A Product of the One-child Policy

[Randy W]

in the SCMP. In her own words, how one girl benefited from the one-child policy, in spite of being given away by her parents.

How one-child policy plucked a girl from China to US and gave her undreamt-of opportunities
In her own words, Ricki Mudd tells how she was removed from her home in Zhejiang province, adopted by an American couple and given opportunities she couldn't have enjoyed in China. Better still, she now has two families.

 

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Sometimes it's odd to think that between us, Wuchao is supposedly the privileged child - the boy preferred by Chinese society, the son my family held out for while I was hidden and ultimately put up for adoption.

I'm among the more than 100,000 children adopted from China by Western families since the early 1990s. Most of us are girls, by-products of the one-child policy, which compounded the cultural gender bias. Few of us know about the families we left behind - or, in many cases, who left us.

. . .

When I was born - on April 26, April 30 or May 5, 1993, depending on whom you ask - I was a disappointment to my family. They called me Mengting, combining words meaning "dream" and "pause". My father's mother pressured my parents not to apply for a birth certificate for me.

. . .

My paternal grandmother held a lot of power in the family. So my parents agreed to try for a boy. Meanwhile, they hid me from the authorities.

For the first few years of my life, I was illegal and invisible - carried in a grocery bag outside, asked to stay silent upstairs at home, always in the dark. When I ran into the courtyard once, my maternal grandmother slapped me. Everyone was petrified that I would be discovered.

. . .

. . . After only 100 days, I was seized by birth-control officials - Fan maintains that someone in the village tipped them off - and put in an orphanage.

My father says he tried to get me out but was chased away. My mother blamed him for not trying harder. At one point, the story goes, my mother was so distraught that she stabbed him in the stomach with a knife, sending him to the emergency room and ultimately contributing to their divorce.

. . .

Rather than feeling rejected, I felt extremely fortunate when I glimpsed how much harder life is for my family in China - and would have been for me if I'd stayed.

. . .

I'm the most highly educated person in either of my families. I've worked hard to make both families proud.

. . .

Wuchao didn't know much about the US before arriving here.

"Do they have rice in America," he asked. He looked at me like I was crazy when I told him a lot of people in America shower every day.

Living in the same house has allowed us to learn more about each other. When we talk about what happened to me, he gets quiet, with a faraway look in his eyes, and tells me he feels partly to blame. I try to reassure him that I don't hold any grudges. I admit to feeling guilty that I wasn't there for him through our parents' divorce and the fights that came after. We've made a pact to be there for each other.

"When I'm successful in my job and make a lot of money, I'll be sure to come back and visit you," he says.

Chinese society may have had room for only one of us. But our lives will be forever intertwined.

 

Edited February 21, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

The original article in the Washington Post, if you don't have access to SCMP

 

China’s one-child policy led to my adoption — and a more privileged life

[Allon]

Nice story, Randy.