Discovering the Lost Mother

Clyde Xi

2/22/2026

Prologue

Last August, Jenna traced her origins through a DNA match and found her birth father. During their first video call—an awkward online reunion—I served as interpreter. What struck me most was his passivity: a quiet frailty edged with detachment. He spoke in halting fragments, rarely finishing a sentence.

When asked why he had abandoned her as an infant, his answer was flat and stripped of emotion: “Too many girls.”

Her birthday? He had forgotten it.

Had he ever given her a name? “No.”

What about her birth mother? She had left him long ago, taking Jenna’s siblings with her. No one knew where she had gone.

Still, Jenna clung to this fragile link with surprising tenderness and optimism. Her adoptive parents, steadfast in their support, encouraged her to go to China and meet him. The father’s family encouraged Jenna to visit during Chinese New Year, when uncles and cousins would return to the home village for the extended holiday.

Yet one question would not leave me: Was it possible, before she traveled, to locate her birth mother and siblings?

At my urging, Jin Yang, my search volunteer, joined forces with Officer Shang—the same officer who had matched Jenna’s DNA to her father. Through official channels and persistent effort, they began piecing together the fragmented trail of her birth mother’s life.

This is where that story begins.

Jenna Reunited with her Birth Father in Huazhou, Guangdong, during this Chinese New Year

★ ★ ★

Jenna is a 23-year-old adoptee from China who has spent nearly her entire life with her loving adoptive family in Alaska. But her story began long before she was born.

Her birth mother originally came from Yunnan. As a young woman, she was sold to a rural village in Huazhou, Guangdong, and given to a man in his mid-thirties named Chen Shuixing as his wife—for 3,000 yuan. The man who took the money called himself a “matchmaker.” In truth, he was a trafficker. In that impoverished countryside, where poverty pressed like a constant weight on the chest, such arrangements were not uncommon. For men with no means and no prospects, buying a wife was sometimes seen as the only way to build a family.

Before coming to Guangdong, she was Zhang Guangxian. The “matchmaker” changed her name to Li Zhengzhu to conceal her identity. People around her called her by this new name, and she had to accept it.

She had already endured one bad marriage before meeting Chen Shuixing. From that union, she had a son and a daughter and was pregnant with the third. Life in rural Yunnan was harsh and offered little hope. Many people migrated to Guangdong, a province known for its economic opportunities. Desperate to escape a loveless and impoverished marriage, she trusted someone who offered help. She left her hometown, bringing her two children while pregnant with the third, only to be unknowingly trapped in another marriage.

Most men would not accept another man’s children, especially a boy. Ironically, though many rural families longed for sons, they wanted only their own bloodline. We don’t know how the children were treated, but normally, they would not be accepted as their own. 

Life did not become easier. The older boy died in the village due to a drowning accident. 

Zhengzhu soon gave birth to the daughter from her previous marriage and later bore three more children with Chen Shuixing. Jenna was the third and youngest of those three—born into a family already stretched beyond its limits. There was nearly a child every year. By then, there were already six people crowded into a life defined by scarcity. There was simply too much poverty, too many mouths to feed.

The child born just before Jenna was a long-awaited boy. In rural China, having a son marked an important milestone. However, Shuixing wanted another son, as his older brother had two, and he did not want to appear lesser by comparison. But the next child was a girl. She was seen as unnecessary, burdensome, and dispensable.

Just hours after Jenna was born, Shuixing placed the newborn in a cardboard box and left her beside a roadside ditch near the main road out of the village. Inside the box was a note with her birth date and the name of the village.

At first, no one noticed the baby. Shuixing returned and moved the box closer to the road so it would be more easily seen.

The father’s side claimed it had been the mother’s decision to abandon the baby. The mother told a different story. She recalled being utterly exhausted from childbirth and falling asleep with the baby beside her. When she woke, the baby was gone. When she asked, Shuixing told her the baby had been taken away to a family in another village.

We do not know exactly what happened. But one thing is certain: Zhengzhu had no say. Having been previously married with children, coming from poverty and limited education, she occupied the lowest position in the Chen family hierarchy. Her mother-in-law treated her poorly and did not offer much help in caring for the children. 

Because of extreme poverty and strict enforcement of family-planning policies, she delivered all her children at home, alone. She cut the umbilical cords herself. She remembered that it was a cold January day. She chose to deliver Jenna in the kitchen for warmth from the stove; her other three children had been delivered upstairs in the washroom. Jenna’s umbilical cord had been wrapped around her neck, and Zhengzhu managed to unwind it and free her.

No one knows exactly how Jenna arrived at the Huazhou Orphanage. Her adoption papers later stated she was found at the entrance of the Great Wall Hotel. The note the father claimed he wrote was absent from her adoption documents.

Chen Shuixing was a man of limited means. He had little education, no special skills, was not physically strong, and spoke very little. He was also physically abusive, in part because Zhengzhu never accepted the marriage. He locked her in the bedroom. She tried to escape three times; each attempt failed. Shuixing’s sister once saw her climbing down from an upstairs window using a rope twisted from mosquito netting. At one point, Shuixing even used iron chains to restrain her.

Farming yielded almost nothing—barely enough to sustain the family. Shuixing took on odd jobs but earned very little. The family desperately needed income. Eventually, he allowed Zhengzhu to work at a nearby rubber factory. That decision changed everything.

The factory gave her access to the outside world. There, she met a man surnamed Yang. Through that connection, she found the opportunity—and the means—she had long waited for. Eight years after being sold into marriage, she escaped for the final time. She later recalled carrying two children and walking barefoot.

She and Yang later married and settled in his hometown, a remote area in northwestern Hunan Province, one thousand kilometers from Huazhou, Guangdong. Together they raised the four children she brought into the marriage—two from her first marriage and two from Chen Shuixing. She did not have additional children with Yang.

★ ★ ★

Just days before Jenna was to return to Huazhou during Chinese New Year, Officer Shang received a solid lead: her birth mother and siblings might be living in Zhijiang, Hunan.

Chinese New Year is a time when nearly everything slows down. The holiday begins about two weeks before Lunar New Year and continues nearly two weeks after. Few people work during that period. I had urged Officer Shang not to pause the investigation, and I remain deeply grateful that he continued.

Over the past six months, I had some conversations with Jenna and her American parents. They longed to meet her birth mother. I believe I would feel the same if Jenna were my own daughter.

Tomorrow, Jenna will take an eight-hour train ride to meet them.

I asked a volunteer friend whether Chen Shuixing might want to travel to Hunan as well. To my surprise, he liked the idea. My friend explained that his strongest desire was to see his son again. In his world, a son still carries more weight than a daughter.

Through Officer Shang, I carefully shared the idea with Zhengzhu’s family. Their response was cautious—not a refusal, but far from welcoming. They worried that the presence of two fathers would make the meeting uncomfortable.

And so, Jenna’s journey continues—across provinces, across years, across the complicated terrain of poverty, loss, and fragile hope.

The baby once left in a roadside box is now traveling back along the road of her beginnings -- and her belonging.

★ ★ ★

Author’s Notes

I have been following Jenna’s reunion trip and felt I was a part of their family. 

I can happily report that Jenna finally met with her birth mother and also her two siblings; the meetings were filled with both cheers and tears. She prepared a gift package for her mother which includes an album of photos that record her growing up, a stuffed toy that represents herself, a box of Alaska candies, a red-packet – following Chinese tradition, and a hand-written letter to her mother. This is she wrote:

Dear Mother, 

February 18, 2026

Since I was a young child, I have always wanted to meet you. I wanted to know what you looked like, what life was like for you, how you were doing, and so much more. I have had dreams of you and so many questions. I hoped that I would meet you one day but truly did not believe this would happen. I started officially searching in 2023 and it wasn’t until last year that I was given hope. 

I do not know the full story but I am sure that you have had to make difficult decisions throughout the years. I am so happy you are alive and well, knowing that you and the rest of the family have made a life for yourself. I understand that life was difficult especially with the one child policy that offered little choices. I want you to know that I have made peace with this and do not hold any grudges. My hope is that we can continue forward and that we will build a relationship.

Thank you for being willing to meet me. It means so much that I am reuniting with you and my family. It is a dream that I've had as a child and is finally happening. Thank you.

Jenna Walch

The Gift Package that Jenna Prepared for her Birth Mother

Jenna Reunited with her Birth Mother in Zhijiang, Hunan

Those children grew up. The eldest married and moved away and now rarely keeps in contact. The second daughter passed away from heart disease at the age of twenty. The third daughter married and has a child of her own. Her son grew into a handsome young man and is fiercely protective of his mother.

Neither the daughter nor the son knew of their sister’s Jenna’s existence until Officer Shang’s visit. It was also the first time they heard their mother’s story of loss and poverty. They felt deep heartache for her.

In a sense, their mother does not wish to revisit that period of total darkness and profound misery in her life.

Jenna Reunited with her Sister and Brother

This story is not only about reunion, but about survival. It is about a woman born into poverty, trafficked under the guise of marriage, stripped of her name, her freedom, and her voice, and forced to endure years of violence, deprivation, and impossible choices. In a time and place where women like her had little protection and even less power, she bore children alone, cut their umbilical cords with her own hands, and carried the weight of decisions shaped by forces far beyond her control. Her life was marked by suffering that many today can scarcely imagine. And yet she endured. The reunion of mother and daughter does not erase that past—but it stands as quiet testimony to the strength it took to survive it.

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We would like to acknowledge that the Nanchang Project helped Jenna register her DNA profile in the police reunion database, which ultimately led to her being matched with her birth father and biological family.

If you have similar needs, please visit the webpage of Nanchang Project (nanchangproject.com/national-database) to learn more about searching through DNA matches.