I want to go back and fill in some of the gaps in the story of finding L’s family. I am going to feel my way along and try to share my part of the story without impinging too much on L’s story or her family’s story.
Before I put my toe in that water, a note for the sake of clarity:
I am just going to skip the whole “Birth mother” “birth father” thing. I call them L’s mama and L’s baba or her mother and father and I will call myself “me/I” and Mr. A “Mr. A” . I am going to assume that my readers know that I also consider Mr. A and myself to be L’s parents without needing to qualify her Chinese mother and father as her “birthmother and birthfather”. If calling them her mother and father bothers you, well, then that is about you. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest. When I write a new post, I will try write “birthmother” at least once toward the beginning of each post for people who are new to our story.
Also, please excuse my bad grammar in using “they” as the pronoun for our Chinese contact. I do not want to identify that person’s gender so bad grammar and bad conjugation is my only option.
How We Found Out
When we found out Mr. A’s job was going to be ending in early January, I had just about reached the end of my rope with our Chinese contact. For many months, the contact told us they knew who the family was but they had not agreed to tell us who they were. Our contact also told us they had met with the birth family. It was becoming increasingly clear that at least part of that story was not true. Another Chinese contact asked our local contact to describe the mother and father’s age and appearance and the local contact hedged and wouldn’t commit. Then other times, we were given details that were inconsistent with other things we had been told. It was really annoying.
When we decided to go to China in January and February, I had the person who calls China for me tell our Chinese contact that we couldn’t wait any longer. We were going to go look for them ourselves. We would use posters and business cards and we would spend a week in the area talking to anyone we met. We would go to many local villages and look there too.
It wasn’t that we didn’t believe our contact was looking. We thought that information was being collected. But we didn’t know how much was actually true and how much was related Chinese cultural issue of telling us what we wanted to hear. We sent that message on Thursday. On friday, the friend who calls China for us called and said our contact wanted to talk to us the next morning.
On Saturday morning, we had a three way call including me, my friend who translates and our Chinese contact. I was sure the story was going to be wishy washy again, so I videotaped the call on speakerphone to make sure I was clear on the details. (I thought SOME were true, so I didn’t want to lose any info to forgetfulness or distraction via annoyance).
Almost immediately, our contact told us “I am sure I found the right family.”
I burst into tears and nearly dropped the phone as they told me L’s parents names and year of birth. Despite years of believing it was possible to find them, part of me believed the party line that it was impossible to find a birth family in China. Yet, here I was, writing down their names with shaking hands.
Then there was more. “They have an older daughter and a younger son.” Again, it was like being hit by a bolt of lightening. L has a sister and a brother who live with her family.
As our contact went on, they told me that L’s parents work in another province and that is why it took so long to get in touch with them. We learned that their children live with relatives in their home village. (Not unusual for China, though surprising to me nevertheless).
We learned that L’s parents are not farmers or rural people, at least not any more. They live in a big city. In fact, our contact had been communicating with her father via instant messaging –They have internet access and email!
Going back and forth through the translator, our call took about two hours. I couldn’t think of the questions I wanted to ask. I had always been suspicious that another little girl on L’s orphanage yahoo group could be her sister, so I asked our contact about that (because I couldn’t think of anything else!)
“Nooooo! American’s think all Chinese look the same! It is impossible!” they said. I thought this was hilarious and told our contact that it may be true for many Americans, but I have Asian family! I can tell Asians apart! (Also, if you told me that girls’ picture was L’s, as a baby I would have believed it. They looked very very similar.)
As we finished our call, I asked our contact “Do you think they will agree to see us when we are in China?”
They replied, “They said they would give anything, if only the could see her one time.”
