In 2016, we published an essay on behalf of a woman searching for her lost child. The article, "The Story of Baby Liu Jia Jia," was read over 30,000 times. It was eventually seen by Jia Jia's adoptive parents, and Jia Jia and her family was able to reunite with Jia Jia's birth mother. The story of Jia Jia's birth mother's search has now been presented inside China by "Story FM," a very popular podcast framed after the style of public radio's "This American Life." With a listenership of over a million people inside China, the search for Jia Jia has touched the hearts of tens of thousands.
But our interest is in the path the birth mother took: The deceptions and outright scamming that she experienced on her journey. Her experience perfectly encapsulates what birth families experience every day in their search for lost children, and goes a long way to enlightening us on why their skepticism and fear runs so deep.
Part Two, to be released in the coming weeks, will explain to Chinese listeners our work in reuniting birth families. Although Lan was mentioned only briefly in this first segment, already we are being contacted by birth parents and siblings in the hope that we can also help them search for their lost family members.
I would encourage you to listen to the audio of the story as you read the English translation presented below, for the emotional journey is more powerful than the physical one. (Alternatively Apple Podcasts, E718, April 14, 2023)
_________________
Zhang Xiaoya is a
mother looking for her child.
In 2012, under the
introduction of a friend, Zhang Xiaoya and her husband met, fell in love, and
soon became pregnant. However, before she could react to the ignorance and joy of being
a new mother, she was forced to lose her child.
From then on,
Zhang Xiaoya began the bumpy road to find relatives.
Her story is about
how a mother finds her daughter in lies and deceit, and about the deprivation
and loss that a woman may face.
-1-
Abandoned
I had my baby in 2012 and I was 26 years old. When the child was born, he weighed
seven pounds and two ounces, with a chubby face and a round belly, very cute.
She was lying in my arms, and I felt very excited and happy.
The doctor asked me, did you eat anything during
pregnancy, and the child has a birthmark on his mouth. I took a look and found that the
child had a little red birthmark on the nasolabial fold, and the doctor said
she also had a little bit on her calf. I didn't pay
much attention.
After leaving the delivery room, the child's father was
unhappy, as if he had just finished crying, and his eyes were a little red. After returning to the ward, he
said, what should I do with this child. I said, what
should I do. He said, can't.
I asked him why, and he said there was a birthmark. I said what's wrong with the
birthmark, and it's not like she's missing arms or legs. He insisted on that sentence.
Abandoning the
child because of the birthmark on the child's face was something that Zhang
Xiaoya never thought of and could never accept. But did the husband's family
really decide to abandon her only because the child had a birthmark? Things don't seem that simple.
After Zhang Xiaoya
and her husband got acquainted, their relationship developed very quickly. In
less than half a year, they were already talking about getting married. Just when the two were about to get
engaged, Zhang Xiaoya found out that she was pregnant, and he and her husband
were very happy.
However, at that
time, the man's parents did not seem to welcome the child very much.
One day after the engagement, the child's grandma took
me to check whether it was a boy or a girl, and it turned out to be a girl. She was very unhappy, and her face
was very ugly.
The child's father was quite happy, saying that girls
are also good, and twin girls are even better. His mother said directly, one is
enough for that, and two more.
His mother asked her sister, my partner's aunt, to tell
me that you should be careful when you go to work. If someone asks you if you
are pregnant, you will not admit it. I'm not happy. We are also engaged, why are we
sneaking around. But I was young at the time, and I
didn't refute what the man's family said, but I was unhappy.
I asked the child's father why he couldn't admit that I
would be pregnant in four or five months.
He said, in order to have another boy in the future. At that time, there was family planning, so I wanted to hide my
first child. The child's father has an older sister.
When he was a child, his family put his older sister in the relatives' house in
order to keep him.
Although she was
very upset, Zhang Xiaoya didn't dwell on this issue because the man's family
didn't mention it again, nor did they say they didn't want the child. After that, Zhang Xiaoya worked and
lived normally, and did not deliberately conceal the fact that she was pregnant
in accordance with the opinions of the man's family. She thought that this
incident was just a small episode in her life. But unexpectedly, when the
daughter was born, the husband's family was determined to abandon the child.
When I heard the child's father say that the child
cannot be had, my mind went blank and I was stunned. I didn't expect him to treat his own
child like this. He is usually very kind to me, and
he will apologize to me when we quarrel, and he will coax me. His attitude
towards children makes me very sad. I wanted to cry, and I also wanted to call
my mother's family. He also took my cell phone.
I wanted to leave, but he wouldn't let me go. He stayed by the
bed all the time, telling me what to do with the child and not having it, and
repeatedly telling me about it.
Later, their family may feel that I kept disagreeing,
and it is not an option to continue in the hospital, so let's go home. It seemed that we didn't even go
through the discharge procedures, so we left in a hurry. I took a car with the
child's father, because since the child was born, their family has not allowed
me to hold the child or breastfeed the child, so the child's grandma and
relatives of their family sat in the back holding the child on the car.
The two of us got home first, and it was both ten and
eleven o'clock in the evening. Then I didn't see anyone else coming back, so I asked the child's
father why the child hadn't come back yet. He said,
the child is at the third aunt's house. His third
aunt was very close to his family, so I thought they really went to the third
aunt's house, maybe they went to discuss the child's affairs. At about five
o'clock the next morning, his parents came back, and after a while, his third
aunt came. His third aunt ran to my bed and told me
that the child had been sent away. She said they had given the child a way out.
I cried, and I said, send it away? Where did it go?
The third aunt said that she was sent to a hospital in
Xuzhou, and said that the child did not cry on the way. I didn't say anything,
after all, she is not my family.
I kept crying there, and my third aunt wiped my tears
there.
At that time, what
appeared in Zhang Xiaoya's mind was not anger, grievance, or questioning her
husband's family's behavior. She just felt very dazed, at a loss and helpless. She couldn't believe that such a
thing had happened, and she didn't know how to face it. She told her mother
about it, but her attitude made her feel even more isolated.
I called my mother and said that the man's family had
sent the child away. My mother said it was impossible. They might be lying to you. Did
they give the child to a relative in their hometown to feed them? My mother
didn't care much about me either. She is more
concerned about Christianity all day long, and doesn't care much about my
affairs. She felt that the water splashed by the
married daughter would not interfere with my married life too much. Her
attitude broke me down. You don't help me when I need
my family. I feel like I have no one to lean on, no
straws to grasp, nothing. When I woke up in the
morning, I felt that everything was fake, as if I was dreaming. On the second
day after the child was abandoned, it snowed outside, and it fell quite
heavily. I just thought, where is the child, is he
freezing outside, how is he eating, and whether he is warmly dressed. I am very afraid that the child will suffer outside.
-2-
Entrust Lao Jing
In addition to
trance and helplessness, Zhang Xiaoya is also full of worries about her lost
daughter, and she really wants to find her back.
But how would she
find it? Can
anyone help her?
According to the
husband's family, the child was abandoned in Xuzhou, which belongs to another
province. In
a strange city, it is not easy for ordinary people to find children. She
thought that she had lost an electric car before, and met several policemen
when she was catching thieves. Zhang Xiaoya did not
call the police formally, but privately asked one of the policemen named Lao
Jing to help find the child.
My partner may be afraid that I will leave, or go to
find the child, and he didn't go to work, so he just watched me at home. I couldn't go out, and I couldn't do
anything.
At that time, I just had an idea, and quickly asked
others to help me find the child. I think Lao Jing is a policeman, maybe a little more powerful than
ordinary people, so I want him to go to Xuzhou to help me find it. If the child is taken away, he can continue to look for it. I secretly
used my mobile phone to send messages to Lao Jing, not wanting my partner to
find out. It seems that Lao Jing replied yes, and let
me wait for the news.
Afterwards, I often called him to ask if he had been
there and how he was doing. Because his place of work is closer to my natal home, he said that
he would talk to me face to face when I returned to my natal home after I was
confinement. When the confinement is over, I will go back to my mother's house
to find him. He said that he went to inquire, and the
people in the hospital said that they saw a woman taking the child away.
I asked what kind of person that woman was, and he said she
was probably middle-aged. I checked on my mobile phone that the hospital was
very close to the train station. I was worried that if the child was taken away
by people from other places, it would be very troublesome to find it all over
the country.
I asked Lao Jing if he had found out if anyone nearby
knew this woman, and where she had gone.
Lao Jing said that he had a relative from Xuzhou, and he
asked this relative to continue to inquire.
Although she found
out that the child was taken away by a middle-aged woman, Zhang Xiaoya was not
relieved. She was thinking, who is this woman? Will she treat her daughter
well? Where are they now? These unanswered questions pressed tightly on Zhang
Xiaoya's heart. However, while her whole heart was still hanging on her
abandoned daughter, her mother-in-law couldn't wait for her to have a second
child.
After I was confinement, my child's grandmother made me
drink traditional Chinese medicine, burned incense and worshiped Buddha at
home, made me kowtow and drink incense ash water. I thought at the time that they lost
the child, felt guilty, and prayed for the child's safety. After drinking for a
period of time, the person who prescribed Chinese medicine for us mysteriously
called me into a small room and told me how two people had intercourse and in
what way. Only then did I know that they made me
drink traditional Chinese medicine and incense ash water, all for the sake of
my son. I was a
little confused and disgusted. Not long after the child was thrown away, your
family asked me to have a child again.
I wanted to cry right then.
Zhang Xiaoya
didn't want to have a baby, but everyone around her was persuading her,
including her mother and friends. Get another one, they say, so you won't be so obsessed with
finding your daughter. Looking around, no one understood Zhang Xiaoya's
situation and mood. Zhang Xiaoya can only pin her hope of finding the child on
Lao Jing, after all, now only Lao Jing helped her find the first clue about the
child.
In order to make
Lao Jing work harder when looking for someone, she also gave Lao Jing 100,000
yuan one after another. However, when she later asked Lao Jing about the
progress of finding someone, Lao Jing seemed to have something hard to say, and
the difficulty of finding a child seemed to be far more difficult than
imagined.
I called Lao Jing at my mother's house, and Lao Jing
said that someone smashed the window of his house at night. When he ran out,
the people had already run away, and only two figures were seen. What he meant was that he helped me
find it, but people from my husband's family stopped him and frightened him,
and there was a reason why he didn't tell me how the search was going, because
he was afraid that my husband's family would cause trouble. I thought that Lao
Jing knew where the child was, but he just didn't tell me.
Zhang Xiaoya has
no way of knowing whether her husband's family obstructed Lao Jing from finding
a child. She
asked her husband, but he denied it. But what Zhang Xiaoya can be sure of is
that her husband's family does not want her to continue looking for a child.
They feel that Zhang Xiaoya's finding a child will affect their second child
plan. They hope that Zhang Xiaoya can fulfill their expectation of inheriting
the family as soon as possible. In desperation, Zhang Xiaoya became pregnant
with a second child, and her plan to find her daughter was delayed because of this.
In the spring of
2014, after Zhang Xiaoya gave birth to her second daughter, she decided to
focus more on finding a child. The matter of finding the child also ushered in a turning point:
Lao Jing really told her who the woman who took the child away was.
Lao Jing said that the woman's hometown is Xuzhou, but
her husband passed away, and her house was also demolished. She has only one son, and now she is
in Shanghai, so she went to Shanghai to help her son look after the child. He
said that the child is in Shanghai, so I definitely want to look for it, but he
said that you are not familiar with the place where you were born, and you
can't find it there. He said that he has a friend in
Shanghai, and he asked his Shanghai friend to help him continue to inquire. I
asked him if he could send me a photo of the person who took the baby, and he
said no, but he could show me. It seems to be a photo
on an information collection system, with a woman's name on it. I just got the name in my head.
-3-
Go to Xuzhou
Female,
middle-aged, native of Xuzhou, now in Shanghai. These pieces of information are like
pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and the image of the woman who took the child is
gradually becoming clearer. In order to find her daughter faster, Zhang Xiaoya
decided not to rely on Lao Jing alone to help her, so she took the clues she
got from Lao Jing and found a colleague of Lao Jing, who was also the policeman
she knew because of the electric car thief. Old Chen.
But what Zhang Xiaoya didn't expect was that Lao Chen made a completely
different judgment. He said that his daughter was not taken away by the woman
Lao Jing said at all.
I think I can check again through Lao Chen to see if I
can find the specific location of the woman, and then I want to find the woman
myself. Lao Chen helped me find out that this woman has a husband. It's not
like Lao Jing told me that her husband passed away. She seems to have a
daughter, not just a son. Lao Chen said that based on his years of experience in handling
cases, this matter is not quite logical. But I was convinced at the time, I
never doubted that Lao Jing would lie to me. Why is
he lying? I'm not letting him work in vain, and I'm
willing to give him money. I don't give up, I want to
go to this woman to have a look. Lao Chen and I went to this woman's hometown,
which is a village in Xuzhou. Her family looked very
poor, the yard was empty and grass grew, and there was no one at home.
I confirmed with my neighbors that there is a woman
named that name here, and then I found out that this woman has a son and a
daughter, and the son's family has two children, a boy and a girl. That girl is about five or six years
old, and she doesn't match my child. I'm still a little bit unwilling to give
up. I felt that the child was taken away by someone
else, but the situation in her family was not exactly what Lao Jing said.
I also wonder if people in this woman's hometown don't know
that she picked up the child. I also discussed with Lao Chen to find this woman
and her son's house. I wanted to see this woman with
my own eyes, to see if the baby was there. Old Chen
said, have you ever been to the hospital at that time, or should we start from
the beginning. I said how to find it from the beginning. This incident has been
going on for so long, and there are no witnesses. I
was also very anxious, Lao Jing helped me find out that it was taken away by
this woman, I was unwilling to give up this clue. He said, you go and try.
He told me not to think too much, saying that I hadn't taken
this road yet, and I was afraid of wolves and tigers, and blocked my own road.
Encouraged by Lao
Chen, Zhang Xiaoya decided to go to the hospital to inquire carefully to see if
there would be any new clues. She went to the emergency room first, and then went to the security
room to ask for monitoring. After several rounds of inquiries, she did not
expect to find a master Liu who had worked in the hospital for many years and
said that she was an eyewitness back then.
Master Liu said that he found the child at that time, and
he took the child to the emergency room.
I thought there was something wrong with the child and was
thrown to the hospital, but the doctor checked and said there was nothing wrong
with it, except that the nose and lips were a little red. He said they called the police at that time, and when the police
arrived, they sent the child to an orphanage. I was very surprised. I knew
before that the child was taken away by others, but suddenly there was a big
change, and she went to the orphanage. Because I had never
heard of this kind of situation before, it was the first time I heard it, and I
didn't know much about the orphanage, so I was a little skeptical. I asked him
how he remembered it so clearly. He said he was very impressed because there were two or three
abandoned babies during that time.
-4-
Doubts about
Welfare Institutions
Zhang Xiaoya didn't know what kind of
institution the orphanage was. She had heard since she was a child that the
child of that family was an abandoned baby, so she thought that most of the
abandoned children would be picked up and adopted by passers-by. In addition,
Lao Jing kept saying that her daughter was taken away by a woman, even with the
woman's name and photo, how could the child go to the orphanage? Could it be
that she has been cheated for the past two years? Shocked and puzzled, Zhang
Xiaoya went to the orphanage in person.
I went to the orphanage, found an office, and wanted to
ask about the situation. There was a man in there, probably in his 30s. I told him that a child was thrown to the hospital at the end of
2012. I went to the hospital to ask, and they said the child was sent to your
orphanage. The staff member changed his face, and his
attitude was very bad, saying what about the child, we have never seen the child.
I was stunned, why is it like this, people said to send them here, but he said
so. I wondered if the information given to me by the teacher at the hospital
was inaccurate, maybe the orphanage didn't see the child. I went back to the hospital and asked the master about it. I said, is the child really sent to the orphanage? Is it
impossible to send it to other places? Master Liu
said that when they encountered such a situation, they would call the police.
After the police came, they would issue a report, which might be a certificate
of abandonment, proving that no one wanted the child, and then sent the child
to the orphanage. I found out which police station it was from Master Liu, so I
went to the police station. After waiting for a long
time, the policeman who was handling the case at that time arrived. The policeman said that when they adjusted the surveillance, they
saw that two women and one man had thrown the child. It
seems that the police station did not find them, and then issued a bill to send
the child to the orphanage.
After getting
confirmation from the police, Zhang Xiaoya went to the orphanage again. After learning that Zhang Xiaoya had
been to the police station, the staff of the orphanage admitted that they had
taken in the child, but their attitude was still very impatient and they were
still unwilling to disclose the whereabouts of the child.
This time I was looking for a female person in charge.
She had a very bad attitude and said that one of the two children was sick and
died shortly after delivery. I know which one you're talking about, the one who probably died
was your daughter. I just cried. She said I couldn't
bear the death of the child. I said the child is not
sick, why do you talk like this. She said they are
good people, you don't want children anymore, we took them in. I said, people
said they sent it to you, even if the child died, you still have to tell me
where the child is now. She said, did you throw the child? I said no. She said,
it's not what you throw that you come to find, whoever throws it will come to
find it. I said, since they threw the child away, they don't want her anymore.
As the mother of the child, if they don't look for her, I can look for her.
The woman in charge still said that whoever threw it will
come to find it.
Zhang Xiaoya was
confused by the flashy rhetoric and strong refusal attitude of the orphanage. From Lao Jing to the hospital to the
orphanage, who is telling the truth? Where did the
child go? Could it be that the policeman at the
police station is lying, and he actually secretly gave the child to one of his
relatives? Could it be that the orphanage is lying,
and they secretly sold the child? Countless reasonable and unreasonable guesses
flashed in Zhang Xiaoya's mind. Later, she went to the hospital, police
station, and orphanage many times, but there was no progress. Until one time, she sneaked into the second floor of the orphanage
and heard about the whereabouts of the child from a nurse.
I want to go find it myself and see if I can find the
baby. I walked along
the corridor to the east end, and saw a staircase at the east end, with a lot
of baby's laundry and diapers on the handrail. Then I
walked up the stairs, and there was no one there. Then I went inside and saw a
housekeeper and didn't hear anything from her. I
walked in again and saw a glass room with two women in it, who seemed to be
nurses. When they saw me, they came out. I asked them
about the child, and one of the nurses said that there was such a child at the
time, and the child had gone abroad. I was dumbfounded for a moment, I thought
she was lying to me. I said, why did the child go
abroad? Did he go abroad to see a doctor because of some illness? She said no, the child is going abroad. I asked her which country
she said was the United States. I asked her when the
child would come back, and she said that she would not come back, and the child
could not be found. As for why she couldn't find it,
she didn't want to tell me any more. Because she was the first to say this, I
wondered if she deliberately made up a lie to make me give up the idea of
finding a child. I also thought, how tricky is this?
Who is the child given to? Was it sold abroad for human experiments? Why didn't the people in the orphanage admit to having seen it,
and didn't say where the child went. When I got home
at night, I searched. Some foreigners used Chinese people for human
experiments.
-5-
Call the Police
From the Xuzhou
woman to the orphanage and then to the United States, things seem to be getting
more and more complicated. No matter what, Zhang Xiaoya decided to start with the orphanage.
Since the orphanage insisted on letting those who abandoned
their children come to find them, she decided to drag her husband along to find
the children. But at this time, the rift between Zhang Xiaoya and her husband
has become deeper and deeper. Zhang Xiaoya originally thought that after she
became pregnant with her second child, her husband would stop her from finding
a child, but unexpectedly, her husband was still unwilling and made up more and
more unbearable lies. For a while, he said that he
had visited the child, and gave back 100,000 yuan to the family that adopted
the child; for a while, he deliberately wrote a diary on a note, saying that
his daughter died on the way to the hospital. He
wrote it down and crossed it out, and then hid the note in the cabinet, in a
conspicuous place where Zhang Xiaoya would definitely see it. Zhang Xiaoya
thought, how can a father be so cruel? In order to
keep his wife from looking for a child, he lied that his daughter was dead.
When the child was just thrown away, the child's father still pretended to be
pitiful, and he still cried, saying that you also left after the child was sent
away, so my wife and children were separated.
I'm a bit soft-hearted, at least I think he's still
human. I think he will
definitely regret it. After he refused to agree to find a child, there was a
gap between me and him. I thought, why am I married
to such a person, I have no responsibility at all, and I don’t regret or feel
sad when my child is lost. What is the difference between such a person and a
beast? I had resentment towards him, and I didn't
want to see him ignoring him, so I let him go to work in other places. But I
encountered many obstacles in the orphanage. They insisted not to tell me where
the child went. I was devastated and had no choice but to quarrel with the
child's father. I called him and he said that the
child was sent abroad, and now I don’t know if he is dead or alive. The
orphanage said that whoever threw it will come to find it, and you have to look
for it with me. He hung up the phone. I called him
many times and finally he shut down. I told their family that if you don't look
for children with me, I will call the police. His parents and relatives came.
We quarreled. His mother denied
the child, saying that I was insane. She said, where
did the child come from, who did you have the child with. I am angry. My child is quite pitiful, she was thrown away by her family, and
she didn't even have any repentance at all, and even said that I gave birth to
the child to someone else. As a mother, she called my
child a wild child, and I definitely couldn't accept it. I had never quarreled with her before. When she said that my child
was a wild child, all the hatred I had accumulated in the past few years broke
out, and I fought with her, tearing each other's hair. My husband and his uncle
also helped. Because they were the ones who sent my
child away at that time, and I also hated his uncle in my heart, so I picked up
a brick on the ground and chased him. Then the brick
fell, and his uncle ran to the property office. I saw
there was an ashtray in the office, and I picked it up and wanted to hit him.
Anyway, I want to fight their family hard.
This is the first
time Zhang Xiaoya has expressed her anger and dissatisfaction to her husband's
family since her marriage. She reported to the police that the family had
abandoned the child, but her mother-in-law and other relatives said it was a
family conflict that could be resolved within the family. In the end, the police station did
not investigate the abandonment of the children, but asked them to sign and
leave. But after such an incident, the husband's family was still unwilling to
find a child.
His family still didn't want to look for it, and I
couldn't contact him. When I contacted his family, his father said that they
severed the father-son relationship and his son was not at home. Then if his
family doesn't look for the child with me, I can't find it. I followed him and watched him and
his relatives come out of the house, and he looked very happy. I was very anxious, so I followed him and stopped his car. He didn't open the door or open the window, so I sat in the car. I
felt like I was going crazy, so I called the police a second time.
In order to find a
child, Zhang Xiaoya behaved more and more like a so-called "crazy
woman". She quarreled, fought, stopped cars, called the police, and used
all the methods she could think of.
This time I called the police, and the police station
detained my husband for one night. But the police told Zhang Xiaoya that legally, the determination
of the crime of abandonment is more complicated, and it needs serious
circumstances to constitute a crime, such as causing serious injuries or death
to the victim. The police station said to find the child first, and then they
went to the orphanage. After I came back, the police
station said that the attitude of the orphanage was very bad, and asked me if I
had quarreled with them, and why their attitude was so hostile. The orphanage
is still unwilling to disclose the whereabouts of the child, so they keep it a
secret, and at most say that the child has gone to the United States.
-6-
Find a Private Eye
No matter what
Zhang Xiaoya did, even if she called the police, the orphanage would only
disclose that the child was sent to the United States, and refused to show the
registration information and the announcement of abandonment. The orphanage
also required Zhang Xiaoya to prove that she was the child's biological mother. But after Zhang Xiaoya submitted the
child's birth certificate to the orphanage, the orphanage still refused to
inform the child's whereabouts. Zhang Xiaoya gradually realized that the
so-called asking the person who lost the child to find her or providing the
child's birth certificate were all excuses for the orphanage to reject her.
Because she could no longer bear the attitude of her husband's family, Zhang
Xiaoya decided to divorce her second daughter, and resigned to concentrate on
looking for children. But where to find it? Is there
any other way to break through the orphanage? At this time, someone introduced
a private detective to Zhang Xiaoya, and Zhang Xiaoya, who was eager to find a
child, spent another 20,000 yuan to hire this detective to help find the child.
At that time, there was no other way, and the orphanage
just didn't say anything. The private detective shown on TV is quite capable and can solve
the case. I want to see if there is something tricky about the orphanage. I
want to see if this private detective can find out. I went to Xuzhou with the
private detective. I picked him up by car. He was
about 30 years old, black and thin, with a bag on his back, and he spoke with a
northeast accent. We first tracked down the woman in charge of the orphanage,
and then he said that he was going to squat in the orphanage at night, planning
to go there to steal files. I was not at ease, so I drove and followed him.
We went out in the middle of the night, and he said that he
would steal it when there was no one in the dead of night, and then gave me a
signal. As soon as I heard the signal, I started the car and we drove away.
He also made a straw hat out of wicker, saying that he would
hide it so that people could not see him. Make it
mysterious. Later, he ran out with a file, on which was written a few words,
saying that a woman had adopted a child, with her name and fingerprints. I only
know who this woman is, and there is no information about her on the above, nor
does it say where her home is. The private detective
did not know how to find out the woman's address, saying that she was from
Jinan. Maybe because I have experienced many such things, I thought at the
time, don't care what he said, just go and prove it. If
you don't confirm this, you may not give up. We then
drove to Jinan in the middle of the night.
We drove there around three o'clock in the morning, and
it was almost dawn when we arrived in Jinan. After seeing the woman, she was at
a loss. I told her not
to be afraid, I'll ask you something. I said, my
child was abandoned, and when I went looking for it, I found a file that said
you adopted the child. The woman said blankly, I have
never been to this place, where did I get my name. This woman is in her 40s,
divorced, and has a daughter, who is already very old, and they still live in a
rented house. In her case, she doesn't meet the
conditions for the orphanage to adopt a child at all, so I think this file is
fake.
-7-
Find a Reporter
Stealing files,
going to Jinan, tossing a lot, and finally returning disappointed. And this private detective is at the
end of his rope, and there is no new way. Zhang Xiaoya realized that this
private detective was a charlatan. Looking back on the journey of finding a
child, there were too many deceptions and lies. It was not until later that
Zhang Xiaoya realized that Lao Jing, who had been helping her find her child,
was also a liar. Although Lao Jing works in the
police brigade, he is not a policeman with a formal establishment at all, he is
just an auxiliary policeman or a security guard at all. Although Zhang Xiaoya
was angry about all this, she had no intention of pursuing it. After all, neither anger nor remorse will help in finding
relatives. Zhang Xiaoya thought, the most important
thing is to find the child. However, the police also reported it, and the
detectives also looked for it. During this time, she even posted on the
Internet and contacted reporters, but it was of no use. Is there no other way?
Just when Zhang
Xiaoya was in a state of desperation, things ushered in a turning point. She
found a reporter in Jiangsu, and the reporter followed Zhang Xiaoya to
interview her ex-husband's home, hospital, and police station. Finally, they
brought a series of materials to the orphanage.
But this time, I don't know if it's because the
reporter's media is in Jiangsu Province, and the attitude of the orphanage has
changed. After the reporter and I obtained a series of evidence, we went to the
orphanage together. After seeing the woman in charge, her attitude changed, saying
that the child was indeed sent to the United States, but the specific
information was kept secret. We also found a nurse at the orphanage who used to
take care of my daughter. I showed the nurse a
picture of my youngest daughter and asked them if they looked alike, and she
said they looked alike. She told me that the baby was
very good as a child and was sent away when she was about 11 months old. Then
the reporter asked the orphanage if they could show us photos of the adoptive
family. The orphanage showed the reporter, but not
me. The reporter also took photos of my daughter when
she was living in the orphanage. After she came out, the reporter showed me the
photos. That was the first time I saw a picture of my daughter. In one, she was lying in a baby carriage, eating her hands, and
looked like she was two or three months old. There is
another one on the information sheet, which states the time when my daughter
was picked up, saying that it has been two months since she was picked up, but
my daughter was just born. After watching it, I was very excited and cried. I
feel that my daughter has grown up a lot. I was
relieved a lot when I saw the photos. If I couldn’t even see the photos, I just
heard them say that the child went to the United States. I still didn’t believe
it, and I was still worried about the child’s safety. The reporter said, seeing
me smile that day. I feel like a big rock has been on
my heart for a long time, and now some of the rock has finally come down.
I feel hopeful for the future. I
didn't dare to think about what it would be like in the future, and I didn't
know how long I could last. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to survive. I
want to write a letter, and when my child comes to see me when she grows up, I
want her to read this letter. I just wrote about my
child’s situation. I wrote that my mother is very worried about you every day.
I don’t know how you are eating and whether you are warm. You have a younger
sister now. When I look at my younger sister every day, I think, what are you
doing now? Will there be someone who loves and loves
you as my own sister like I love my sister? I was afraid that she would not be
able to find me, so I wrote the contact information in the letter and handed it
over to the orphanage.
-8-
Find Daughter
After getting the
photo, Zhang Xiaoya finally believed that the child was indeed sent to an
orphanage and later adopted by an American family. Her hanging heart finally eased a
little. In fact, since the 1980s or so, China has started foreign-related
adoption work. In 1992, after China made it clear
that foreign citizens could adopt Chinese children, the scope of
foreign-related adoptions gradually expanded. As of
2016, nearly 150,000 Chinese children have been adopted by overseas families.
A large number of these children, like Zhang Xiaoya's
daughter, became abandoned babies due to various complicated reasons. However,
many Chinese families who have lost their children, like Zhang Xiaoya, do not
know that their children may be sent abroad, so they will experience more ups
and downs in the process of finding relatives.
After she was
convinced that the child had gone to the United States, Zhang Xiaoya still did
not give up the idea of looking for the child. She even wanted to go to the
streets of the United States and ask one by one.
I knew that the child was going to the United States,
and a big stone in my heart fell halfway.
But after all, I didn't see the child, and I was still very
worried. I just thought about how to find a child
like a needle in a haystack in a sea of people. I tried every means during the
day, but at night I still had to go back to my little daughter and sleep with
her. Because of the matter of the eldest daughter, I
may be afraid of the feeling of loss. I only see my younger daughter every day,
and only by her side can I be more at ease. But every
morning when I wake up, I still feel like a dream, in a daze, not knowing where
I am. Every time I see reports on TV or online that there is child abuse, or
the stepfather of the adoptive family molesting the child, I want to cry. I am
worried that this will happen to my child, and I think I should find her
quickly . If her life is
not good, I will definitely try my best to get the child back. I also tried to
find a way to post on the Internet, and then a Chinese named Xiaolongnv
(Longlan Stuy) from abroad contacted me after seeing my post. She said that she was a volunteer and knew many families who
adopted children from abroad, and she had adopted children herself. She said she translated my story into English and sent it to their
country.
While waiting for
Chinese volunteers to help her find a child, Zhang Xiaoya continued to think of
ways in China. She
went to foreign-related adoption centers in Beijing and Nanjing successively,
but did not find any new news. During this period, many adoptive families found
her after reading the stories that Xiaolongnv helped her translate. She saw
pictures of many people, but none of them were her daughters. Since her
daughter was abandoned in 2012, Zhang Xiaoya has worked hard again and again,
experienced one lie after another, and was disappointed again and again.
When the child was
abandoned, Zhang Xiaoya didn't even have time to choose a name. It was during
the process of finding the child that Zhang Xiaoya chose the name for her
daughter. The
single character is "Jia", and the nickname is "Jiajia".
"Jia" means "good". Zhang Xiaoya hopes
that Jiajia will eat well, live well, and everything will be fine.
It seems to be a
hidden arrangement. In 2017, when Zhang Xiaoya's youngest daughter went to
kindergarten, Zhang Xiaoya finally found out about Jiajia's whereabouts.
The day my younger daughter started kindergarten, I
found out that the head teacher who took her had the same name as my older
daughter. It
seemed to me quite a coincidence that an adoptive family I had known before
sent me a photo of the girl that night. In the photo,
the girl should be a little over four years old, wearing a red T-shirt standing
by the sea, with her head bowed, looking a little shy. When I saw it was my
daughter, she looked very similar to me, her father, and my youngest daughter.
It feels very strange, as if it was an arrangement of fate.
I met a teacher with the same name as my daughter, which had a good omen, and
then the child was found that night. Isn’t it a coincidence? I was very
surprised, very happy, and also very urgent. Now that I found her, I wanted to
see her very much.
-9-
After Finding My
Daughter
Apart from her
looks, Zhang Xiaoya was sure that this was Jiajia because the girl also had the
same birthmark on her face. She hoped to get in touch with the girl's American adoptive mother
as soon as possible. And this adoptive mother contacted [DNAConnect.org] after
seeing Zhang Xiaoya's story. The adoptive mother had
always thought that her daughter was an orphan, and she was surprised when she
learned of her life experience.
Xiaolongnu (Longlan
Stuy) suggested that Zhang Xiaoya write a letter to her adoptive mother,
emphasizing that she would not rob the adoptive mother of the child, so that
the adoptive mother might be more willing to establish contact with her. Zhang
Xiaoya wrote down Jiajia's life experience, her process of finding Jiajia, and her
feelings for Jiajia. After Xiaolongnu forwarded the letter to her adoptive mother, the
two finally got in touch.
Contacting the adoptive mother of the adoptive family
was not as fast as expected. The adoptive mother also considered a lot, and finally decided to
contact me. Because when she went to adopt my
daughter, the orphanage said my daughter was an orphan. After she saw my story,
she couldn't accept it, and her heart was very complicated. The adoptive mother
said the child knew from an early age that she was adopted. When she was first adopted, the child cried every night. Later,
the adoptive mother collected photos of the orphanage and put them in a box, so
that the child would not see it, for fear that she would be sad.
The child was young at the time, so I didn't dare to ask
for too much, for fear that the other party would have scruples. The most I
could ask for was a picture of the child.
From the photos she sent me, we can also see that she is
very kind to children, and the toys she bought for them are also very good.
I've also seen pictures of kids learning to swim. The adoptive mother said that the child likes playing tennis and
animals very much, and said that her wish when she grows up is to be a
veterinarian. Every time I saw the photos, I was very happy and would share
them with my family. They said that the child was living a happy life, and the
family who adopted her looked very kind. I feel much
more at ease now, and feel relieved that I can finally live a normal life in
the future. When I first found my child, I really hoped to see her, even if she
went to China for two days during the summer or winter vacation, it would be
great. I also wondered if the child wanted to video
or call me as much as I did. I also tried to ask the adoptive mother, but the
adoptive mother did not respond. I was also cautious
when talking to her, for fear that she would be unhappy if I said something,
and we would no longer be able to contact her. I have learned that the child
has gone to the United States, and legally I will never return to her in my
life. But I will definitely visit her in the future,
even if it is secretly. When she grows up, if we meet
for the first time, I want to take her shopping and buy her favorite things.
For so many years, the things I want to do for her have
never had the opportunity to do for her, just want to do these things for her
when I meet for the first time. . . . .
-- As we said in
the program, since China opened up foreign-related adoptions, more than 100,000
children have been adopted by overseas families. Among them, the family members of
many children, like Zhang Xiaoya, started a long journey to find their
relatives after abandoning or losing their children for various reasons; and
many children abroad are also eager to find out where they came from. Across
the ocean, how do they find each other? What kind of
pain, joy and embarrassment will they experience? In the near future, we will
broadcast another story about cross-country family search, friends who are
interested. We look forward to your listening in the future.