By Cat McNeela and G. Tate
In 1979, Deng Xiaoping and his economic reformers introduced the “One-Child Policy” as a temporary measure. Thirty-five years later, the Communist party still clings to this policy (Jian). Not only has this affected the Chinese population, but in the United States it has affected the adopted children and their families.
Filmmaker, Linda Goldstein Knowlton of “Somewhere Between” interviewed four adopted Chinese teens who share their inner convictions about how they dwell on somewhere between cultures. Each teen cogently shared subtle thoughts and emotions about her path from China to the United States. This movie exemplifies how the girls are products of China’s “One-Child Policy”, and how there are social pressures that fueled parents’ quest for sons. Also, the movie dives into the psychology of being an immigrant in the American society. When the movie was released in 2011, Knowlton notes that of 127,500 adoptees from China, 80,000 lived in the United States when the film was produced.
The stories are rather painful, yet shared with a sense of somber acceptance. When they were young children in China, each girl was left behind in a depressing way. One girl was taken on a bus ride and told to wait for her cousin who never appeared. Another was left by her mother in a neighboring village; when her father went to look for her, she was already lost. During the film, they would show clips of birthday parties, and because they were abandoned, they did not know their real birthdays.
As transracial adoptees in white communities, the girls have felt that they never fully blended in. Throughout the movie, each girl called herself a “banana”—meaning yellow on the outside, white on the inside. Later, one of the girls refines this and says, “we are more like scrambled eggs”–the white and yellow mixed up.
At one point, they each ached to know more about the “why” questions of their lives. For example, why were they in an orphanage, why were they adopted, or what became of their birth families? The term “abandoned” was used frequently, which escalated varying emotions. Whenever insecurities or pain surfaced in their voices, it centered on questions of their origin.
- Knowlton, Linda. Somewhere Between. DVD. 2011
More Information at One Child Policy and Gender and Adoption
I had no idea that the one child policy is still affecting lives today. The movie sounds really interesting.