August, 2017: After nearly two years, the adoptive family of "Baby Jia Jia" is now in contact with the birth mother. The birth mother is over the moon happy.
June 11, 2016: The following message was sent to us by the birth mother, addressed to the adoptive family:
The following essay, written by Lan, is a plea to families with children from the Xuzhou, Jiangsu orphanage to try and locate the adoptive family that adopted the child profiled below. Beyond that, there are some important lessons adoptive families generally can take away from the experiences of this family:
June 11, 2016: The following message was sent to us by the birth mother, addressed to the adoptive family:
“Please forgive my sudden appearance. I understand you and your family might need time to make a decision, and need time to talk about this with the whole family.
"But I would like to let you know that I am not asking you to return my daughter back to me. I understand my daughter was already became an American citizen, and I believed you love her very much too. I really appreciate your care for her and for adopting her. I hope you and I can make friends, and I just wanted my daughter to know that I never abandoned her or gave her up, and that I love her very much! I hope she is happy!”
________________
The following essay, written by Lan, is a plea to families with children from the Xuzhou, Jiangsu orphanage to try and locate the adoptive family that adopted the child profiled below. Beyond that, there are some important lessons adoptive families generally can take away from the experiences of this family:
1) Many children are transported long distances before being turned into an orphanage.
2) As we have seen in other instances, orphanages almost always work to prevent birth families from locating and retrieving children once they enter an orphanage.
3) This child was abandoned by her paternal family for one simple reason - she was a girl. Gender bias, especially among older citizens of China, still exists.
_________________________
Recently, I received a link to a story posted on-line by a birth
mother inside China
After I got in touch with this birth mother, I was able to learn
her story.
The birth mother is 29 years old. She lives in Tengzhou City
in Shandong Province
Below is her unfortunate story:
On December 9, 2012, she was very excited to finally become a
mother with the birth of her baby girl, born in the Women & Children’s
Health Hospital of Tengzhou City. The next day, her husband and his family came
to check her and the baby out of the hospital. She was with her husband, in her
husband’s car, and the grandparents, holding her newborn baby girl, went with
the aunt and uncle in another car home. After her husband and she got home,
they waited and waited, but the grandparents never showed up with her baby
girl. All that night and through the next morning, she waited. Finally she
realized her baby girl was gone.
“I started to go crazy, screaming, looking
for my baby girl. The next day I found out they had already abandoned my baby
girl somewhere secretly, because they wanted a boy, not a girl. They would not
say anything, and wouldn’t tell me where they had abandoned my baby girl!” the
birth mother told me.
“They did not let me go out of the house to look for my baby girl,
and locked me inside the house try to stop me. I started to text any friends
that I knew, asking for their help to find my baby girl.”
She searched for her baby girl very hard on her own for a while,
but her husband’s family did not cooperate with her in looking for the baby
girl. They didn’t provide her the location where they had abandoned the baby.
Instead, they did whatever they could to try to stop her, repeatedly
threatening her. “That got me very angry,” the birth mother screamed, “Finally,
I reported them to the police station for abandoning my baby girl.”
The policemen came, a reporter came. With the police department
and the media involved, the birth mother learned her husband’s family had
abandoned the baby girl at the First People’s Hospital in Xuzhou
City in Jiangsu Province
In May 2014, after she had spoken to many people in her research,
the birth mother finally found out her baby girl had been sent to the Xuzhou City
Then, she went to the Xuzhou City First People’s Hospital, and
tried very hard to find the witness who found the girl in the hospital. She
located the police officer who was involved with the girl’s finding and who had
sent her into the orphanage. With the witness and evidence, as well as a reporter,
she returned to the orphanage. This time Director Chen Li of the Xuzhou
orphanage admitted that they had accepted the baby girl into the orphanage that
night, but that the baby girl had already been adopted by a couple from the
United States.
“In front of the reporter and the camera, this time Director Chen
Li’s voice was much softer as she admitted that they had accepted my baby girl
into their orphanage from the police station. But she told me that before she
could provide any information and pictures of my daughter, she would first need
to apply to the government to get state approval to allow her to do that. She
also needed to ask for permission from the adoptive family, to see if they
agreed to get in touch with me.
“In January 2015, I finally got baby pictures of my daughter from
the orphanage.”
In April 2015, she went to the CCAA in Beijing
So, she went back to the Xuzhou
orphanage after she left Beijing
The next day after her visit to the Xuzhou
The birth mother concluded, “My daughter should be three years and
six months old now. As I found out, she was about 11 months old when was she
was adopted by the American family. I am worried that her adoptive family won’t
help her to find me at all, and she will never have a chance to know that I
love her as much as I love her younger sister who’s next to me. She will never
know that she has a little sister who loves her very much, too!”
After her daughter was abandoned by her husband’s family, she and
her husband quarreled constantly. Both struggled and tried hard to keep their
marriage together, hoping
to have a complete home for their daughter if they found her. Their second
daughter was born in March 2014. “She has brought much joy to me, but did not
change the fact that I still miss my missing daughter every minute in my
heart.”
About half a year ago, she and her husband divorced.
The birth mother would very much like to have her daughter to meet
her younger sister, and hopes to stay in touch with her adoptive family as a
family member. She also hopes her daughter grows up happy with her life.
“It has been three years that I have been looking for my daughter,
since the day after I gave birth to her and her “missing” took my heart away!
If not for my youngest daughter with me to hold on to, my life would not be
worth living. Please! Help me to find my daughter!”
_________________
If anyone has information about this
missing baby, please contact us. She was named Liu Jia Jia by the birth mother
and Yang Yu Shao by the Xuzhou City Orphanage. Her estimated birth date by the
orphanage was 12/1/2012. She has a hyperpigmentation in both her nasolabial
groove and left leg.
