Turning a Lens on China Adoption

A profile of Dr. Changfu Chang from the Philadephia Inquirer:

Millersville University professor Changfu Chang figured his first documentary on Chinese adoption would be his last.

After all, how much could he say on the topic?

He thought the same about his second film. And his third, fourth, and fifth.
Now, with eight documentaries in print and a ninth in production, Chang has accepted that the careful examination of this one complicated corner of humanity is in fact his life's work and calling. The story of the adopted children, mostly girls, about 80,000 strong, has moved in directions no one could have anticipated since he produced Love Without Boundaries in 2003.

"I feel like there's more urgency," Chang said in an interview, adding: "You feel like you're part of this global community."

It's not what he expected. Not while working as a reporter for Fujian Television in China, nor while studying mass communication as a doctoral student at Purdue University.

* * *

More recently the narrative around the one-child policy has been upset by news that officials in Hunan seized babies and sold them into a lucrative black market. In August, the New York Times reported that at least 16 children were taken between 1999 and 2006. Officials threatened big fines against couples who had "illegal" births, then took children when parents could not pay.

Chang said he believed China's system was basically clean. At the same time, his films show that girls enter orphanages in many different ways, with complicated backstories, and that official accounts may not bear scrutiny.

Given his unique place in China adoption, it isn't surprising that I've posted quite a bit about Dr. Chang before.

Dr. Changfu Chang, Brian Stuy, Kay Johnson, and little ol' me

In the post Dr. Changfu Chang, Adoption, Trafficking, Corruption, Record-Keeping, Identity, I summarized the remarks of Dr. Chang, documentary filmmaker, after a showing of two of his films at a meeting arranged by my local FCC chapter.  Here's my account of what Dr. Chang shared about trafficking in China:

He said that some (unidentified) people were claiming that as many as 30% of the children in international adoption were trafficked. However, he could assure us that that was not true and that we simply should "stop worrying about it." Only a miniscule number have been trafficked, he claimed. He specifically mentioned the LA Times article about family planning authorities stealing children and the earlier Hunan scandal where a family was convicted on trafficking charges, but did not directly address whether those well-known episodes were part of that very small number he concedes or whether those stories are simply not true.

Dr. Chang did not define trafficking or adoption corruption. He did say that what we in the West might think of as corruption would not necessarily be thought of as corruption in China. He was very concerned that we in the West were making moral judgments about trafficking and corruption without considering the context of Chinese culture.

I did not find his denial of wide-spread trafficking credible because he offered no evidence. I also can't credit that 30% figure since he did not say who claimed 30% of children were trafficked, much less offer evidence in support of it. I felt I knew as much (and as little) about adoption corruption and trafficking in China after his talk as I knew before it. It was pretty much a wash.

Brian Stuy responded at his blog, taking issue with Dr. Chang's assessment of the state of corruption in Chinese adoption, concluding:

 If you define "corruption" in terms of international law, Dr. Chang's statement that "some (unidentified) people were claiming that as many as 30% of the children in international adoption were trafficked", and that it "was not true and that we simply should 'stop worrying about it'" is either gross ignorance, a misunderstanding of the term, or a lie to save face.  There is no other option.

Brian has now posted in the comments the gist of an email from Dr. Kay Johnson, author of Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son, who is familiar with Dr. Chang and his work.  She says:

I think the main problem here may be the definition of terms. The Chinese term for "trafficking" often includes a word that means abduction (guaimai). US Adoptive parents also sometimes assume that the term "trafficking" means kidnapping or abduction. The way you use trafficking when you refer to finder's fees as "trafficking" is probably closer to the Chinese term fanzi or fanying, which means a dealer or hawker of children, a term that does not indicate how the children were obtained.

So I guess that when Changfu says "this is rare" he may be thinking "guaimai" and he assumes perhaps his audience is asking him about the frequency of kidnapped children being sent into international adoption. Is this really 30% as they have heard? I don't think any of us are prepared to estimate such a high figure for kidnapped children in IA, even if one includes birth planning seizures of birth children. Including seizures of domestically adopted children would increase the percentage considerably but still not to 30% over the last 15-20 years.

Another commenter at Brian's blog said that she had talked to Dr. Chang and that he claimed to have been "terribly misquoted" (I have not heard directly from Dr. Chang about any problems he has with my account.) As I stated at Brian's blog, I stand by what I reported as to what Dr. Chang said. 

I also noted in my post that Dr. Chang did not define adoption trafficking or corruption, which made it difficult to understand what was being described as "30% of the children in international adoption were trafficked," or "[o]nly a miniscule number have been trafficked" or even precisely what it was that we, as adoptive parents, should "stop worrying" about.  Dr. Johnson seems to confirm that that might have been the basis of a miscommunication between Dr. Chang and his audience.

So there you have it, for what it's worth.

Dr. Changfu Chang, Adoption, Trafficking, Corruption, Record-Keeping, Identity

In response to the post of a video reporting on confiscation of children by birth planning authorities in China, a reader commented:

Just saw Dr. Chang Fu Chang this wekend and he strongly argues that this is not happening in China.

As I've mentioned before, I attended a session with Dr. Changfu Chang, documentary filmmaker, earlier this month.  He said something similar in his meeting with us.  He didn't say adoption corruption didn't happen, but he did say it was extremely rare.

He told us that he was an expert on what was going on in China today.  In fact, he said, he knows more about current events in China than anyone else outside of China.  Furthermore, he said, he's been working on video stories about China adoption for decades, so he is also an expert on China adoption. He also told us he's a very modest person!

He said that some (unidentified) people were claiming that as many as 30% of the children in international adoption were trafficked.  However, he could assure us that that was not true and that we simply should "stop worrying about it."  Only a miniscule number have been trafficked, he claimed.  He specifically mentioned the LA Times article about family planning authorities stealing children and the earlier Hunan scandal where a family was convicted on trafficking charges, but did not directly address whether those well-known episodes were part of that very small number he concedes or whether those stories are simply not true.

Dr. Chang did not define trafficking or adoption corruption.  He did say that what we in the West might think of as corruption would not necessarily be thought of as corruption in China.  He was very concerned that we in the West were making moral judgments about trafficking and corruption without considering the context of Chinese culture.

I did not find his denial of wide-spread trafficking credible because he offered no evidence.  I also can't credit that 30% figure since he did not say who claimed 30% of children were trafficked, much less offer evidence in support of it. I felt I knew as much (and as little) about adoption corruption and trafficking in China after his talk as I knew before it.  It was pretty much a wash.

I asked him whether, separate and apart from issues of corruption and trafficking, the records adoptive parents received about their children were accurate.  He said they probably were not accurate.  In China, he said, falsifying documents is not considered a big deal.  He reminded us of the falsified birth certificates of all the under-age gymnasts competing for China in the Olympics.  And he shared an anecdote from his own life; at one time, admission to college in China was based solely on your score on the national test.  He was graduating high school the year the universities started to consider school grades as well as test results.  He said the principal of the school came into his classroom and said that now that grades were also going to be considered, the school was going to change the students' transcripts to show they got all As.  Ends justify the means.

He also said that orphanage directors wouldn't see it as important to record accurate information about where the child actually came from, what their actual birth date was.  Identity, he said, is a Western concept, so Chinese people don't understand how Westerners feel about needing to know their history or background or genetic code.  He discussed the whole Tiger mom thing, and said what was very Chinese about her is that she insisted her children could succeed in music through hard work;  she wasn't looking for an inherent musical talent handed down from biological relatives that needed to be nurtured.  Chinese people won't ask, "Where did my talent come from?" Since orphanage directors don't understand the important of identity, they wouldn't see it as important to record information accurately.  They would falsify documents simply to make it easier for the child to be adopted.  Ends justify the means.

I asked specifically about the red note the orphanage director gave me and claimed to have found with Zoe.  He said these red notes are like fortune cookies, not really Chinese.  There is no tradition in China of abandoning a baby with a red note.  He said if you asked 100 people in China about abandoned babies and red notes, they'd think you were crazy. He's quite sure the orphanages are manufacturing the red notes because they know how much adoptive parents like to have them.  There's nothing malicious in it, they simply want adoptive parents to be happy with their adoption experience.  Ends justify means.

Not surprisingly, the audience at Dr. Chang's talk was pretty morose after all of this.  He was quite anxious that we be happy (very Chinese of him!), and reiterated several times that we shouldn't worry about corruption in China adoption or about falsified records.  Everything done in China was with the best of intentions.  There was nothing "fishy" going on.

Can't say that made me feel any better. How 'bout you?

Review: Sofia's Journey & Daughters' Return

Three years ago, our local FCC chapter brought Dr. Changfu Chang to the area to show his documentary film Long Wait for Home, where he talked to three sets of birth parents in China who had abandoned their children under differing circumstances.  It was, not surprisingly, a riveting and fascinating account.  Not surprisingly, I was eager to attend when he came back with two new films to share.  The first, Sofia's Journey, I'd read about here, but the second, Daughters' Return, was new to me.  Both, however, involve girls adopted from China searching for birth parents in China.

In Sofia's Journey, a very articulate Sofia shares her need to know about and meet her birth parents.  She reads from a letter she wrote as a child where she says poignantly that there is "a hole in my heart" where they belong.  That hit me strongly as it reminded me so much of Zoe.  The family had searched before, but on this visit they focused on finding the finder in hopes there might be a clue to Sofia's birth parents there. Indeed, they find something they hadn't bargained for -- the finder had taken Sofia home, unofficially adopted her, and parented her for 7-8 months before taking her to the orphanage.  Confusion reigns as the story changes -- they didn't "find" Sofia, a go-between had brought her to them from her birth parents who had to relinquish her.  More confusion -- the birth mother had actually lived with them for a month and acted as nanny, yet they claim they don't know who the birth mother is, have no name, have no location.  But one thing the family does have are 7-8 months worth of pictures of Sofia before she was taken to the orphanage.

In the Q & A afterward, Dr. Chang addressed the pressure imposed on the family to take their adopted daughter to the orphanage.  Essentially he said that the family had a boy and wanted a girl, but they were threatened with job loss and heavy fines if they kept their adopted family.  The family figured if they had to pay a large fine, they'd rather do so for a biological child, so they relinquished Sofia and later had a biological daughter.

Sofia's Journey raises many more questions than it answers for Sofia. She still hasn't found her birth family.  The changing stories from her adoptive family in China is confusing.  One concrete piece of information she did learn -- that the date she thought was her birthday was not in fact her birthday, had instead been made up by the orphanage -- is devastating to her.  Still, she feels a real connection to this Chinese family that obviously loved her and took good care of her for her first months.  

In Daughters' Return, the focus is on two girls searching for birth family in China.  You may have heard the story of Eline from the Netherlands -- her story was revealed in a Dutch documentary. There are updates about Eline and her birth family, and the story of another child, Ricki adopted to the U.S., combined in this documentary.  That combination made it difficult for me to follow the two stories at times, and I admit to feeling fractured and confused while watching it.  I'm going to write mostly about Ricki's story since that's the one I tried to follow most closely since it was new to me.

Ricki was almost 5 years old when she was adopted.  From the beginning, she kept telling her new parents that her name was something different from the name the orphanage told them.  The only information they were given about Ricki's past was that she had been in foster care before being brought to the orphanage 18 months before.  The family returned to China in 2000 and brought a large gift (from many adoptive families) to the orphanage.  At that time, they were given additional information and taken to meet the foster mother, Mrs. Fang.  She gave conflicting stories about Ricki's history -- that she found her at the train station at 7 months old and brought her home.  That someone from another village had brought the baby to her.  That a woman from the mountains was her birth mother and brought her.

After Ricki's family returned to America, the foster mother wrote them with other stories -- that she did know the birth family. Finally, that Ricki was her daughter's daughter. That's when she asked for $10,000.

Then out of the blue, a letter from a completely different family  claiming to be Ricki's birth family.  They revealed that they were unmarried, had tried to keep Ricki despite threats from birth planning authorities and lack of support from the father's parents who did not want a girl baby. They hid the baby, passing her from family member to family member.  They wanted to place her in a "fake adoption" and then get her back later.  When the mother became pregnant again, and discovered it was a boy, the father's family agreed to the marriage.  Ultimately, the girl was seized by birth planning authorities.  The parents asked Mrs. Fang to try to get the baby back from the birth planning authorities, and she did.  They later learned she had taken the baby to the orphanage.  The father went to the orphanage several times to try to steal the baby back, but never succeeded.  The last time, he did not see his daughter there and learned that she had been adopted.

During the Q & A session, Dr. Chang told us that losing the baby had driven the couple apart.  The mother was never able to forgive the father for giving in to his parents and not keeping their daughter.  In fact, during an argument she stabbed him in the stomach and they later divorced.  Then despite the divorce, the teamed up to try to find out where their daughter was.  They learned that Mrs. Fang had been getting packages from America, and her son finally gave them the address of the family and they wrote Ricki's family.

Whew!  There's more, including the meeting for the birth parents and Ricki, in the documentary.  Despite the disjointed nature of the story told, it was a fascinating account .  Dr. Chang says Ricki, now 18, is planning to spend two months of this summer with her birth parents in China, and Dr. Chang will do a follow-up documentary about that.

I'll post later about some of the other things Dr. Chang said during the question and answer session, about Chinese culture and his point in making these adoption documentaries, but for now I'll quit!  I would recommend watching both documentaries if you have a chance.

Sofia's Journey

A story about a girl adopted from China, the subject of Dr. Changfu Chang's latest documentary, Sofia's Journey, seeking her birth family:

Her journey begins with a question: Who am I?

There are the things she can see — the glossy black hair, the luminous smile, the dark brown eyes — and the things she feels.

She feels like dancing. And she feels like singing. She feels a kinetic forward momentum, a perpetual simmer that makes her want to fly.

She feels the fence beneath her feet. On one side of it, she’s the American daughter of Marilyn and Peter Robinson, a text-sending, ballet-dancing, homework-doing, shoes-buying teenager who is plugged in and accustomed to having her voice heard. On the other side, she’s a daughter of China.

In Grand Junction, she looks different. In China, she feels different.

Who am I?

* * *

When Sofia entered middle school, she started asking aloud the questions that had always floated through her subconscious: What about my birth family? Where are they? Who are they? Why did they give me up?


Marilyn and Peter were reminded that to be adoptive parents is to assume a certain humility, to know that there is room in a child’s heart for both families.

“I felt that’s what a mother would do is love (Sofia) so much that I would bring her home,” Marilyn explained in “Sofia’s Journey.”

Having spent decades in marketing, Marilyn launched a campaign to find Sofia’s birth family. Fliers with baby photos of Sofia said, in English and Chinese, “I lost my parents in June 1995.” She and Peter called the orphanage, called government officials, called everyone who might be able to help. With only sporadic success, they nevertheless planned to go to China in June 2008.

From a Yahoo! group she’d joined, Marilyn learned about Chang, a documentary filmmaker and professor of video production at Millersville University in Pennsylvania who specialized in documentaries about adoptees returning to China to search for their birth families. Marilyn emailed him to ask for advice, and discovered he’d be in Xiamen, Fujian Province, at the same time as the Robinsons.

And so the documentary was born.  I remember attending a talk by Dr. Chang where he mentioned this documentary in the making.  The local FCC chapter is having him back for a viewing of the new documentary May 1st.

China Adoption, Birth Parent Searches, Corruption Conversations

Adoptive Families magazine has a number of interesting articles this month, including a look back and forward at China adoption (p. 35).  If you've been following China adoption even a little bit, nothing in the article will surprise you.  Kay Ann Johnson, author of Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son, is frequently quoted in the article, but if you read O Solo Mama's interview with her, nothing there will surprise you, either. AF doesn't put all articles from its current issues on its website, so you'll have to get the hard copy, or wait a couple of years!

There were two side bars to the article that I found particularly interesting.  One, titled the Birthparent Riddle (p. 37), talks about birth parent searching in China with quotes from Brian Stuy, Kay Johnson, and Dr. Changfu Chang, a documentary filmmaker who has made several films about birth parents and adoption in China.  Interesting quote from him in this paragraph: 

The Chinese government hasn't taken an official position on search, but Chang is sure that 'the CCAA and Ministry of Civil Affairs are keeping a close eye on the ongoing searches by U.S. and European families."  At this point, they seem to be taking a 'wait and see' approach, though attitudes differ greatly from province to province.

The second sidebar, Talking About Corruption (p. 38), has helpful advice from Amanda Baden, Ph.D., who specializes in transracial and international adoption.  First thing that caught my attention -- unless you have proof that your child was kidnapped or confiscated by birth planning authorities, etc., "don't imagine a worst-case scenario," but also don't whitewash or lie about it.  Second important point:  "This isn't a topic to get into with a 3-year-old.  Baden recommends tackling it . . . at 6 or 7."

For those of us who are looking for the perfect way to explain this difficult issue, no luck:

'There's no great explanation -- it can't be spun in a way that makes it happy,' says Baden . . . 'The challenge is to be honest, and frame it so that a child can understand the situation, reflect on it, but not internalize a lot of negative feelings about China as a country.'

Also, take a look at this Adoptive FamiliesCirle blog, where an adoptive mom describes a conversation about birth parents with her 6-year-old adopted daughter. Struck me as familiar -- Maya is 6, and this weekend she told me all about a school project of making a flower, and putting on each petal who they pray for (Catholic school, remember?!).  She proudly listed each person in the family -- "you and Zoe and Mimi and Grandpa and my birth mother. . . ."  Looks like Maya is entering a new phase;  she's moved beyond avoidant mode in talking about her birth mother!

Voices of Chinese Birth Mothers

In a comment to this post, Margie said that her view of birth families has been shaped in part by "having had the opportunity to hear first-hand Korean mothers who lost their children to adoption tell their stories." I wish we could hear directly from Chinese birth mothers as she has from Korean birth mothers. There are a few places to hear them speak second-hand -- the Dutch documentary, a brief cameo in China's Lost Girls, and Dr. Changfu Chang's Long Wait For Home.

But I want more. I was looking through A Passage to the Heart (drawn there by a cite in another article to a piece entitled, "The Importance of Loving Your Child's Birth Mother" (gee, I can't imagine why I wanted to read that one!)), and I ran across Susan Caughman's "Messages From Our Children's Birth Parents." She collected from adoptive parents the notes pinned to their baby's clothing when they were found and taken to orphanages.

It's fascinating reading:

From Wuhan, Hubei Province:
In our countryside the thought that a man is more important than woman is very popular. I myself don't have the strength to say something against it and overthrow it. But I believe on this big world there must be some kind, goodhearted uncles or aunties who can rescue my little daughter. I would do anything for him or her on my next life if I have another life. Birth Mother.

From Fuyang, Zhejiang Province:
To the adopter, please keep this note. In this life, in this world, I am not able to provide for you. I am giving you up so you can have a life. Good luck and be well.

From Hunan Province:
This baby girl was born on April 28, 1992, at 5:30 a.m. and is now 100 days old. She was born in a large hospital. She's in good health and has never suffered any illnesses. Owing to the current political situation and heavy pressures too difficult to explain, we who were her parents for these first days cannot continue taking care of her. We can only hope that a kind-hearted person will take care of her. Thank you. In regret and shame, your mother and father.

From Fuyang, Zhejiang Province:
She was born on May 24, 1992. Please help my daughter.

I still want more! Does anyone know of other places to find voices of Chinese birth parents?

Video Review: Peer in the Distance

Video: Peer in the Distance
Directed, Written & Produced by Dr. Changfu Chang

Review by Zoe

What this video is about: Two girls and they never met, because they live apart. XinPing lives in the country and WanWan lives in the city. They both have hard things in their lives. WanWan goes to school and has lots of lessons after school, so she always works. XinPing lives on a farm and has chores, and has to walk a long way to school.

What I liked about this video: That they knew each other and sent letters for a long time. I liked that they were friends even though they didn’t go to the same school.

What I didn’t like about this video: That they didn’t get to see each other in person.

What I learned/How this video helped me: I learned what life is like for girls living in China.

Zoe doesn't have school today, so we had a chance to see this DVD. I've had it for a while, since I went to an FCC-sponsored presentation by Dr. Chang, where he showed another video, A Long Wait for Home. That was also a great video -- not quite appropriate for Zoe's age, though. In that video, three birth parents discuss why they abandoned their children, how they feel about it now, etc. I think it's a very important and helpful video, because we haven't heard these voices from China before. But I also think there are some limitations on how helpful these voices are -- they don't strike me as very typical of birth parents in China. Still, I'd recommend both DVDs!

You can see a trailer for Peer in the Distance at YouTube.