I am a girl. I was born in 1997, 18 years after China's institution of the one-child policy, and 18 years before the policy's end. I am a consequence of China's failed attempt to control population and stabilize herself.
I was adopted in 1998, at approximately one year and three days old. Everything about me is an estimate. The orphanage that I lived in for a year is in Kunming, in Yunnan province, but it's possible that I'm from anywhere in the surrounding area. I don't know how I ended up in the orphanage, and I don't know why.
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I don't know much about myself. I don't know my medical history, my actual birthday, or anything about my birth family. I'm not alone in this lack of knowledge. According to American University's TED case study, in 1998, 4,208 visas were issued to Chinese orphans being adopted by U.S. families.
That means there are 4,208 more children growing up away from their birth families -- from a single year of adoptions. That means there are 4,208 more children that will have many questions for their adoptive parents when they grow older — from a single year. That means there are 4,208 more children to add to the population of "privileged" children — from a single year. That means there are 4,208 more children, mostly girls, taken away from China's aging population.
Very few Chinese adoptees know a birthday besides the one the orphanage estimated for them upon their arrival. Very few have found their birth families, and very few ever will. When I hear extremely rare stories of girls reuniting with their birth families in China I feel a pang of jealousy. I know I'll never get answers to questions that most adoptees wonder — what circumstances surrounded our being "abandoned", what our birth families are like, and what life would've been like in China, and infinitely more.
I am thankful that I was adopted. I can understand how rough life would be in impoverished China. But thankfulness doesn't mask my curiosity, and it doesn't mask my conflicted feelings about China.
Chinese adoptions rose in the late 1990s and fell as the 2000s advanced. In the last few years, China has made it nearly impossible to adopt a healthy infant. Two years ago China began to relax the one-child policy allowing certain couples to apply for a second child. Finally, in October of 2015, China ended the policy, marking the beginning of a period of great uncertainty.
Uncertainty visits me. I don’t know how to feel about the policy's termination — should I feel excited or should I feel jealous? Should I be angry that it took so long, or should I just be happy that such an oppression is over? I may never know.
Uncertainty plagues China, too. When China first started allowing more children in a family, many families chose to not have more kids. Though China's intention is to have population growth, damage may be irreversible. But China won't know for a few years.
China’s people are growing old. Like the U.S., China will struggle to find youth to take care of the aging population. Unlike the U.S., China suffers from the additional problem of not having enough women to produce a generation to care for the older one. China, in adherence to ancient tradition, has valued boys to take care of the parents and contribute to the labor in the largely rural China. This tradition has dually been detrimental to the country’s future and its girls.
And I am a girl.
