education that seeks to mold purpose-driven “rooted globalists”.  The young university reflects the ambition of 21st century scholars and its international student body to blend Western and Eastern perspectives within its “interdisciplinary” education model. Situated between Shanghai and Suzhou, the university’s geographic location in the heart of the Yangtze River Delta, exposes students to the cultural richness and hottest technological advancements in one of China’s most developed regions. Paired with the American curriculum of its parent institution, Duke University, the hybrid space of Duke Kunshan University attracts thousands of students, among them Chinese diaspora seeking to explore their dual identities. 

Similarly, Veazey finds her undergraduate education at DKU as a perfect opportunity to connect with her transnational identity. She describes coming back to China as a surreal and emotional journey, navigating an identity she did not grow up with. “It was really crazy because [Chinese authorities] kept calling me by my Chinese name and I hadn’t told them my name at all. Even when I was leaving China to come back to the US. They were like, no, you’re not Skylar. You’re 黄华西. When they called me that, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I really am still part of the system. That was the weirdest part because I left that behind when I went to America.’” 

Despite sincere efforts to reconnect, adoptee children encounter numerous challenges when assimilating into Chinese culture. Their upbringing in the United States often manifests in habits and mannerisms that diverge from those of Chinese natives. Skylar expresses the challenges of transitioning from Colorado to China, where only 3.8% of the population are Asians, much less Chinese, to suddenly finding herself immersed in Chinese culture and experiencing a different but familiar sense of unbelonging. ”I was raised by white people but I experience what it’s like to be Asian because I look Asian. On the outside I look very similar [to a Chinese person] but on my first day in China someone could tell I am an outsider just by the shirt straps I wore.”  Beyond attire, food preferences, greeting customs, and notably, accent are distinguishing traits that can be picked up by native Chinese to pick foreigners apart. These characteristics contribute to the adoptees’ sense of otherness, even in environments where they physically resemble others.

Both women recall experiences unique to the Chinese-American adoptee identity, such as being handed separate bills when out with their single parent. Now that they are grown, the once-prominent age gap that helped distinguish them as parent and child has faded, leading to frequent mistaken assumptions of them being two friends simply hanging out, due to their contrasting appearances. On another instance, Knight remembers being scolded by cab drivers who, while usually understanding and giving foreigners more patience, expected her to be able to navigate China because she looked Chinese. Reflecting on these experiences Veazey expresses a sense of disillusionment: “It definitely threw me into a spiral. There were points where I was like, why am I trying to do this? I don’t know myself as a Chinese person. Why am I fighting so hard for something that isn’t really mine?”  

This conflict does not exist only in terms of personal factors, but rises to the level of regions and nations. The perception and treatment of native Chinese towards Chinese of other nationalities also contribute to the diaspora and adoptees’ struggle and sense of isolation. Some Chinese users would express their bias against foreign citizens of Chinese origin on Chinese platforms, often viewing them as not true Chinese, believing they do not belong to China, and occasionally exhibiting hostility towards them. Chinese Americans, in particular, after receiving such sentiments, are more prone to develop a poor view of China. According to a survey, only 40% of Chinese Americans have a favorable view of China. Such practices can deepen identity conflicts and cultural barriers between Chinese and Chinese Americans.

On the tail end of the one-child policy, Knight and Veazey were among the last of the big adoptee wave. They describe the weight of returning to a new China, and the difficulty witnessing intact families with parents looking after more than one child. “Everytime I pass on the street. I was like, wow. Like, that’s, you know, a Chinese family. That’s a daughter right there. It’s just crazy to see how these family dynamics are so different from the time that me and Jordan were in China and were put up for adoption.” According to official documents and policies on China’s People’s Daily website, the one-child policy was officially introduced in 1978 as a result of the “State’s promotion and implementation of family planning” for China’s population control. During the one-child policy, unplanned pregnancies that result in the birth of a child were penalized to varying degrees. Anyone who gives birth to an additional child in violation of the law was subject to a levy of two to six times the previous year’s gross income, with those who give birth to a child out of wedlock or to a person other than his or her spouse subject to a levy of six to eight times the gross income. The levy was increased by three times for each additional child in the order in which they were born. In these times, many families chose to abandon their children, especially girls, in order to avoid high taxes.

In navigating their shared struggle, they discuss the importance of leaning on their adoptive families and found families in third spaces. Whereas Knight celebrates her close relationship with her sister, Veazey works as a camp counselor for Heritage Camp for Adoptive Families in Colorado. Veazey explains that the camps, one based in Snow Mountain Ranch and the other in Denver, were special places to talk about nuanced topics like their relationship with their parents. There you would find people with different levels of connection to the adoptee identity. “One Korean guy was there because his girlfriend was adopted from China,” Veazey elaborates, “A lot of them were also older. They have dealt with being adopted longer than us and they’re dealing with it so well.” Knight and Veazey have become closer over time. They discuss their connections with adoptees  and other members of the Chinese diaspora who view DKU as a buffer zone for exploring their identity. 

For those who have been adopted, whether legally or informally, experiences with both biological and chosen families have influenced their future aspirations to be adoptive parents themselves. Charles Chang, a computational social scientist and urban studies professor at DKU, had a very special experience with a “found family”, having received his undergraduate education in Beijing, China, before moving to the United States for his doctoral studies. Unlike Knight and Veazey, Chang knew his biological parents but had a strained relationship with them, and was cut off from his parents’ financial support for most of his early adult life. “My biological parents do love me, but our relationship was horrible 20 years ago. My family cut me off when I was in the US. All my support came from my adoptive father who paid my tuition and living expenses. For a long time, I resented my biological parents.”

Since then, Yifu Tuan, a Tianjin man who had lived in Australia, has taken Chang under his wing. His adoptive father gave Chang care, love, and financial support throughout his twenties, all of which would influence Chang’s decision to want to adopt a child afterward. After Tuan’s passing in 2020, Chang made his way to China, seeking to adopt a child and mend his relationship with his biological dad, who had lived alone since his biological mother’s death. “I lost my [surrogate] father who I loved dearly. My biological father lost my mother who he loved. And the child I’m about to adopt was abandoned by his biological parents. We were all lost and had something in common in that regard.” 

Chang confides some of the difficulties in trying to adopt a two-year old boy. He had begun his adoption process in 2016. Chang tried to apply for adoption in China and the U.S. but faced considerable resistance in both countries due to his status as a single adult male. In the U.S., prospective single male adopters undergo rigorous evaluation involving deeply personal inquiries. While beneficial for the well-being of adopted children, the intrusive nature of this process can impose additional stress on aspiring parents like Chang.

The paths taken by parents adopting children can vary greatly in difficulty and length. In order to establish his paternity and secure legal recognition for his adopted child in the States, in Chang’s case, a minimum two-year waiting period is required. By the time Chang’s child attains American citizenship, he will have reached the age of four. When asked why he has stuck with his adoption journey all these years, Chang admits that love can exist between friends and colleagues, but many forms of love are conditional. “I think I stopped insisting on someone to love me and wanted to love others more, unconditionally.”

The adoptees in DKU have reached their own personal conclusions in reconciling with their past and the trauma of abandonment. While Veazey and Knight remain curious about the reasons their biological parents had, they sympathize with the difficulties Chinese parents had during the last three decades. “I am more curious about my biological mother because this time was especially hard on women, on their bodies, financial and mental health,” Veazey laments, “Mothers feel a different type of grief and certain policies really made women give up their children.”

Poverty in China, particularly during the one-child policy era, is another factor contributing to strained relationships between parents and children. Chinese-American adoptees, appreciating the significance of education, have actively sought opportunities to enhance its value and accessibility. Chang, having grown up poor, refrains from assigning blame to his parents. “My biological parents did not understand me very well because of the educational gap,” Chang said. Chang, who helps direct the Digital Technology and Society Cluster at DKU, remains hopeful about the future of liberal arts education and its potential to enrich China’s educational landscape. 

In the meantime, Knight and Veazey have launched their own podcast, the Hu Sisters Podcast, having originated from Hunan and Hubei respectively. Their podcast revolves around the themes of love, difficult relationships, adoptee humor, acceptance, vulnerability, discrimination, and the unknown. “We can discuss a variety of topics from 0 to 100,” Veazey added, “We can go from laughing to crying.” By sharing their stories, they hope to create a resource for other adopted children facing similar struggles. Knight emphasized, “We had a voice on a very specific identity that not a lot of people have.”

As for their favorite conversation topic, Knight says she often indulges in the existential what-ifs of her life: “What would I do if I were my parents?” “What would my life be like now if I had not been adopted?” She believes that confronting these questions directly can lead to a deeper understanding of herself.

In dealing with the uncertainties of her life as a Chinese American adoptee, Veazey’s visit to the U.S. embassy weighed heavily on her mind. As she gazed at her baby picture, she couldn’t help but ponder her place in society. “It’s one thing to just be told you’re adopted,” Veazey mused, “and another to actually connect the pieces.” As she matures, she finds joy in exploring and assembling the disparate fragments of her identity, even as some pieces elude a clear resolution. “The only life I have ever known is the life I have right now.”