MY fATHER'S PERSPECTIVE

I asked my dad to share with me his perspective on my adoption. I’ve abridged parts of his story for readability, and have also removed names and explicit references of other families in the adoption group for privacy’s sake. My parents divorced in 2009, but were married at the time of my adoption (1995).

How were you first introduced to the idea of adoption?

Tina [note: my mother] received a card for China Adoption Services, because at the time we were looking for ways to have a child. And I’m not sure how long afterwards—maybe the same day, maybe a couple of days later—Tina showed me the card, and it was another option, and one that really fit with me, one that I liked, rather than having another child—instead providing a home for a child.

So then we explored more, and we decided to meet with [the Adoption Services owner], and we arranged to meet. And she stood us up the first time, I think. They were very busy. We met with them eventually. They apologized up and down about standing us up, and we talked, and adopting seemed like a viable thing. Tina was excited, I was… still at that point, if I kind of reflected on it, sort of ambivalent. I knew I was going to become a father someday, I expected it, but I didn’t know how. So we met with the agency a couple of times, got involved in the adoption process, and finally decided to do it, which required paperwork.

What were you told about adoption from China?

We heard that the Chinese government wanted to make sure children had good, stable homes, that there were enough resources to provide for the child, and that the child would be a special needs child. And to this day, I don’t know if that’s code for what the adoption agency and the people in China had to say to get the children adopted, because that was a requirement of the Chinese government, or something else. Some children came with issues, all of them came, you know, from families that couldn’t stay together for some reason—because of the one-child policy, we were told. That if you had more than one child and the government found out about it, they would take the child.

Many families, we understood, didn’t go do prenatal care, didn’t go to the community doctors, didn’t get checkups. They hid the pregnancy and the birth of the child. And as we understood, the boys meant more than the girls because the boys would stay and take care of the parents, and take a wife, and take care of the parents, as was the tradition in China. The girls would get married and go live with their husband and take care of his parents. That’s the understanding we had.

How long did the process take?

Well, we signed up and we paid fees, a lump sum of $16,000 or so, and there was adoption agency processing and travel arrangements, and I think we had—let’s see, we started in May or June, or maybe a little later, and you were in our arms in October, so the same year. [Me: Wow, fast.] Yeah. Some adoptions take years—my memory is that from the time we signed up to the time we had you was like five months. And we got sent pictures of you, in that little crib with your fist clenched. Some parents in the adoption group made copies [of the photos they received] and kept them in their wallet or kept them near, and looked at it or wrote stories.

So the orphanage sent you a photo of me?

Right. It gets to our adoption agency in Portland, but it gets sent from the orphanage—you know, there’s a lot of paperwork, there’s the language, there’s the time difference—it takes a long time to make this all happen. [The person who ran our adoption agency] was a very hard worker.

And so we got more and more information. We’re getting information about who our co-travelers are, we all had to construct a booklet and take a photo. There were only 6 families [in the adoption group]. We were the third group from the Portland adoption services to go. I think that’s right. So there was a description about us, about who we were, how old we were, what we were thinking about relating to children and so on and so forth. There were some false starts, you know; we heard the time [to leave] was close but we didn’t know exactly when, which makes sense. If you think about it from a practical standpoint, it’s a very complicated process. These are children in other countries, in another culture, that have to be old enough and healthy enough to be adopted, and have to be assigned to different prospective parents, and it’s all reviewed by the government. We have to have a home study, to make sure the home was stable. So that all went fine, and finally the time came that we would be flying to China.

What was the trip like?

We flew to Seattle a day before Halloween, 1995. You were born on May 5 1995, and the story is that you were left at the orphanage with maybe a note. And my memory of it was that you were three weeks old when you were brought to the orphanage. I don’t remember if you were left at the orphanage or at a police station. So we knew you were a girl, we knew your birthdate, we had your picture. We started getting excited. We had a travel plan, we flew to Seattle and [met with the other adoption groups].

The adoption agency designated me as the group’s, I don’t know, photographer, filmmaker, whatever, and they gave me an 8mm camera—which is old school now—and told me to take pictures. And videos. We met the other families, I was very excited—we were all very excited, the moms were really excited. The dads were, you know, more dad-like, and so we flew to Beijing. We got there around 11, 10 o’clock and night and got right on a plane and flew to Shanghai, and woke up at 7:30 in the morning on the day of the adoption.

Shanghai was incredible. There were still tractor-like things driving up and down the street, lots of Chinese people—there were very few foreigners. By 9:00 a.m. we were supposed to be on a bus to drive to Hangzhou, near West Lake. And it was that very next day we would be presented with our daughters. And oh, I should also say I had a [locksmith] shop [in Portland] now. I have five or six people working for me, they’re all excited, I tell all my customers, they’re excited, you know all my friends—they’re exited, and my mom was alive then—lots of people excited for me, and for us.

So we were in China, the food is different, we’re jetlagged, we’re excited, we’re apprehensive. We have breakfast, we’re loaded onto the bus. And we take a bus to Hangzhou, and we see all these cool places along the way, and stop at a couple places. I’m filming a lot, taking pictures. That’s my way of processing it all, documenting it. We’re going to the Chinese Overseas Hotel. That’s where we’re going to stay, and that’s where we’re going to be parents. We’re getting to know the other parents—we have a pretty good relationship with them. And we’re all concerned you know, anxious that the girls are healthy.

Tell me about the day of the adoption. 

Well, we get to the hotel and we come to a gate in the parking lot and the bus driver introduces us, and the staff are talking to each other, and we are treated like rockstars. There are many Chinese people outside the bus, and it’s like we’re basketball players or like Beyoncé’s back up group. They’re kind of mobbing the bus. It seemed like there were hundreds of people. And we get in, we check in, we go to our rooms. They tell us do not drink the water, make sure you’re drinking bottled water. Around noon or 1 o’clock they take us to a hallway/lobby on the 12th floor with purple chairs. And we’re joking around, making comments about how these are purple Barney chairs. Then around 4:30 on that day, we’re meandering around the lobby, looking down at the parking lot, and we see cars arriving, carrying little girls.

I think—you know, we’re all excited, apprehensive, we’ve heard all kinds of stories. I personally am concerned for the mothers. The birth mothers, the birth fathers, and who were they, were they a chance meeting, were they a married couple. What is going through their mind, where are their daughters. That is always a big thing for me, personally. And it kind of fits into my regular routine that, you know, I want to do a good job [of being a dad]. You know, not only are these our daughters, they’re someone else’s daughters. 

So. Up the elevator they’re coming, and sure enough, the elevator opens, 12th floor, Barney-purple chairs, and some of us are standing. People come out the elevator doors and the guardian is trying to figure out who belongs to who, Oliver [note: their guide] is there, and the children go to the right parents, and [laughs] first memory I have is Tina is seated with you, you’re wearing kind of a yellow and green sweater. You’re hot, you’re sweaty, you’re being inspected like a freshly picked apple from a tree. Tina takes your pants off, you’re really hot, you have a used diaper—the stickies were no longer working. It was a disposable diaper, but like maybe there was a shortage of them. So we put you in a new diaper. You were underweight, you weighed 5 kg, which is 11 lbs, and you were almost six months old.

Anyway, we got ahold of you and got introduced to you. There was lots of sadness and happiness. We hung out for a while, I don’t know how long, an hour or so, and we thanked the guides, and then I distinctly remember them saying okay it’s time for you guys to take the babies back to their rooms, take care of them, make sure they’re clean and warm and fed, don’t drink the water. We would feed you formula, of course.

There was a big difference for me, in both you and your sister’s adoptions, in seeing your picture and actually seeing you. Like, before it was real, but not as real as being handed a living breathing child. And now you’re in charge of this child. Personally, [the day of adoption] was the day of becoming a father. The pictures and the letters, when you’re back home and working and taking care of this and that—that was one thing. But there, now you were suddenly a parent. And it was a fabulous experience. It still is a fabulous experience. Even when you don’t send texts back to me. Make sure you get that in your writing.

Why did you choose to keep my Chinese/orphanage-given name?

We had several names in mind. I liked Dierdre, because I wanted to nickname you Deeders. Tina wanted Eleanor, maybe because of Eleanor Roosevelt? I’m not sure. But at our hotel we would meet up with two Chinese maids in the hallway and they would just be cooing all over you. They would grab your ears*, and they would ask your name and they would repeat it back to us: “Jin Mei, Jin Mei.” Hearing the Chinese women say your name—that was enough. And you know, keeping your name was keeping some of your heritage. To me it was special.

* Face reading in China is a traditional method of fortune-telling.

What else did you do in China?

Lots of things. We have a guide, and his American name is Oliver, I don’t remember his Chinese name. He’s competent in English and Chinese, and he’s young, probably in his 20s. He was great, and you know I chatted with him—why don’t you come to America, it’s so easy to do—and I didn’t realize they just didn’t let you out of China, 20 years ago, you have to have some pull and connections.

The agency made sure we had something to do every day. We'd walk the streets, buy some art. We went to the art center, we went on the lake, to a sacred place where there was incense, to a factory producing carpets, or drawings, and we’d have dinner in restaurants—and it was just fabulous. Thank you for reminding me. We would be out on the streets with you now, Tina has you in a blue snuggly, and I mean—we’re a chick magnet! There were men, but mostly women, coming up to us and asking as much as they could. I learned how to say “Meiguo” [America] and they were all very excited and gave us thumbs up, and they’d touch your ears, coo over you. It was real hot and humid. We’d be carrying you around in the snuggly, it’d be hot and humid, there’d be a lot of traffic in the street, honking and horns, and you would be unphased by it. I was surprised by it, but you were just smiling.

Did you need to do anything else before leaving?

We had to go to Canton, or Guangzhou, to finish the process. The American Embassy was there. We stayed in the Victory Hotel, not the White Swan, which was the one everyone was talking about, but it was totally fine. I remember we would be waiting in the lobby waiting for families to arrive, because we would all eat together, and there would be all kinds of things going on. People wouldn’t feel well. It was a big shock to become a parent, and maybe parenting skills were all at work, and we were still jetlagged, or maybe the child wasn’t sleeping well. But we’d go out to eat, and I’d have you at the dinner table, and the Chinese girls that were working [at the restaurant] would come over and gather around us and coo and ooh and awe at you. I would just take you out of the snuggly and hand you over to the staff, and they would literally take you and go back into the kitchen to show their coworkers, or family, or whoever. And they’d bring you back out and you’d still be all in one piece, of course, and back in the snuggly you’d go.

We have to visit the embassy two or three times. We met with people, and they’d interview us, making sure we were not too reckless or irresponsible, and photos were taken, and we signed some more documents. We do a little more shopping, we get taken places, eat at local places. We’re in a great location, alongside the Pearl River. We venture out and visit parks near the river. There were of people doing tai chi, older people, and they were the ones who would come over and say hi.

Eventually everything was finished. We get on the plane, and we fly from Canton back to Beijing. From Beijing we go back to Seattle, and from there we go back to Portland.

Would you ever go back to China?

Of course, it was a fabulous experience. I enjoyed every minute of it. I would go back in a heartbeat.