新闻来源：www.nytimes.com
原文地址：Opinion | Adopted Chinese Babies Like Me Spend a Lifetime Searching for Home
新闻日期：2024-09-15
自小我就感到自己与生俱来的异样感。我讨厌我的黑发和眼睛，这让我在荷兰长大时显得格外与众不同。我常希望自己能有一头金色的卷发和湛蓝的眼睛，就像其他荷兰孩子那样。有时我会自欺欺人地认为自己已变成了那样，直到镜子提醒了我自己的身世。
1993年，我还很小就被一对白人荷兰父母收养，他们无法生育。我长大的是一个深信基督教的小城镇，在那里，每周都有几十个穿着盛装、全是白人的人都从我家门前走过，前往教堂做礼拜。这个小城不仅在地理位置上与中国的距离很远，在文化和种族上也相差甚远。
我不怪我的养父母给了我异样的童年感。他们已经尽了最大的努力让我拥有了一个幸福的童年，我非常爱他们。但当中国确认会停止大部分外国收养时，一种如释重负的感觉涌上心头，随后是夹杂着的愤怒情绪。
自1990年代初中国向国际收养开放以来，已有超过16万名中国儿童被送往世界各地。这些孩子似乎找到了属于自己的家，但过程中的痛苦与不公却是不容忽视的。中国的“独生子女”政策使得孤儿院人满为患，而女婴尤其多，因为人们偏好男性继承人。于是，一种以盈利为目的的国际收养业应运而生，有的家庭甚至会卖掉孩子。
许多像我这样的被领养中国儿童在成长过程中一直在寻找归属感和身份认同。我在阿布斯勒达姆（Alblasserdam）读小学时就是第一个非白人小孩之一。有些同学会踢我的自行车试图把它弄坏，其中一个男孩说：“一个肮脏的中国人配不上这个。”对他们而言，我算不得真正的荷兰人。我也常听到大人们称我“杏眼”，还用手指拉起眼睛的一角。
在家族中，我也时常觉得自己是局外人。当父母告诉亲戚他们要带一个非白人小孩回家时，并不是所有人都支持。我的表妹出生后，祖父母家里很快挂满了她的照片，但只有一两张是我自己的。我不太在意这些，只是羡慕表妹长得像别人一样。我像是个没人似的。
随着年龄的增长，我喜欢上了电影和电视中的少数亚洲角色，不再是按摩店的工人或数学社里的怪人。我的偶像是一位聪明、泼辣的医生 Cristina Yang（《灰姑娘医生》），由 Sandra Oh 演绎。那时我不知，研究人员称这种经历为“再文化”，即发展自我身份，在出生文化和收养文化间穿梭。
我从小就觉得自己的一部分仍留在中国，渴望与之重新连接。三年级时，每位同学都画了一棵家谱树。我在中心写下自己的名字，并用放射线指向一个个问号。放学后我哭着回家向父母请求带我去中国。他们为这次旅行向房子抵押了第二笔贷款，2003年12岁时，我终于回到了故土。
突然置身于同胞之中有着强烈的感觉；我最终找回了长久以来的归属感。现在是我的父母显得格外突兀。陌生人会盯着陪同我的两个白人和一个中国小孩。我喜欢中国的食物，味道浓郁而不单调，远胜荷兰平淡无奇的食物。我会说的第一句中文是“不辣”，告诉餐馆工作人员别放辣椒。
去年我陪伴一位被收养于2000年的朋友 Paula Vrolijk 一起回到她的家乡——中国的一个农村地区，寻找亲生父母。她找到了他们，并发现有一个双胞胎姐姐一直和另一个家庭生活在一起。因为当时女孩出生时，祖母希望得到一个男孩，如果第一个孩子是女孩，则可以再生第二个。但因为她们是一对双胞胎，所以必须放弃其中一个。后来那家人多年一直在找我，却不知道我已经远在世界的另一边。
寻找亲生父母的旅程带我去到了贵州省会贵阳市，在那里我查阅了我的收养档案。文件中写着一位妇女（可能是我的母亲）曾把我和两个陌生人留在公共厕所里，她没有回来。一张纸条上写道：“这个婴儿很健康，希望她长寿。”寻找仍在继续，但我觉得结果已不太重要。
9月5日，在中国外交部的例行记者会上，当一名政府女官宣布将停止大部分国际收养时，我心中涌动着复杂的情绪。我感到如释重负和愤怒：我为结束这种不公平的收养而高兴，但也对中国的政府没能完全承认收养系统的问题而生气。我不是说我的荷兰父母不好；他们尽力给了我一个幸福的童年。但是，我难以接受自己被带走的过去。
原文摘要：
As early as I can remember, I wished I hadn’t been Chinese.I hated my unruly black hair and my eyes, which marked me as a foreigner in the Netherlands, where I grew up. I went to bed at night hoping I’d wake up with blond hair and blue eyes like the other Dutch kids. Sometimes I tricked myself into believing this had happened — until a mirror reminded me where I came from.I was adopted from China as a toddler in 1993 by white Dutch parents who couldn’t conceive on their own. I grew up in a deeply Christian small town where, every week, dozens of people — all of them white — paraded past our house in their Sunday best on the way to church. It was about as far as you could get — physically, culturally, ethnically — from China.I don’t blame my adoptive parents for the sense of alienation I grew up with. They did their best to give me a happy childhood, and I love them very much. But when China confirmed earlier this month that it would end most adoptions by foreign parents, a wave of relief washed over me, followed by suppressed anger.The number of Chinese children placed with overseas families since China opened up to international adoptions in the early 1990s has been estimated at more than 160,000. Around half of these kids went to the United States. The topic is usually discussed from the adoptive parents’ perspective: How it allowed them to start families, how they rescued these orphans and now how the sudden ban leaves applicant couples in the lurch.Far less attention is given to the darker side of these placements and their impact on adoptees.China’s strict one-child family planning policy, introduced in 1979, forced many Chinese parents to give up babies. These were usually girls, because of a traditional preference for male heirs. A profit-motivated overseas adoption industry cropped up in response, in which human lives were sometimes bought and sold.For many like me — plucked from our home cultures and raised in countries where we didn’t quite fit in — the search for who we are and where we belong has been lifelong and full of discovery, as well as confusion, regret and loss.I was one of the first nonwhite kids at my primary school in Alblasserdam, a tidy little Dutch town. Some classmates would kick my bike, trying to break it, because, as one boy put it, “a filthy Chinese does not deserve this.” The ubiquitous, indispensable bicycle is a symbol of the Dutch nation, and to them, I wasn’t Dutch enough for one. I heard adults say “slant eye” and saw them use their fingers to pull up the corners of their eyes.Even in my extended family, I sometimes felt like an intruder. When my parents told their relatives they were bringing a nonwhite baby into the family, not everyone was supportive. After my cousin was born, my grandparents’ house soon filled with photos of her. There were just a couple of pictures of me. I didn’t mind so much; I was just jealous that my cousin looked like everyone else. I resembled nobody.As I got older, I connected with the rare Asian characters in movies or television who weren’t the stereotypical massage parlor worker or socially awkward math geek. My hero was the brilliant, sassy Dr. Cristina Yang in “Grey’s Anatomy,” played by Sandra Oh. I didn’t know it then, but researchers have a word for what I was going through: “reculturation,” the process of developing one’s identity and navigating between birth and adoptive cultures.I grew up feeling a part of me had never left China, and I longed to reconnect. One day in the third grade, each student had to make a family tree. I wrote my name in the center with lines radiating out, ending in question marks. I went home in tears and pleaded with my parents to take me to China.They took out a second mortgage on our house to afford the trip, and in 2003, at 12 years old, I was back on my native soil. To suddenly find yourself among your own kind has a powerful effect; I finally felt the sense of belonging that I had sought for so long. Now it was my parents who stood out. Strangers would stare at the two white people accompanying a Chinese child. I loved the food in China, bursting with intense flavors lacking in bland Dutch cuisine. The first sentence I learned in Mandarin was to tell restaurant workers, “Bu yao lajiao” (no hot chili peppers). I vowed to learn Chinese and go back, eventually returning in 2019 to work as a journalist.My reporting in China further opened my eyes to the realities of adoptions.As the one-child policy caused orphanages to fill up, babies became a commodity. Local officials in China sometimes seized infants from their parents and sold them. The industry began prioritizing parents overseas, who could afford to pay a mandatory “donation” that could exceed $5,000, which was out of reach for many Chinese couples. Some Western adoption agencies in turn played the white-savior card, implying that Chinese adoptive parents would not truly love a child who was not their flesh and blood.In reality, even before China began international adoptions, Chinese parents had adopted millions of babies. But stringent new qualification requirements for Chinese parents were introduced in 1991. Overseas adoptions peaked in the early 2000s and went into steady decline as China’s economy boomed, the government provided more funding for orphans and finally announced in 2015 that it was dropping the one-child policy.Many adopted Chinese, now adults, are seeking to trace their roots. This can be an emotional roller coaster.Last year I accompanied a friend, Paula Vrolijk, who was adopted by Dutch parents in 2000, as she traveled to her hometown in rural China in search of her biological relatives. She found them and also discovered she had an identical twin who was kept and raised by the family. When the girls were born, their grandmother had wanted a boy, and back then, couples could have a second child if the firstborn was a girl. But since they were twins, one of the girls first had to be given up. The family later searched for Paula for years, not knowing she was on the other side of the world.My search for my birth parents took me last year to Guiyang, a city in southwestern China, where I viewed my adoption file. It said a woman — possibly my mother — had asked two strangers in the city to hold me while she went to the restroom. She never returned. A note was found on me saying: “The baby is healthy. I hope she lives a long time.” My search goes on, but I’m realistic about my chances.On Sept. 5, at the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s daily press briefing, conflicting emotions swirled inside me as I nervously raised my hand to ask a government spokeswoman about reports, then still unconfirmed, that international adoptions would be stopped. When she announced that what had essentially become a legalized form of child trafficking was indeed now over, it felt cathartic.But any relief I feel is tempered by knowing that China’s government will probably never fully acknowledge the system’s abuses. I’m still angry — at the fraught legacy of the adoptions, at the enduring focus on prospective parents’ feelings instead of the children’s and when people imply that I should be grateful for having been adopted.The end of China’s adoptions era and my reconnection with my birth country has brought some closure. I know I might never be fully accepted as either Dutch or Chinese, but I’ve learned to be proud of my dual identity. It’s who I am.And I’m no longer angry at the mirror.
