A species obsessed with origins

大家好! Hi all,
I want to share with bloggers and readers some of my thesis and final paper in college, on cultivating an imagined “Chinese” identity within Chinese adoptees in America. I recently met a very interesting woman through Mei Mei at a dinner in Beijing. We got to talking about the great “feeling of loss” and sense of urgency to connect with origins and ancestry that some people feel. Naturally the subject of adoption was part of this conversation. How much does this feeling of loss contribute or take away from our identity formation as Chinese adoptees?

Here is some serious food for thought:

From intro:
I affirm that in Chinese adoption, the perception of the child’s loss of cultural heritage and imagined birth culture is the essential reason for parents to cultivate a Chinese cultural identity because they sense a displacement in their child’s life when they are taken across the transnational distance into America. This is based on the fundamental social and cultural perception that blood and ethnicity is tied to a certain place and culture.

It is vital to note the cultural essentialism that lies within the term “cultural heritage” and constructions of the Other through problematic representations of Chinese culture. In response, parents realize that the strongest connection they can give the child is a reconnection of a tie to the birth culture. This represents the cultural and social ideal that the strongest bond is forged through blood relations. The idea of cultural heritage or roots also carries the idea that an adoptee has an “original identity” to which they will belong and will be pulled “back” to (Yngvesson 2002: 247); one that pre-exists and is distinct from their family’s identity… an identity seeming to only exist through a connection to an obscure, imagined origin.

The transnational boundaries of China and the U.S. also place the adoptee suspended between two possible identities, in a liminal space in which the adoptee “cannot be alienated from roots but can only ‘find’ herself in the relationship between self and other, birth country and adopted country, birth parent and adopted parent” (Yngvesson 2002: 239).

From conclusion:
The loss of this birth mother and culture and the ambiguity of their beginnings are considered by the parents to be a huge piece of their personal identity as people; a large hole in their being that if not cultivated will be a permanent absence, or an identity that forever lurks in the shadows of their life as a missing piece….
*****

I have never really struggled with feelings of deep loss or abandonment. Maybe this is because I knew my birth mother tried to get married, couldn’t and then had to give me up. There are just so many factors that have shaped my identity, but a factor of “loss” was never one. Though that isn't to say I don't understand others' feelings of loss, just that I'm more curious about my past and birth mother, etc. than feel loss about it.
What makes one adoptee feel loss and another not? Hmm…

I want to pose a scenario and question now that I discussed at that dinner:
Chinese people always ask me where I’m from, and when they hear I was born in China but raised in America, many times their response is “Oh you are so lucky.”
How does an adoptee who feels terrible loss towards China feel when they hear this response?? In other words, how do they reconcile that Chinese people themselves (who live in their “motherland”) think that these Chinese are lucky to have been adopted to an American family and to live in America, even though it means they are American, and not Chinese? This response does not signify that it is a loss for them or Chinese culture, but rather more of a personal fortune for the adoptee. This response elicits so many underlying questions!

I’m asking you adoptees out there!

Much Love,
Sabrina x


(Yngvesson, Barbara.
2002. Placing the ‘Gift Child’ in Transnational Adoption. Law & Society Review. Special Issue on Nonbiological Parenting. 36(2): 227-256.)
(also please do not plagiarize!!)