The Daughter I Lost Returned Thirty-Two Years Later

As told by: Zhu Hefang

Interviewed by: Yang Jin

Transcribed, edited, translated by: Clyde Xi

May 1, 2026

Introduction

During the 2026 Lunar New Year, 62-year-old Zhu Hefang was reunited with her daughter Katie, who had traveled back from the United States. It was the first time the two had seen each other in thirty-two years.

Katie was Zhu Hefang’s fourth-born daughter. Shortly after her birth in 1994, because of poverty and China’s family-planning policies at the time, she was given away. After passing through several hands, she was eventually adopted by an American family.

Zhu Hefang’s husband came from deep poverty and had been shaped by traditional beliefs. In rural China of that era, the idea that “a family must have a son” was deeply ingrained. Determined to have a boy, the couple continued having children: their first five were daughters, and only the sixth child was finally a son. Under the policies of the time, this meant years spent hiding from authorities, fleeing from inspections, and living in fear—and, again and again, enduring the pain of giving away newborn daughters.

For nearly thirty years, Zhu Hefang never stopped searching. She paid for DNA tests herself, sought help from police, and often watched online reunion videos, wondering whether her daughter might also be looking for her somewhere. Recently, a nationwide DNA database match finally brought closure to a search that had stretched across oceans.

The following account is based on Zhu Hefang’s oral testimony, and we have preserved her original speaking style and content. We collected this account through two interviews with Hefang, and Katie participated in the first. Together, they reflected on years of hardship, longing, and separation—and the simple wish of the mother at the heart of their reunion: that Katie had lived a happy life.

"This year, with her home for the Lunar New Year, the holiday felt even more joyful."

1

My name is Zhu Hefang. I was born in 1964. My husband, Zhu Guangxing, was born in 1960. We live in Shangyang Village, in Chian Town, Yiwu, Zhejiang Province.

My mother had three daughters, and I was the middle child. I grew up in an ordinary rural family and finished junior high school. After graduation, I spent two years in fields at home before someone introduced me to a job in the city. I worked at construction sites, helping manage materials for the boss.

My husband and I didn’t really date. Our mothers arranged the match between us. He obeyed his mother in everything. We married in 1983.

We eventually had five daughters mainly because of my husband’s old-fashioned belief that we absolutely needed a son. We kept trying until the sixth child was finally a boy.

My husband had a difficult childhood. He never finished elementary school. His mother had been married three times. In her first marriage she had him and his older sister. In her second marriage she had another son and daughter. He didn’t return to live with his mother until he was thirteen years old. Poverty was the main reason that second marriage fell apart. Later, she married an electrician, and life became somewhat easier. They had another daughter together—Katie’s youngest aunt.

My husband could endure any hardship. He did every kind of labor imaginable: farming, herding cattle, raising pigs, driving tractors. To earn extra money, he even traveled to Jiangxi Province to chop firewood for other people.

Life back then was unbearably hard. Poor people were looked down upon. Everything we have now came from years of working little by little with our own hands.

2

Our eldest daughter was born in 1985 at the village clinic. She’s forty-two now. At first, her grandmother raised her. After her grandmother passed away, my mother took over.

Under the policy at the time, we had to wait five years before having another child. In 1990, we finally received permission for a second pregnancy. But we were terrified that family-planning officials would force me to undergo sterilization, so I didn’t dare give birth in a hospital. Instead, I delivered a baby girl at my aunt’s home.

Before the birth, we had already agreed: if the baby was a girl, we would give her away.

Through acquaintances, we found a family looking to adopt. The wife was remarried and already had three children from her previous marriage, so she was not allowed to have another child.

A few years ago, I finally found out where my second daughter was living and went to visit her. Later, when she built a house, we even gave her a red envelope gift.

Two years later, in 1992, I gave birth to my third daughter, again at my aunt’s house in Jinhua. At that point, we believed there was a very high chance we would be discovered and sterilized. If that happened, we would never be able to have more children and a son, and our eldest daughter would be the only one left at home.

After agonizing over it, we decided to keep this daughter.

But we were afraid someone from the village would come and seize the baby, so we secretly sent her to my husband’s aunt. We paid her to help find a family who could care for the child. That family wanted to adopt her permanently, but we couldn’t bear to let her go. After a few months, we brought her back ourselves.

I thought to myself: even if I’m sterilized now, at least we already have two children.

I began raising her myself while living away from the village. Because this third pregnancy violated the birth policy, we didn’t dare go home.

3

Katie was born in 1994.

At the time, we were working in Yiwu city. As my due date approached, we hid at our employer’s house on the outskirts of the city. The boss needed someone to tend vegetable plots, and there happened to be a place there where I could secretly give birth. Katie’s grandfather was also working there then. The woman of the house was especially kind.

Not long before Katie came back, that lady told me there was a child searching for her birth parents and asked if it might be our daughter. I said no—the ages were off by two years. By the time Katie returned this year, she had already passed away. Otherwise, she certainly would have come to see her.

Back then, we were terrified of being discovered. We hid indoors and hardly dared step outside. Even hearing a tractor at night frightened us. I didn’t dare go to a hospital. An elderly neighbor woman delivered the baby—she was already eighty years old.

Katie was born at four in the morning. Her father was out guarding watermelon fields overnight, and no one even called him back.

About a week after she was born, under pressure from her grandfather, we sent her to a family we had arranged beforehand. That night, the boss’s son drove a motorcycle while my husband sat on the back holding the baby as they carried her away under cover of darkness.

That family was relatively well-off and already had two boys. The wife desperately wanted a daughter, although the husband was less enthusiastic. Unfortunately, when they brought the baby over, the wife wasn’t home. A few days later, the village women’s affairs cadre, who also oversaw family-planning enforcement, took the baby to the Yiwu Welfare Institute.

When the wife returned and learned that a beautiful baby girl had been sent to the orphanage, she bought formula and went there hoping to bring the child home. But she was told she did not qualify to adopt because the family already had two children, both sons. She carried guilt over that for years.

My aunt lived in that village, and she was the one who told me the baby had been taken away. I rushed to the orphanage to ask about her, but they wouldn’t let me inside.

Later, after I became somewhat acquainted with the director, she agreed to help me look into it. They told me the baby had already been transferred to the Ningbo Welfare Institute.

The only reason the director in Yiwu helped me was because I had once cared for another little girl in the institute. Otherwise, she never would have looked into Katie’s case or revealed to me that she had been sent to Ningbo.

That little girl I foster-cared was about five years old—tiny, but beautiful and very bright. She still remembered her birth parents. She suffered from bowel and bladder incontinence, and perhaps her parents had abandoned her because they couldn’t manage her condition. I found a friend knowledgeable in traditional Chinese medicine and helped treat her with herbal remedies. Eventually, her bowel problems improved greatly and she gained control. Later, when she was seven, she was adopted by an American family. I hope her bladder condition was cured there too. She probably still remembers me. If she ever wanted to find me again, I think she could.

Afterward, I fostered another child from the institute as well.

Katie was born on June 8. According to the records at the Ningbo Welfare Institute, she was brought there on June 23, so she didn’t stay long at the Yiwu Orphanage. She was only six months old when she was adopted and taken to America.

4

When I gave birth to my fifth daughter, the wife of the family we worked for was a doctor at a clinic. I delivered the baby there with her help.

Because we were afraid the government would find out, we didn’t dare apply for a birth certificate.

I raised that daughter until she turned one. Then I became pregnant with my son, and we sent her to live with her aunt. Eventually, the aunt formally adopted her. Life there was very difficult for her.

After we brought our son home, the government punished us for violating the birth policy. Part of our house was torn down, our electricity was cut off, and neighbors pointed fingers at us and looked down on us. I couldn’t go out to earn money because I had to stay home caring for the children. Those were very hard years.

When my son was ten months old, I finally underwent sterilization surgery.

5

Our third daughter once went to Ningbo herself to ask about Katie, but the welfare institute refused to meet with her.

Nine years ago, I heard about a private company offering DNA testing. I paid for the test myself, hoping I might find my daughter through a database match, but nothing came of it. Back then, those databases were small and disconnected from one another.

In 2023, I asked the police for help accessing the orphanage records. They told me they couldn’t release them, but suggested that my husband and I submit DNA samples to the national database. We both did.

Later, Katie’s DNA matched with ours there.

At the time, I also contacted Officer Shang’s office, but somehow never received a reply. I often scrolled through his Douyin videos, watching other children reunite with their families, and I kept wondering: could my daughter also be searching for us?

More than five hundred children were adopted out from Yiwu.

6

I want to thank Katie’s American adoptive parents for raising her so well—she’s intelligent, beautiful, hardworking, kind-hearted, and accomplished. Everyone who meets her envies us.

I also want to thank all the volunteers who helped her find us.

This reunion during the Lunar New Year was the happiest moment of my life.

When we went to the market together, people said she looked exactly like me. She also brought back many photographs of herself from every stage of her life so we could see how she had grown up.

I told Katie to let go of the unhappiness of the past. Now she has two homes: one in America and one in China. I want her to live happily.

She is highly educated, and there is little we can do to help her. I wanted to give her some money to take back to America, but she refused.

All I want is for Katie to have a good life. I would never ask her to support us in old age.

Katie is now an independent radio producer. She once studied in China for four months on a scholarship from the U.S. government, attending school in Harbin and learning Chinese. At that time, she still didn’t know she was originally from Yiwu and had never visited the city before.

She is the only child of her adoptive parents. They once had a son, but he died young.

7

Of our five daughters, everyone except Katie is now married with children of their own.

Our third daughter was the only one who attended university. Because we raised her ourselves, my husband spoiled her. From high school through college, we spent a great deal of money on her education. She now works helping a business owner with livestream sales. She is divorced and raising two children on her own.

Our son dated his first girlfriend for six years. Now he has another girlfriend. He’s not young anymore, but he still isn’t in a hurry to get married. He is the only child who stayed with us.

My husband now works tending flowers and plants at a hotel. I make handicrafts at home to bring in a little extra income. Yiwu may be famous for its massive small-goods markets, but we live too far from the city, so we can only sell cheaply and earn much smaller profits.

And after giving birth to so many children, my health has suffered greatly.

Editor’s Note

We had the privilege of witnessing Katie’s joyful reunion with her birth mother. Their meeting, separated by decades and oceans, was deeply moving.

But not every family is so fortunate.

In countless silent corners of the world, many adoptees still live without answers:

Where did I come from?Why was I abandoned?Are they still alive?

And on the other side, many birth mothers may spend the rest of their lives carrying endless guilt and longing, never finding closure.

The following poem was written by an adoptive mother to the birth mother of her child, who has still not been found and is believed to be somewhere in Yangzhou. May it also offer comfort and remembrance to the many birth mothers and separated children who are still searching for one another.

“Promise”

This is a song for you.

In my dreams at night,

I see your face

and your gentle smile.

You are so far away,

yet it feels as though

you are right beside me.

I love you with all my heart

and long to know you soon.

I promise

that one day I will hold you in my arms again.

I promise

that I will always carry you in my heart.

Even if you remain far away,

I will never forget you,

because you will always live within me.

I look forward to the day

when I can finally meet you

and discover how much we resemble one another.

And when we finally embrace,

we will feel together

the love that drew us back to each other—

a love that will never end.

Though our lives were separated,

the countless invisible threads between us

have already bound our hearts together.

This relationship, woven from three lives

— two mothers and one daughter—

has already taken shape.

And this steadfast, overflowing love

will remain in my heart forever.

I promise.