Writing in seven days 2 day3 | I am actually not a northerner, I am a southern baby girl who was abandoned in China in the 1990s

I realized that I haven't shared that I was adopted, because I haven't known about it for a long time, and it's hard for adopted people to understand what "adopted" is, because usually adoptive families, I'll hide this.

In the 1990s, China strictly implemented the one-child policy. The clan-based society in the south heavily favored boys over girls. It was said that 30 million baby girls were unable to be born. I have also seen the news. Rolled straw mats were left in the countryside, drowned in toilets, or were They are then sold to orphanages, which will then connect with adoption agencies in the United States. You will find that some Asian women born in the 1990s in the United States were not immigrants, but were adopted into white families.

But how could something so dramatic happen to me.

I am a girl who has not changed my local accent after five years in Taipei. I am immediately recognized with my retroflex and Beijing accent when I say a word. Turns out to be a southerner?

In 2016, I was very anxiously preparing to take the entrance examination for the anthropology graduate school at Peking University, when I suddenly learned about my life experience.

At that time, I suffered from a stubborn skin disease due to the somatization of my anxiety disorder. I had to go to Peking University Hospital every week for treatment. For two days a week, I would lean against the hospital wall and read a book amidst the pain of treatment. At this time, I received a very inexplicable private message on Weibo.

A photo of me as a child, showing me in my own home.

The other party wrote: "You were actually adopted. Your parents never told you, right? We are your family. Mom and grandma have always missed you."

At that time, I didn’t feel shocked, but I was very suspicious. I thought this was a new type of fraud, so I got interested and replied:

"Really? I'm in the Internal Medicine Department of Peking University Hospital now. My kidney is broken. Will you give me a kidney?"

I thought I was being humorous, thinking that this would dissuade the liar, but the other party passed over her ID card and her father's ID card and said, "No matter what happens, we will stand with you."

This is a bit scary. I was still dubious and curious, and continued to see what the other party said. The other party called herself my "sister". I was the third daughter in the original "biological family". I was sent away because the family wanted to have a boy, and as expected, I got a younger brother.

As for me, my first reaction was to call the police and ask the police if there was a restraining order in this situation.

I feel that I am in a state of doubt, and a kind of certainty after seeing too many cases. If this is false, then this is the beginning of a very scary kind of harassment. They may have recognized the wrong person and will project a lot of emotions and needs. For me, I would never accept that. And if this is true, the fate of the abandoned third daughter in a clan society on the border of Jiangxi and Fujian is also to be sucked by this family. My feelings were not so clear at the time. I just felt that, whether it was true or not, I needed to protect myself.

As expected later, the "biological parents" family members came to me one after another, sent me private messages on Weibo, accused me of rape, harassed me, and even sent my photos, songs, and videos to their family WeChat group to show off and talk about the development of their third daughter. It's really good. Regardless of whether I am under great pressure to take the postgraduate entrance examination, he insists on seeing me, all kinds of moral kidnapping, and all kinds of crying and fighting. I am moved by myself and move the world. I was constantly harassed by these people, which led me to change my Weibo name.

That night, as usual, I finished my self-study in the teaching building of Peking University, went home, and had a warm dinner with my parents. My parents asked about my treatment, my father made my favorite soup, and my mother stewed it. I didn’t even think twice about the cabbage stewed pig she was used to. On the way back, I told her that I had called the police. My mother's reaction was a bit strange, saying that if you encounter strange people, just ignore them. Why call the police?

But my personality has always been one of those who see injustice on the road. When I encounter a group of swindlers on the road, I will call the police quickly and wait until the bad guys are brought to justice before leaving. My mother should know my character. How could I not call the police?

I remember it was winter at that time, and my family still lived in the courtyard of a factory in Nancheng. In the winter in Beijing, the conditions in the community were not that good, and the community had to rely on the community to burn its own boiler. My house was at the end of the pipeline, and the heating in the whole city was hot. When someone gets angry, I will be exposed to the cold, so I have to wear a cotton-padded jacket and cotton-padded shoes at home. My mother would also come to my bedside every night to press the corners of the quilt, and a heavy blanket would be placed on top of the quilt.

On this day, when she was covering her with a blanket, I suddenly blinked and asked: Mom, am I your biological child?

She didn't answer immediately. I suddenly felt like a thunderbolt struck me, the feeling of a huge shock penetrating my body.

My mom's eyes got wet and she called my dad into my room. The two of them were in tears, even a little helpless like children.

"If not, will you leave us?" My mother tried in a low voice.

I was furious: Of course not, you are my parents. It is their own decision not to raise me, and they bear their own responsibility.

At this moment, I, who was in my early twenties, became the adult of this family, comforting my parents who were at a loss for words: "Don't worry, tell me slowly what's going on."

"We originally planned to wait until you got married before telling you."

"Back then, there was an intermediary to contact you. They agreed not to disturb you for the rest of your life. How could this happen?"

"We couldn't have a baby at that time, so we kept seeing a doctor. In fact, it turned out that we were able to have a baby later, but your mother is already 37 years old."

"You came here by train at that time. Your mother and I went to see you and we felt that we were very special."

I learned that this was a consensual adoption, and I realized that everyone in my parents' family knew about it.

Before I knew I was an adopted child, I was the favored youngest granddaughter of two families.

My father comes from a large family. He is the thirteenth and the sixth son. My grandmother is a Manchu lady from the declining late Qing Dynasty. She married a wealthy Han businessman and became a child bride. I have never met my grandmother, but I heard that she still had her feet bound. I didn’t recognize the wealthy Han businessman family. My grandfather looked like an ordinary gentry. In the 1950s, the family fled from the Northeast to Beijing. They were defrauded of half of their property by family members. They also encountered the subsequent overthrow of the capitalist roaders and the confiscation of their property. , runs a small hotel. I heard from my eldest aunt that the Bai family used to be one of the richest people in Northeast China. They ran a car dealership and had their own Bai family compound. My father was born after the family declined in Beijing. Life was difficult at that time. He was born prematurely and was not very healthy. The family rolled him up in a straw mat and put him in a trash can in the alley. He was picked up by my second uncle. Sometimes at family gatherings, he would cry when he mentioned this incident. As the youngest son of a declining family, he had no ambitions, was humorous, and a bit lazy. He ended up doing errands in his second brother's company.

My mother grew up in a family of senior technicians. When she was a child, she lived in a Tongzilou in Beijing. It was a relatively thin building with a large kitchen shared on the first floor. You can still see traces of the common life of factory workers. My mother said that when I was a kid, I could secretly go to the factory and drink Arctic soda. My mother also said that her mother, my grandmother, died of tuberculosis at the age of 36. She is the youngest girl, with a younger brother. She was almost adopted as a daughter to her uncle. She was even given away, but her eldest sister wanted her back. When my mother was young, she was a beautiful and outstanding female textile factory worker. She was a model worker. She was vague about it, but at that time, being beautiful, hard-working, and outstanding made her experience some harassment. She fell in love with my dad because he was honest. But for their first date, they went to the Temple of Heaven and walked down the hundreds of steps in the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests. "Every time you go down the steps, your dad has an extra brother or sister. I finally found out that he has 11 brothers and sisters. With such a big family, when I walked down from the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, my legs felt weak.”

That night, after hearing the shocking news, I actually slept peacefully. I felt safe and loved like never before, and the connection between the three of us was deeper than anyone else in the world.

They all experienced the experience of being abandoned two hours later. When they met me, they must have been particularly loving and compassionate. Moreover, when I was a child, I was chubby and had big eyes. I was a really good-looking child. When I look at photos of my childhood, I want to adopt myself.

But what troubles me most is the repeated intrusion of my "biological family." My "biological brother" even registered a small account to follow the app where I posted covers. I felt that every corner of my life was being watched, shared, and dyed. During that time, I was preparing for the postgraduate entrance examination, so I could only numb my discomfort. To feel comfortable, I focused on studying first. My good friend at the time was a trainee lawyer and helped me negotiate with the family. Tell them to stop harassing me and tell them that I am preparing for a very important exam in my life.

I'm actually not sad about being abandoned when I was a child. In a patriarchal country, it's so normal to kill female infants and throw away the second and third girls. On the contrary, I feel disgusted by their so-called natural sense of blood connection. Blood being thicker than water is an illusion.

What made me sad at the time was that on the one hand, I was regarded as the object of their self-impression and I was their stage. On the other hand, no one actually cared about my state at the time. They suddenly wanted to get involved in my life again just like they abandoned me. .

I only feel intellectual sadness, and there is no real pain. It is a kind of ridicule and sympathy for the terrible patriarchal culture and the deformed people in it.

I have a little bit of your blood in my body, so am I yours? Why?

I had no idea about getting to know them or meeting them.

I had been studying anthropology for a while, and I had never seen any weird culture. According to the customs of some ethnic groups, when a family member dies, he must eat the other person's bone marrow mixed with rice, so that his soul can rest in peace. This is how you treat your family members with respect. I can accept both.

To me, this so-called life experience is like dealing with other people's affairs. I looked up information on the abandoned baby wave in the South in the 1990s and watched several documentaries about girls looking for relatives. I roughly understood the history, system, local customs, local pressures, basically everything. It is very clear from the documentary that most girls have the idea of ​​​​looking for relatives because they are not having a good life at this moment, and they often have a kind of longing, but when they see them, they are embarrassed and resentful.

There is no need to attach any emotional content to this kind of meeting, there is definitely a purpose. I want to forgive, I want to be happy, I want to do anything. They all have a plan. I am not someone who takes sleeping pills to sit back and relax.

I am an anthropology researcher with experience in fieldwork in southern cities, and I have seen sexual harassment and crimes in Jiangxi and Fujian countless times. I don’t need to meet these people to let go of these things.

You said that it has been more than 20 years since you made the decision as an adult when you threw it away, and now you want to make up for it. Where can anything be that cheap? Chinese people value forgiveness, and the shocking and hypocritical finale is about the betrayed woman bearing all the malice and harm.

I'm not that stupid.

Moreover, this sudden guilt seems a bit suspicious. I thought about three scenarios at the time:

1. Someone in the family is sick and missing organs

2. When something goes wrong in your family business, go to pray to God and pray to Buddha. People will say, have you done something wrong to someone? You should go and fulfill your wish.

3. The last brother born in the family is a loser. The family doesn’t know who else to rely on. Let’s see if the abandoned third daughter can rely on him.

I can cite many more examples, none of which are due to blood ties. They are using me completely as an object.

Why should girls have to bear this kind of people, this kind of culture, this kind of kidnapping?

My solution to this matter is to go directly to my lawyer friend and make it clear that you have nothing to do with me, don’t even think about seeing me, and don’t even think about disturbing me again. I don’t have any obligations to you. If you want to compensate me, I won’t either. unnecessary.

You are the ones who have nothing to do with me.

Moreover, the key point is that I have no specific resentment, because at that time the fertility policy, local violence, clan culture, and all aspects were at play. Everyone is a perpetrator and a victim. However, people have the right to be unreconciled. I don’t need to act as a lubricant for history. The wounds of history should remain. There should be no sutures.

This incident didn't cause me any harm, and I didn't want to take revenge or anything. I think indifference is the best answer. On the contrary, I feel that I am very lucky. I can study, receive education, and meet parents who particularly like girls. They can give me full support and freedom just like raising a boy. In the end, I naturally became a girl. As someone who cares about women’s rights, I cherish everything I’m thinking about right now.

And this incident made me understand even more that it is your education, your environment, your own persistence and hard work that shape you.

People don’t need to look for roots. People are taking root in themselves and flowing, facing, encountering and growing every day. This is especially true for women, because we don’t have walls to rely on climbing vines, we need to spiral upward in the void. People in China have no roots. We are just trying to build our home based on lies.

I later went for a genetic test to check for some genetic diseases. The moment I opened the genetic test report, I was a little shocked. After all, I thought I was a Manchu from the north since I was a child. I like to eat pasta and dry air. A Beijing girl with a bold and heroic attitude, but it was clearly written on the screen that she is Han from the South, with a little bit of Dai genes, plus the area is the border of Jiangxi and Fujian. Maybe I am a Hakka, or I should actually be Can you speak Hokkien?

And the most amazing thing is that I later failed the test with a very small score difference, and came to Taiwan to study anthropology the next year. Now, I have begun to come into contact with Hakka culture, language and music, and I have also come into contact with it through fieldwork. With folk beliefs related to Fujian, I lived a life like a parallel universe. Also, I have a stronger sense of identity in my advocacy of feminism, because this is simply the bounden duty of a southern baby girl who almost has no voice. Behind me are the lives of countless women who are half my size. Later, I shared this incident on Weibo and left thousands of comments. They were all women who had shared the same experience with me. We were scattered all over the world, exploring our own destiny, and doing what we could with the extra life given by God. Make your own choice.

I think this is the best anthropological education I have received. Genes do not determine who you are. It is cultural acquisition and recognition in interactive practice that bring each of us an extraordinary and unique life.