The Lost Daughters of China

May 1, 2000
After a 22-month-long adoptive "pregnancy" filled with heaps of paperwork, a U.S.-China liaison rang Evans and her husband one October evening in 1997 to say, "You have a daughter." According to her Chinese documents, the little girl was "found forsaken." While it is illegal to abandon babies in China, Evans reports that the number of "lost girls" is frighteningly high: "Babies, female babies, it seemed, were found everywhere, every day." Currently more than 18,000 Chinese-born children, predominantly girls, have been adopted by Americans. Evans's first trip to mainland China included the brief whirl of bureaucratic negotiations, sightseeing and eating in restaurants, leading up to her introduction to Kelly Xiao Yu, her year-old adopted daughter. Yet in the author's effort to understand the forces that shaped her daughter's situation, her lack of familiarity with China results in a heavy dependence on such sources as the writings of Confucius and Jasper Becker's 1997 book, Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine--and few fresh insights. Evans shines, however, when depicting her new daughter's immediate affection for her and, following their return to the U.S., for the family dog and Harley Davidson motorcycles. In these lovingly wrought sections, devoted to exploring the mysterious process of adoption itself and Evans's quick fall into love with her newly "found" daughter, her narrative is both perceptive and moving. Agent, Barbara Moulton.