Chinas one-child policy led

to my adoption and a
more privileged life

Ricki Mudds family held out for a boy. Her brother, Wu Chao, is now living with her and
her American family so he can get some of the advantages of time spent in the United
States. (Stuart Isett/For The Washington Post)

By Ricki Mudd September 25

Ricki Mudd lives in SeaTac, Wash. Rickis Promise, a documentary based on her
reunion with her birth family, will be screened at the Library of Congresss James
Madison Memorial Building on Wednesday, Sept. 30, at 12 p.m.
So what time does your flight get into Sea-Tac? To me, it seemed a fairly basic
question. But it confused my brother, Wu Chao, who was texting me from China. At 19,
hed never been on an international flight before. He hadnt thought to ask about an

arrival time, an airline or a flight number. All he knew was when his plane was
supposed to leave Shanghai. I was going to have to figure this one out on my own.
Eventually, I got him to send me his ticket confirmation. It was written in Mandarin and
exceeded my basic understanding of the language, so I plugged it into Google
Translate, putting periods in odd places, as you have to, to trick it into recognizing
Chinese words. Aha! I was able to decipher Delta. I e-mailed customer service,
attached the confirmation notice and swore that I wasnt trying to get any identifying
information I just didnt want my brother to come through customs and find himself
alone. Finally, I had my answer: He was supposed to arrive at the Seattle airport on
Dec. 21 at 7:42 a.m.
Sometimes its odd to think that between us, Wu Chao is supposedly the privileged
child the boy preferred by Chinese society, the son my family held out for while I
was hidden and ultimately put up for adoption.
Im among the more than 100,000 children adopted from China by Western families
since the early 1990s. Most of us are girls, byproducts of Chinas one-child policy,
which compounded the cultural gender bias. Few of us know about the families we left
behind or, in many cases, who left us.
When I was 9, I got a letter from my birth parents. Since then, Ive made two trips to
China to get to know them and to answer questions that gnaw at so many adoptees:
What happened? Why didnt they want me? Or if they did want me, why am I here?
And what would my life have been like if I stayed?
The story I got from them is the one I imagine every adoptee longs to hear: My parents
never wanted to give me away. In fact, they desperately wanted to keep me. Yet Ive
learned not to be nostalgic about what might have been. The one-child policy brought
my family, and many Chinese families, immense pain. But by forcing my parents to
give me up, it also opened incredible opportunities for me opportunities so
irresistible that my brother, the child my parents kept, moved here from China last year
for the education and other advantages that time in America can provide.
For many adoptees, especially in the case of international adoptions, the search for
birth parents is frustrating and futile. Its pretty amazing I was able to find mine. It
almost didnt happen.
In 2000, when I was 7, I returned to China with my American parents to meet my new
sister, Rebecca, the third daughter they were adopting. During the trip, we visited the
orphanage in Quzhou where theyd met me, and we gave the staff medical supplies
and money collected from other adoptive families. Our donation prompted an
outpouring of goodwill. When my American parents pressed for information about my
origins, we received an invitation: Would we like to go see my foster family?
We drove for about an hour and a half along pitted roads until we reached a small

village deep in the mountains. There, we were introduced to Madam Fan, a woman
with close-cropped hair, wearing a navy top and pants reminiscent of a Mao suit. She
clearly recognized me. But she gave conflicting accounts of how Id come to her. First
she said she had found me at a train station. Then she revised the story: A family in a
neighboring town had asked her to care for me. We didnt know what to believe when,
after we returned to the United States, she wrote to say that, actually, I was her
daughters daughter and asked for $10,000 in support.
Somehow its unclear to me my birth parents in Quzhou heard that Madam Fan
had been exchanging letters with an American family. My birth parents would later tell
me that when they went to her village and approached her about it, she was evasive.
But her son slipped them an envelope with a U.S. address on it.

Ricki Mudd poses with her birth parents and brother during
her first trip to meet them in 2005. (Family photo/Courtesy of Ricki Mudd)

Two years after that trip to China, a letter marked with the wrong city but the correct
Zip code showed up at my house in suburban Seattle. Its tone sincere and
compassionate was convincing in a way that Madam Fans correspondence was
not. The couple claiming to be my birth parents didnt ask for anything. Instead, they
thanked my American parents for taking care of me and offered financial and other
support. The enclosed baby pictures confirmed that they were the real thing.
I was 12 when I met them for the first time or, at least, the first time that I remember.
At the airport, my birth mother clung to me, sobbing, like she would never let go of me
again. I was both excited and nervous to see them, but the reunion was somewhat
overwhelming. Not knowing Chinese, I didnt understand a lot of what was going on
around me.
I went back again at 18 and stayed for six weeks. This time, being a few years older
and having learned some conversational Mandarin, I was able to begin piecing
together my story. Some of the details remain hazy, and I may never know exactly
what happened. Ive found that the Chinese tend to be more comfortable than
Americans are with ambiguity.

When I was born on April 26, April 30 or May 5, 1993, depending on whom you ask
I was a disappointment to my family. They called me Mengting, combining words
meaning dream and pause. My fathers mother pressured my parents not to apply
for a birth certificate for me. Here, in a rural place like ours, a family cant do without a
son, she explained. It was common for families to abandon girls until they got a boy.
My parents say they resisted the pressure. My mom told me: I begged your dads
family to keep you. But your grandma said no. I said, Its fine to have a daughter. But
your grandma wouldnt budge.
My paternal grandmother held a lot of power in the family. So my parents agreed to try
for a boy, and meanwhile they hid me from the authorities.
For the first few years of my life, I was illegal and invisible carried in a grocery bag
outside, asked to stay silent upstairs at home, always in the dark. When I ran into the
courtyard once, my maternal grandmother slapped me. Everyone was petrified that I
would be discovered.
It was terrifying if you had an over-quota child, my father says now. If the
government knew, you would be in trouble. People would come to your house, remove
all your grains and do anything they could to you. And sometimes, theyd destroy your
house.
My mother recalls: Even for a new house, theyd get on the roof, rip it apart and
bulldoze the entire house. We had to keep moving and hiding. It was really painful for
us. We knew it wasnt a long-term solution.
I dont know how they came into contact with Madam Fan. My parents are vague
about it in their accounts. But they told me that sometime after Wu Chao was born,
they worked out a deal with her. She would raise me. Her brother, who had never
married, would adopt me. And my parents would send money to the Fans while
maintaining a relationship with me in secret.
One of my few memories of the time at Madam Fans is of being so hungry that I ate
chicken bones off a dirty floor. I wasnt there long, though. After only 100 days, I was
seized by birth-control officials Madam Fan maintains that someone in the village
tipped them off and put in an orphanage.
My father says he tried to get me out but was chased away. My mother blamed him for
not trying harder. At one point, the story goes, my mother was so distraught that she
stabbed him in the stomach with a knife, sending him to the emergency room and
ultimately contributing to their divorce.
I was upset when I learned about the one-child policy, introduced in 1979
andrelaxed only last year. And when I learned about the preference for boys, I bristled
at the idea of being a victim of blatant sexism. But talking to my birth family, I began to
see how, from a Chinese perspective, theres a certain logic to it. China has a lot of
farmland, and many families survival depends on the success of their farms, so boys

are valued for their utility when it comes to physical labor. Boys also provide insurance
that aging parents will be looked after, since a wife is understood to marry into her
husbands family, obligating her to care for her in-laws ahead of her own parents. And
boys are better positioned to carry on their familys honor, since only a man can pass
his surname on to the next generation. Of course, these traditions are themselves
rooted in a sort of sexism. But its not as simple as liking boys better than girls.
I guess you could say Ive made peace with the idea. Ive even reconciled with my
fathers mother. Id been afraid to meet her. But I was also curious about the person
who had had such outsize influence over the trajectory of my life. So, during my
extended stay, my dad and I drove to her village. Youre back home, she exclaimed,
leading me into a small house with crumbling stucco. She joked that I was chubbier
when she last saw me. Then she insisted on preparing a full table of food for me, to
welcome back the granddaughter she never wanted.
Rather than feeling rejected, I felt extremely fortunate when I glimpsed how much
harder life is for my family in China and would have been for me if Id stayed.
My home town, Quzhou, was once the southern home of Confucius. Theres a famous
temple and a scenic lake. But its also a dirty city with holes in the streets.
Although my parents are considered middle class, theyre just getting by. My dad lost
nearly all his money a few years ago investing in a soft-drink business that failed. Now
he gets up at 2 a.m. to deliver dairy products to breakfast stands and stores. He drives
the sort of truck in which, the Chinese say, everything makes a sound except the horn.
He lives in an unfinished house; dirt covers the floors, wires snake through jagged
cutouts in the walls.
My mom lives in a relatively nice apartment. But when I stayed with her, she had
recently gone through chemotherapy for cervical cancer, and, as I understand it,
China doesnt offer much of a social safety net when people arent able to work. She
had to rely on the support of her boyfriend.
And then there is Wu Chao. Our parents divorce seems to have been especially tough
on him. When I saw him in China, he was withdrawn, often looking at the ground. He
didnt like going outside or having friends over. He wasnt doing well in school. Our
mother blamed an addiction to video games. But she didnt make things easy for him.
Almost every day I was with them, she yelled at him about something. One time she
slapped him, and he ran off into the night. She admitted saying things like: If you dont
listen, Ill want your sister back. Id rather keep your sister, not you.
She says she knows it hurts him, but it makes her feel better and less sorry for what
happened to me.
Tears stream down my face and snot flows from my nose in the video my American
dad recorded in the hotel after collecting me from the orphanage. I was nearly 5 years
old. I look terrified. And I had a temper. I would bite people and spit food on the floor,

which made my adoptive parents wonder if theyd made a mistake. I also had horrible
nightmares: In my dreams, I saw loved ones killed.
But with the support of my new family Bill and Wendy Mudd, their five adult
children, and what would eventually be three of us adopted from China and two
daughters adopted from Vietnam I settled into my American life. My parents arent
wealthy, but theyre comfortable. My dad worked in the King County fire marshals
office and my mom was a cosmetologist at Macys before they launched a business
selling toys and collectibles on eBay. We live in a six-bedroom house in SeaTac, a
Seattle suburb five minutes from the airport. Theres a pool and a swing set out back.
One doctor predicted early on that I wouldnt do well in school. But, after being
diagnosed with and treated for ADHD, I defied expectations. At 18, I graduated from
high school and at the same time received an associates degree from a community
college. That gave me enough credits to start as a junior at the University of
Washington, where I went on a full scholarship and finished in two years. After college
I worked as a research assistant in the universitys psychiatry and behavioral sciences
department, and this week I start a two-year masters program there in humancentered design and engineering.
Im the most highly educated person in either of my families. Ive worked hard to make
both families proud.
My brothers flight arrived on time, and I was there to meet him. He had a carry-on and
two checked suitcases one full of gifts for my American family, along with a stuffed
panda and clothes for me.
My American parents had offered to host Wu Chao if he ever wanted to do a student
exchange. He didnt end up doing one in high school, but after he failed to score high
enough on his exams to get into a top-tier university in China, my birth family asked if
hosting was still a possibility. The thinking is that a degree from an American school
and, more important, a chance to learn English will help his job prospects when he
returns to China. This fall hell start an accounting course at a community college. My
Chinese parents are paying for his tuition. My American parents are covering
everything else.
Wu Chao didnt know much about the United States before arriving here. Do they
have rice in America? he wanted to know. He looked at me like I was crazy when I
told him a lot of Americans shower every day.
Living in the same house has allowed us to learn more about each other. When we
talk about what happened to me, he gets quiet, with a faraway look in his eyes, and
tells me he feels partly to blame. I try to reassure him that I dont hold any grudges. I
admit to feeling guilty that I wasnt there for him through our parents divorce and the
fights that came after. Weve made a pact to be there for each other going forward.
When Im successful in my job and make a lot of money, Ill be sure to come back and
visit you, he says.
Chinese society may have had room for only one of us. But our lives will be forever

intertwined.
ricki.mudd@yahoo.com
Read more from Outlook and follow our updates on Facebook and Twitter.
Posted by Thavam