2009 National Ethnic Media Awards Winners

The following is a translation of the original story.

By Rong Xiaoqing, Sing Tao Daily Sunday Magazine, 06/08/2008

Sophia Kosman, 11, still clearly remembers the trip she made with her mom to China in 2006. That was the first time she had returned to China since she was adopted by her American parents as a baby from Nanchang in Jiangxi province. Among many fun places they went to was Wolong, in Sichuan Province, to see the pandas. Sophia, then 8, was brave enough to hug a panda. "She was eating an apple and probably didn't notice I was there. She was very cute, so soft," Sophia recalled.

So when she heard from her mom about the earthquake in Sichuan, Sophia was very sad. "All the people who were killed and who are homeless, it's devastating," she said.

On May 17th, when the New York chapter of Families with Children from China (FCC), a network of adoptive families with China-born kids, held their annual Chinese Cultural Day, Sophia and many other kids joined their parents to sell T-shirts and other goodies and collect money for their earthquake relief fund. So far, they have raised $15,000 and the money will be sent to the orphanages in the Sichuan area to help take care of the orphans left by the earthquake. "It's important to help people in such a tragedy. And I am from China. It's in my background," said Sophia.

"I think that as a result of the trip, China is a 'real' place that she can picture in her mind and relate to, rather than simply the 'place she was born' but with no connection to anything real," said Sophia's mother Margie Berman, who is the President of the New York FCC. "Once things are real rather than just words it opens your heart in a different way and makes you want to help more because you can see the damage and remember the real people, places and animals you saw."

Sophia is among an increasing number of adopted Chinese kids that have been returning to China for visits in the past few years. Since it opened to overseas adoption in the early 1990s, China has replaced Korea to become the number one source for American adoptive families. The number of children adopted from China by Americans jumped from 61 in 1991 to 6,493 in 2006, according to the U.S. Department of State.

The trend is expected to slow because China has introduced new restrictions on adoptions effective last May. Those disqualified applicants who are too old, physically or financially challenged, or not legally married. But Chinese kids who've made their way to the U.S. — more than 60,000 of them altogether — have already established a community whose needs can never be overlooked.

Services catering to this special community, online shops selling traditional Chinese toys and decorations and Chinese language schools have been springing up in the past decade. Now, with the earlier wave of adopted becoming teenagers, the China tours are becoming a new fashion.

When she came back from the trip to China with Sophia, Ms. Berman launched an annual travel forum for member families of the New York FCC, so they could learn how to prepare for their own trip. According to Ms. Berman's analysis, 30% of kids in the community are now 8 to 16 years old. This is the best age range for kids to make the trip, according to adoption experts — younger kids may not be ready physically and emotionally and older ones may be rebelling and hard to travel with.

"When the kids were small, there weren't many things we could do. Now our kids are teenagers...It is a strong priority for many, many people in our community to return to China with their children," said Ms. Berman

This has all created a cottage industry as an increasing number of adoption and travel agencies start to provide tours. When Kate DeLosso, a travel counselor and mom of adopted children from Korea and the Philippines, started to provide special interest tours to adoptive families in 1996, Korea was her sole destination. In 2002, the Chinese Motherland Tours were added to the agenda of her Pennsylvania-based Collectible Tours company.

"My business is growing fast, particularly in China," said Ms. DeLosso, who expects the business to be even better in the next couple of years as more China-born kids get old enough to really deal with such a trip. "If there were only 100 children, that's not enough to start a business but if there are 6,000 (the 2006 figure for Chinese adoptions), I'm going to have a much larger market, because there is the potential that up to 6,000 families in seven years will want to travel."

Michael Han, a China adoption expert with more than ten years in the market, is seeing similar trends. When Mr. Han founded the Always and Forever Adoption Homeland Tours in Oregon in 2004 after detecting the demand was growing, he sent only a dozen families to China in a year. Last year, he helped arrange trips for more than 200 families.

Even the Chinese government agencies take note. In 2004, the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council of China and the China Overseas Exchange Association expanded their co-sponsored annual "Root Seeking Tour" — which had been focusing only on children from overseas Chinese families since its inception in 1999 — to add a "Families with Children from China Heritage Tour" for adopted children.

The China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA), an affiliate of the Ministry for Civil Affairs, also launched its first annual summer camp for adopted children in August last year. When he was asked to help recruit for the camp in mid June, Gongzhan Wu, the China Program Manager of the Gladney Center for Adoption, a leading adoption agency based in Texas, thought it might be a fruitless task. After all, most families already have their summer holiday plans booked by June. But the original 25 slots were soon expanded to 30 and still they were all filled within two weeks after Mr. Wu sent out the invitation to adoptive families on his emailing list. "That was totally unexpected and we were thrilled," said Mr. Wu.

Although many tours scheduled for this summer have been cancelled because of the earthquake and due to the higher prices of airfares and hotels triggered by the Beijing Olympics, industry insiders predict a large surge next year with families who originally planned to go this year now vying to register for next year. "We will get at least 500 families next year," said Jim Wang, the Chair of the Ohio-based Foundation for Chinese Cultural and Educational Exchanges in USA and the initial American organizer of the Heritage Tour.

The interest in such programs is coming from a new generation of adoptive parents, who have learned a lesson from the earlier adoptive families with Korean children that simply assimilating kids into the mainstream U.S. culture does not work. The lack of access to birth culture didn't turn the Korean adoptive children white. Rather it added to their confusion about identity and that has turmoil has gone with them into adulthood as there is no way to escape people judging them initially by their appearance.

Most of the families adopted from China follow the open adoption rule recommended by adoption experts so the kids always know they are not with their biological parents. And they have been trying to connect kids with their birth culture since day one by studying the language, having dim sum and celebrating the Lunar New Year together with their kids.

But when kids get awareness of themselves and of the world around them and start to ask the first philosophical questions in their lives: who am I and where do I come from, Chinatowns and Chinese schools in the U.S. are not able to provide a complete answer.

"At some point, all children seek some sense of belonging, and adoptees try to do that too, but a lot of times they find themselves caught in between (the two cultures)," said Erik Shumar, a PhD candidate in social work from Columbia University who has been working on a study aiming to help the kids to be positive about their identities by providing standard classes to parents with international adoptions. "They often grow up in predominantly white neighborhoods and schools that and they really feel like they are white. But their cultural background is Chinese. A lot of times, when confronted with the paradox, they want to go to see also what is China like and what does it mean to be Chinese, because that obviously is part of them."

Visits to Chinatowns in the U.S. don't stand comparison with a visit to China. "Chinatown here is still New York City, and there are still a lot of Westerners. It's basically restaurants and a few little stores," said Amanda Baden, a New York-based psychologist specializes on the adoptive community who herself was adopted from Hong Kong. "The benefit of going to China is getting the whole experience of seeing many, many people, seeing the vastness of the country and the history of the country. Kids feel a lot more comfortable once they've been there. They get a better sense of where they came from."

For many kids who take the tours, there is an anticipation that is stronger than visiting the Great Wall or playing with pandas — to get close to their birth parents, although sometimes they keep this desire only to themselves. Compared to many other kids, 14-year-old Kily Wong, who was adopted by an American-born Chinese family living in New York, keeps a cool head on the birth parents issue. Although she shocked adoptive mom Mee Mee Chin by suddenly asking the question "where I came from" when she was five — earlier than Ms. Chin expected — Kily said she never thought of tracking down her birth parents before she took the CCAA summer camp last year.

But it became an unavoidable topic among the campers who came from all over the U.S. and were in Beijing alone without the company of their adoptive parents. "At the camp, when we talked about it, we came out with a scenario: what if they somehow found your (birth) mom and you can go into the room to talk to her? I noticed a lot of the kids said they were being angry at their parents for leaving them," said Kily.

For herself, sense seemed to win out over such emotions. Kily put together a picture based on the information she learned about China from various sources. "I don't think I would be really mad at them. I know in the old days in China, it was very hard to live, and there is the One Child Policy. They really didn't have choice," said Kily. Still, she'd like to meet her birth parents if they could be found. "For me it's not how could you do this to me but I want to understand why, what kind of pressure they were under."

AiXiu Angeleigh Cooney, a 16-year-old from Hawaii and Kily's camp friend, is more emotional. "I'm afraid to go and try to find them. If I met them I won't know what to say, I probably would just cry," said Xiu Xiu, as she is known by friends and family. "But I've always wanted to know what life would be like if I stayed with them."

Xiu Xiu put her feelings in a poem titled My Birthparents. "I would give anything/ To see what you look like/ And I would stop the world/ And melt with you/ Just to have our moments/ No matter how long it would take/ The forever love," she wrote.

Xiu Xiu's birth parents will probably never get the chance to read it. Unlike Korea and some other countries, Chinese orphanages don't keep the records of birth parents and searching for an anonymous couple in a country of 1.3 billion people would be almost impossible.

The kids realize it once they get there. But if this has left a broken dream, it may be a bitter sweet one because it somehow helps them to adjust to their current life.

"Victoria always wondered whether she could find her birth parents but now she doesn't ask any more," said Niki Chen, a high school teacher in New Jersey, about her 12-year-old daughter who visited China three years ago. "I guess she saw China is too large to find them and that settled her. She starts to accept that this is her life and she's got to move on."

The absence of birth parents, however, didn't stop kids finding out about their origins. Their baby photos and documents are all kept well by the CCAA in Beijing, and sometimes even details of the exact locations and the circumstances that they were found by kind hearted rescuers. And the orphanages are always open for them. A lot of times, kids are able to see the cribs they used to lay in and meet their previous caregivers who still remember their names and even recognize them sometimes.

Mary and John Comas from Westchester, New York, noticed the changes in their ten-year-old daughter Emily after the family visited her orphanage during their trip last year. "She is less anxious and more at peace with her story," said Mrs. Comas. "Now we can talk effectively. Instead of 'I wonder where is my birth mom', it's more like 'yeah, when I was in that crib in that room...' She can reference something concretely. "

To the kids, compared to the emotional moments in the orphanages which often involve hugs and tears, the real sense of being Chinese more likely comes from the interaction with strangers.

Sometimes, when kids travel with their Western parents, onlookers won't conceal their curiosity, and the way they express it could make kids feel uncomfortable. "I hated their staring because we were with our mom and dad who are blonde and gray," said 13-year-old Katie Cleveland from Pennsylvania who visited China with her parents Patty and Scott and younger sister Jamie last year.

But tour organizers say it is changing as local Chinese are more and more used to foreign visitors and to the idea of adoption, which used to be a taboo. "In the early years, people not only stared at the group, they sometimes followed us," said Ming Hua He, the director of the Connecticut-based Chinese Cultural Exchange & China Homeland Tours. "Now most of times they seem to be more understanding."

Ms. He said her organization also helps families to make tags in both English and Chinese that state "we are adoptive families and we love China." She said when families show the tag to curious onlookers, the responses always are warm and friendly. "People say to the parents: thank you for looking after our children."

But strangers are also ready to offer Chinese-style family hospitality as many tour organizers arrange for kids to spend time with ordinary families. And making dumplings with Chinese people and watching soap operas and playing computer games with their kids can be a joyful cultural experience and a favorite with many of the kids.

"I enjoyed seeing where the family lived and being with them," said Daniel Clark, a 15-year-old boy from Massachusetts who spent a day with a family in Beijing last summer. From the family, Daniel learned kids in China always have a lot of homework to do and Chinese families are more likely to cook at home than to order takeout as his adoptive mom often does. "I got to see what it's like in a normal household in China. They were very kind and generous to me. I will never forget their kindness."

Xiu Xiu, the girl from Hawaii, who also spent time with a Chinese family, talking Harry Potter and sharing home-cooked meals including a "funny" chicken foot dish, was also touched. "I felt warm. It was like back home. I felt people did love me over there even though they didn't know me," said Xiu Xiu, who referred to China as "my country" in the conversation.

To the organizers, this is the most important accomplishment of the tours, as Mr. Han from the Always and Forever Adoption Homeland Tours put it: "So kids now know they are not abandoned but loved by China." To Beijing, there is a long term expectation that these kids who are surrounded by love from both China and America and understand both cultures will one day play a big role in the relations between the two countries.

The certificate issued by the Ministry for Civil Affairs to campers of the CCAA camp, which many kids proudly hang on the walls of their bedrooms, states the intention clearly: "No matter what you do when you grow up, never forget about the devoted love and care of your American adoptive parent. No matter where you go, never forget that you have your root in China. You will be the angel for the friendship between Chinese and American peoples forever."

Many kids might still be too young to understand big words like cultural ambassador, which they heard frequently from the receptions they got in China. And they talk about their "cultural shock" honestly when they frown about toilets you have to squat on, air pollution, weird-tasting congee and spicy food, the disparities between the rich and the poor and the over modernization in some big cities. "Why do I have to come to Beijing to see another New York?" asked Kily, the 14-year-old from New York. Indeed, while the exception, there are some kids who were so turned off they declared they didn't want to ever return to China.

Yet, many of them have started to build the bridge between the two countries, consciously or not. The CCAA campers are trying to help the three wheel-chaired girls they met at an orphanage in the city of Tianjin city to come to the U.S. for medical treatment. Xiu Xiu from Hawaii is trying to raise money for the earthquake victims as well as two orphanages in China - both of which she plans to volunteer in next summer. Daniel from Massachusetts said he'd like to live in China in the future. And Katie from Pennsylvania is planning to make a scrapbook about her trip to show her friends about China.

But the connection is not limited to the kids. Ice breaking more often happens first with adoptive parents. "Some parents who adopted in the early 1990s thought they were rescuing the kids from the brutality in China. But after traveling in China with their kids 10 years later, their view has changed," said Mr. Wang of the Foundation for Chinese Cultural and Educational Exchanges in USA.

Mr. Wang cites a top lawyer in Washington D.C. who attended his tour. "He was very elegant and didn't talk to us or other families at the beginning. And later he told me his understanding about China was mainly from the Western media and now he knows many times it's distorted," said Mr. Wang. "He became a big supporter of the Chinese language schools here after the tour and we are good friends now."

Mr. Wang is trying to give a further boost to the whole process. He plans to organize theme tours based on the professions of the parents next year, so that while kids enjoy themselves, the parents can meet with their Chinese colleagues to develop business or educational projects. "I think this is one of the most effective ways to further develop the ties between China and the U.S," said Mr. Wang.

Kyle Liston is one of the parents. A doctor from Colorado who has both Western and Chinese medical training, Ms. Liston considered herself lucky when she was chosen as one of the five chaperones for the CCAA camp last summer, so she was able to travel to China with her adoptive daughter Annie. She got to know about the dragons through her study of the treatment system called "Seven Dragons" in the Taoist Five Elements acupuncture. But after attending the lecture about traditional Chinese culture offered by the camp, her understanding of the dragons was brought to a new level.

"I didn't know China is considered as the water dragon and America the fire dragon. They are sort of the opposite of each other but they also balance each other. I will forever see in my mind the blue water dragon of China merrily dancing with the red fire dragon of America," said Ms. Liston.

When asked about the idea of seeing her daughter become a "cultural ambassador," Ms. Liston said: "I certainly hope so and I hope I myself could do the same. This is a very critical moment for China and the U.S. to embrace each other's culture."

Talking about dragons, ten-year-old Ann Bartlett is very excited. In August, Ann will go to China with her parents Leslie and Doyle and six-year-old brother Cameron (who was also adopted from China). On her must-see list are the Great Wall in Beijing and dragons. Although she knows that dragons come from myths and fantasies, she still dreams of bumping into one in a country that is known as their homeland. "I like dragons. It's nice to see them in the Chinese New Year ceremony," said Ann.

The family will also watch parts of the Olympics. And Ann may be facing a tough choice if the competition is between China and America — she doesn't know which side she'll cheer for. "I guess I'll vote for both," she decided after thinking for a few seconds.

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