Asian Americans Adopt New Lives From the AsianWeek archives, take a look back three years ago at the families covered in this week's Main Feature.
	Adoption: The Long Road Ahead (Feature) APIA Leaders Strive to Help Life Go On (in National News) S.F. Schools' Enrollment Plan Still Being Debated (in Bay Area News) Surviving a Free-Market World (in Business) Art and Gut-Deep Emotions (in A&E) My First Protest (in Opinion)

By Ethen Lieser

Adoption brings change. It changes adoptive families. It changes the family who gave up the child. And most importantly, it changes the child. Sometimes it is heartbreaking. And sometimes it is a success story. No matter the outcome, adoption is an opportunity given to a child, a wish perhaps, for a better future.

In most cases, the child is adopted when he or she is a baby, when there will be no recollection of the actual circumstances. In other cases, there may be faint memories of gifts or balloons and teddy bears at airports.

But for many adoptees, there will come a time when they will investigate their roots. It is a sense of beginning, a start to one’s life. Especially in cases of Asian children adopted into white families, it is the want of staring into faces like their own.

In a documentary film by Korean adoptee Nathan Adolfson titled Passing Through, the protagonist delves into his deepest insecurities to come to terms with his displacement. A former film student at UCLA, Adolfson decides to return to his birth place through a study abroad program to try to gain a better understanding of who he is and what could have been if he had not been adopted.

During his stay in Korea, Adolfson reunites with his three biological siblings. During the reunion, discomfort and cultural barriers are apparent. Though biologically tied, Adolfson is still a stranger to his sister and two brothers, a case that is often true in adoption reunions.

“The No. 1 barrier is language,” says Barbara Kim, the director of adult programming of Asian Adult Adoptees of Washington in Bellevue, an organization made up of approximately 300 adoptees. “Almost none of the adoptees speak Korean and very few of the Korean families speak English. The other problem is [that] intellectually, you realize these people are biologically related to you, but there are no [emotional connections] because many don’t have memories of growing up with these people. So you don’t have that to build on.

“You are trying to build a relationship with total strangers when the only common thread you have with each other is that you are biologically related to these people.”

Kim, who is adopted herself, speaks from a first-hand perspective. She has retraced her roots and connected with her own biological father. Her next trip to Korea will be for his 70th birthday celebration. Other than the occasional visits, the relationship has not branched to deeper involvement.

“I can say that my father is in Korea, but my dad is in Nebraska,” she says. “We live such different lives that it is very hard to find a common ground.”

Dr. Bradford Woo, the San Francisco coordinator of Accept, an adoption and counseling center, says open lines of communication between parent and child is crucial. Photo by Ethen Lieser

After several unsuccessful bouts in trying to have a biological child, Masunaga and Alden of Sacramento took in Akemi when she was seven and half months old. Today, she is a healthy three-year-old. But before Akemi came into their lives, Masunaga and Alden tried domestic adoption, an option that is utilized in only one of 10 adoptions, says Dr. Bradford Woo, the San Francisco coordinator of Accept, an adoption and counseling center. It’s an experience Masuanga and Alden would like to forget. The biological mother took back her child after six weeks.

“There has been a lot of bad publicity in domestic adoptions because mothers change their minds,” Dr. Woo says. “And it’s very painful emotionally for the parents who are adopting because they pay money for the medical bills and expenses for the birth mother.”

But with the success of Akemi, the Masunaga-Alden family has filed the paperwork for their second child, who should arrive sometime next year. “We love her immensely — to the moon and back is how we explain it to her,” Masunaga says. Though Masunaga and Alden have only adopted from China, the family realizes potential problems for Akemi and her sibling in the future. Like many Asian adoptees who enter white families, Akemi could likely face similar problems when she gets older. Alden is white.

“She’s going to have to understand that her mom and dad are of different ethnic origins,” Masunaga says.

Questions have already surfaced when Alden is alone with Akemi. “Children have asked him questions if he is by himself with her because she doesn’t look Caucasian,” Masunaga says. “I guess it could be remotely possible that she’s half.”

Says Dr. Woo, “There is a layer of dealing with people, especially with white couples with a Chinese baby. People can sometimes make rude remarks, not to be rude, but just out of ignorance.”

Although it may not directly affect Masunaga because she is Japanese American, for many Chinese Americans, the adoption process is now quicker. On Aug. 1, the China Center of Adoption Affairs in Beijing implemented several significant new policies, which will give first priority to Chinese American couples and single Chinese American women. Single Chinese American males are excluded.

In addition, adoption applicants must be at least 30 years old, can only adopt one child at a time (with the exception of the adoption of twins or siblings living in the same welfare institute), and cannot have more than four children at the time they apply. To adopt a baby in this system will take only four-to-six months, instead of 12-to-18 months.

Waiting babies at Sanshui Children’s Welfare Institute in China. Photo courtesy of Accept

“China can do many more adoptions and do it faster, but the implemented quotas don’t allow it,” says Woo, whose adoption center does between 130-to-140 adoptions per year, including 50 to 60 Chinese adoptions. But that process leaves many children stuck in orphanages.

Due to overpopulation and the one-child law in China, the number of abandoned babies isn’t expected to decrease. And most of the abandoned are girls because traditionally “boys are more valuable,” Woo says.

Chinese American single mother Vicky Yee adopted Justine when she was eight months old. Though over three years have passed, Yee can still recall the emotional experience she had at Justine’s orphanage. Because of the preference to adopt babies, many toddlers are left behind. There were over 200 children at the orphanage, Yee says, but only ten families were there to adopt.

“It’s heartbreaking because even though [I] had [my] baby and we were leaving, the babies were waving bye-bye,” Yee says. “I wish I could have taken all of them home.”

Due to the eye-opening experience, the 45-year-old Yee questioned her perspective on life, saying she should have adopted sooner. With that, Yee has her sights on giving Justine the most normal American life possible, even though she doesn’t have a father. “She asks about her father sometimes,” she says. But at the same time, Yee doesn’t want Justine to forget her roots. A trip to China and her hometown is slated when Justine is older.

“First of all, I really want her to identify herself as being Chinese,” says Yee, who has relatives in Hong Kong. “I see a lot of opportunities to be closer to Asia.”

According to Dr. Woo, an open line of communication between parent and child is crucial. Taking children back to his or her homeland can be vital in understanding who they are.

“Sometimes, when Chinese couples adopted Chinese babies, they decided not to tell the child [that he or she was adopted], which used to be the traditional thing to do,” he says. “In the end, it misled the child.”

But times have changed, and parents are becoming more aware of the benefits of truth.

“The parents have definitely made an effort to stress Chinese culture, to learn more about it, and to make it part of their lives,” says Andrea Stawitcke, the director of Bay Area Adoption Services in Mountain View, an organization that has assisted in over 350 adoptions from China since 1991.

Such questions of identity come to light in Deann Borshay Liem’s award-winning documentary film, First Person Plural. Liem, who grew up in Fremont, was switched with another child at the last moment of her adoption process, which gave Liem an identity of a different child. Throughout her childhood, Liem accepted the fact that her Korean mother was dead, but through recurring dreams about her Korean family, Liem began an investigation into her true roots. And she found out, that indeed, her mother was very much alive.

Liem says, “I feel like I’ve been several different people in one life.”

On an emotional roller coaster, Liem takes her American parents along when she visits her biological mother in Korea. Liem’s American parents felt somewhat threatened throughout the ordeal, fearing that their daughter would be lost.

“The question a lot of adoptive parents have is that their child may want to leave them,” Woo says. “So it’s kind of threatening for them, and some are glad that there isn’t any information about the biological parents.

“Those people who are insecure as parents may be sending out mixed messages to their children and not encourage them to look. It can make them feel guilty, disloyal, sometimes in very subtle ways, which can create different problems.”

But at the end of the film, it was apparent that the obstacles of language and cultural differences were too large to overcome, although they still do have a long-distance relationship. With over 100,000 Korean adoptees in the United States today, this has become a common experience among many children reaching adulthood, and it brings forth an issue of parental privacy and the right of the child to his or her past.

“If you had a wonderful life and if the birth mother had a wonderful husband and marriage and a stable home, she wouldn’t have given up the kid,” says Kim, whose organization focuses on programs, support and mentoring service for adoptees and their adoptive families. “We need to respect their right if the parents want to maintain their privacy. They have a right to keep their past private.”

But according to Woo, if there are questions within the adoptee and there is a longing to know, he or she should at least try.

“It’s not always going to end up as a happy ending,” he says.

Says Kim, “For some adoptees, it is enough that they have found them. They know where they are, they got their questions answered, and then they don’t have any further need to maintain a relationship. And some have real close relationships. They go visit with them, even live with them, and sometimes, the Korean families move to America. So it all depends on the individual person.

“And if they searched and found nothing, then at least they tried and there is nothing more. Then they can go on with their lives.”

Ken Chu and Lisa Leung brought Lauren into their lives when she was six months old. They are in the process of adopting another girl. Photo by Ethen Lieser

“I had some mixed feelings about it when we first started,” Chu says. “I was afraid after seeing a lot of stuff in American movies about how kids are sort of isolated when they find out that they are adopted.”

Chu and Leung adopted Lauren when she was six months old because they both carry lupus, so if they had a biological baby, the condition could be passed on to the child. They are in the process of adopting a second child, who should arrive in January or February 2002. The couple is ready to bring Lauren to China when they pick up the child.

Like Masunaga-Alden and Yee, Chu and Leung are first-time parents with Lauren, and they understand learning the ins-and-outs of parenthood is the only thing they can do, and the rest will be dealt with when the time comes.

“When she is five, six or seven years old, she might yell, ‘I hate you!’ but it won’t be a big deal,” Leung says. “I did the same thing when I was that age.”

Says Masunaga, “The thing is that you’re not always going to know the right answers. You’re not always going to know everything. And you’re not always going to be perfect. But don’t let that discourage you because that happens to all parents. I might think I’m doing a bad job, but if you’re there to provide them with love and support, that’s really all they ask for.”

Reach Ethen Lieser at elieser@asianweek.com.