Personal Narrative: My Adoption To China

On June 1, 1999, I was adopted from Gaoming, China. After four boys, my parents were excited to fly thousands of miles to see their baby girl for the first time. There was a lot of chance and uncertainty when adopting a child from China. My mother told me stories of couples who would go to China and end up adopting a child completely different than who they had officially signed papers for. Sometimes even a complete different gender than what had been requested. Many babies from my orphanage were mentally disabled or had physical defects such as cleft lips or joint issues. All of these babies had been left somewhere in China with no records of who their parents were. Obviously, this is because it is illegal to abandon a child. I grew up with limited knowledge of my life in China. All I knew was that I was abandoned in a market a few miles from my orphanage. This market changed my life. It struck me with curiosity and has occupied my thoughts for years, bringing up many questions that could not be answered. I had memories from when I was young of my mom telling me to paint what I thought the market looked like along with paintings of my birth mom. I, of course, had no idea what to imagine it as. I had no memory of China and I did not know what a market was. After all, all our grocery …show more content…
One of the days of the trip was committed to visiting my orphanage and the market. It was surreal. I felt that I had a deep connection to these locations I had never been to. The same women who were there when I was an orphan were there the day I visited thirteen years later. With a quiver in their voices, my parents expressed their gratitude and love to the people running the orphanage. My mom’s friend, our translator, told us that she said, “Wow. She has grown into a beautiful young woman. You two look like amazing parents.” Finally, we leave and get into the van to go the long-awaited