the adoptee's voice

Sunday, August 30, 2009

Adopted teen finds answers, mystery in China

“Your Blood Is My Blood” a blog written by an American woman who is searching for her own identity. Jae has an incredible skill as a “Spoken Word Artist” and she has the ability to speak ‘from the street’.
Link here: the adoptee's voice
Reader Remember that it is actually unusual for a “BOY” to be adopted from China, with it’s “One Child” policy, sometimes enforced very strictly even in the Rural areas.
“The father fell to his knees, weeping. The mother quietly buried her face in her hands. The 17-year-old boy stood upright and motionless -- whether out of shock or stoicism, no one knew.
Christian Norris, who had just returned to China for the first time since he was adopted by an American eight years ago, didn't know what to think.”

"Honey, are you OK?" Christian's adoptive mother, Julia Norris, finally asked. He nodded affirmatively, but said nothing.
The reunion between Christian, a high school student in Easton, Md., and his birth parents took place Saturday in a Beijing hotel room crowded with well-wishers and media on hand to witness the virtually unprecedented event.
Since the early 1990s, an estimated 75,000 Chinese-born children have been adopted abroad, and although they increasingly visit China on heritage tours, Christian is one of only a few who have managed to chase down their personal history.”

“He was born Jin Jiacheng in 1991 in Yinchuan, a city in the Ningxia region several hundred miles west of Beijing, to a couple who both worked in a hospital and already had a son. Because his parents could have been penalized for having a second child, he was sent as a newborn to his father's home village to be raised by his grandmother and a 23-year-old uncle, who pretended the infant was his own son. When he turned 6 and was ready to start school, they sent him back to the city.”

Korean War Baby comments:

Here is the gist of the story: when he was seven years old the boy was lost and separated from his parents while on an family outing. The bus left without him and somehow he got on a bus and wound up 350 miles away. He was found wandering under a bridge and brought to an orphanage. His future Adoptive mother worked for an Adoption Agency. Attempts to find out where he lived failed because he could not remember. AFTER one year Julia Norris, both a firm believer in open adoptions and a tenacious investigator who once worked for the television show ‘America's Most Wanted.’ A single woman, Julia Norris adopted the 8 year old boy and three years later a Chinese girl.

This story is full of interesting facts, an example of just things gone wrong in life. There was not ‘kidnapping’ or ‘Child Laundering’ in this case. China’s policy is already being reconsidered, after the high death toll of the ‘Only Child’ of many who died in the earthquake last year.

Read the rest, remembering that “Every story is different, unique, or similar, a SPECTRUM of circumstances and facts. We must ALWAYS examine the truth. Christian has a huge amount of STUFF to work through, no wonder he is overcome and I would think bewildered by it all. THERE IS NO SIMPLE ANSWER for the future, but with his Adoptive mother perhaps he can work through it.

As we must all work through “THIS THING OF OURS-ADOPTION”.