- Birth Family Search
CCI Birth Parent Searching and Reunion Group
This Facebook group aims to provide information, resources, and encouragement for adult Chinese adoptees who are seeking to find their birth family or are currently in reunion. They also have a confidential discussion forum for any questions or experiences that are wanting to be shared.
- Birth Family Search
Korean Adoptees searching for their birth families
This is a Facebook group for Korean adoptees who are searching for their birth families. It is open to all Korean adoptees to publish any photos and information about their adoption. There are also subgroups that are closed Facebook groups.
- Birth Family Search
China Family Search
China Family Search is a resource page for those in the Chinese adoption community interested in birth family searching. It offers information and resources for both the adoptive parent and the adoptee. This source would be a good starting point for Chinese adoptees interested in searching and their parent.
- Birth Family Search
Research-China
Research-China.org is an informational website detailing the sociopolitical circumstances of China starting from the causes of the One Child Policy up to recent happenings that affect adoption or are a direct cause of it. It features an adoptive father’s experience with his adoption and helping his daughters conduct a birth family search. This resource is for those interested in the politics behind adoption and its history.
- Birth Family Search
The Roots of Love
The Roots of Love is a Chinese adoptee family reunion project with multiple professional searchers on location. They offer free DNA testing to potential birth relatives and share birth relative contact info for free. This organization would best benefit Chinese adoptees actively searching for birth family.
- Birth Family Search
Korea Adoption Services
Korea Adoption Services’s “Searching for Adoptees” webpage is for birth families searching for their biological children. For adoptees searching for their birth families, there is an additional page called “Searching for Birth Family.” KAS offers post-adoption services, too. The posted story will be translated in Korean and get posted on a Family Search board of Korean webpage as well. This source can apply to and most benefit Korean adoptees or birth families who want to search for one another.
- Birth Family Search
Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in Boston
The Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in Boston’s Birth Family Search Process for Adoptee’s webpage gives steps and information on how to do a birth family search. Official paperwork in PDF format is available and a flow chart is also accessible to the public. This source can apply to and most benefit Korean adoptees who are interested in birth family search.
- Birth Family Search
International Child Search Alliance (ICSA)
The International Child Search Alliance (ICSA) is a “ all-volunteer international group of adoptees and adoptive parents founded in November 2018.” They offer reliable information and promote awareness in China of adoptees’ desire to know their birth families. This source applies to and most benefit Chinese adoptees who are interested in birth family search.
- Birth Family Search
DNA Testing for Asian Adoptees
From GenePeace DNA Consulting, this document serves as a guide on DNA testing. This document can apply to and most benefit those who are interested in exploring how “DNA can be used specifically for people of Asian ancestry, including Asian international adoptees and adoptees of mixed Asian heritage (domestic or internationally adopted). “ This guide is packed with information and suggests additional resources.
The Nanchang Project: “Chinese Adoptee DNA”
From the Nanchang Project facebook page, this infographic is a flow chart about Chinese adoptee DNA. This source can apply to and most benefit Chinese adoptees who are overwhelmed by all the places you can add DNA.
- Birth Family Search
Journey Across Forever – China Birth Parent Search Group
Journey Across Forever is a closed group for adoptive parents with children from China who are searching for birth parents, foster parents, finders, etc. There are networking resources, steps to take when searching, and other resources that provide information on the process.
- Birth Family Search
China DNA
China DNA is a group that does DNA analysis to help adoptees connect to their Chinese ancestry, genealogy, and heritage.
- Birth Family Search
China – Birthparent search
Birthparent Search is a Facebook group for Chinese adoptees, adoptive parents of Chinese adoptees, and other close relatives of Chinese adoptees. The goal of this group is to provide support and resources for finding birthparents in China.
- Birth Family Search
Family Ties: Chinese Adoptee Birth Family Search
Family Ties is a Facebook group that offers guidance and support for people searching for birth families in China. This is NOT an advocacy group and is a platform solely for searching, guidance, and support.
- Birth Family Search
A Family in China
An archive of a podcast that discusses the searching journey in multiple perspectives (adoptees, birth parents, & searchers). This source can apply to and most benefit those who are invested in learning more about this topic.
- Birth Family Search
Nikwi Hoogland
In an Instagram page in blog-like format, this source offers a personal look at an adoptee’s thoughts and experiences surrounding her identity and reunion experience. This source can apply to and most benefit adoptees who are wondering about an experience like this.
- Birth Family Search
“2018 I WENT TO CHINA TO SEARCH FOR MY BIRTH FAMILY * 2018年寻找中国亲生父母”
In this short youtube documentary (link to full TV documentary is in the description), an adoptee shares her experience of going to China to search for her birth family. She explains the controversies surrounding her choice and encourages others to search for their birth families.This source can apply to and most benefit adoptees who are wondering about an experience like this.
- Birth Family Search
Bao Bei Hui Jia
Bao Bei Hui Jia is a Chinese birth family searching site where you can post searching posters for free. You can provide information like birthday, missing time, family seeker characterization, possible memories, etc. This site is for Chinese adoptees or adoptive parents searching on behalf of their child.
- Birth Family Search
CCI (China’s Children International): Searching Resources
CCI’s Birth Parent Search and Reunion Resource Guide is a compilation of birth family searching resources for Chinese adoption community, offering various tips, strategies, platforms, etc. This source is for people of the Chinese adoption community interested in birth family searching.
- Birth Family Search
Nanchang Project
The Nanchang Project is a program dedicated to creating a community and resources (DNA testing, searching) for Chinese adoptees searching for birth family. They provide a space to connect, educate, and support the community. This resource best benefits Chinese adoptees searching for birth family or parents searching on behalf of their children
- Literature
All You Can Ever Know
Cheung is a Korean transracial adoptee from Oregon and was born severely premature. She grew up knowing her adoption story as a “comforting, prepackaged myth”. As she grew up, she began to face prejudice, find her Asian American identity and became more curious about her origins. In this memoir, Cheung tells of the “search for the people who gave her up, which coincided with the birth of her own child”. It is a “profound, moving chronicle of surprising connections and the repercussions of unearthing painful family secrets—vital reading for anyone who has ever struggled to figure out where they belong”.
- Literature
Palimpsest: Documents From a Korean Adoption
Sjöblom was adopted from Korea at two years old into a Swedish home. Throughout her childhood, she struggled to fit in and was constantly told to suppress her feelings of wanting to know more about her origins. Thus, she learned to bury the feelings of abandonment, like many other adoptees. In this illustrated memoir, “Sjöblom’s unaddressed feelings about her adoption come to a head when she is pregnant with her first child [and] she discovers a document containing the names of her biological parents”. She realizes “her own history may not match up with the story she’s been told her whole life: that she was an orphan without a background”. She ends up digging more into her background by traveling to Korea and the orphanage and finds out that the truth is “more complicated than the story she was told and struggled to believe”.
- Literature
Lucky Girl: A Memoir
In this true story, journalist Mei-Ling Hopgood, one of the first wave of Asian adoptees to arrive in America, “comes face to face with her past when her Chinese birth family suddenly requests a reunion after more than two decades. | In 1974, a baby girl from Taiwan arrived in America, the newly adopted child of a loving couple in Michigan”. Hopgood had an “all-American upbringing, never really identifying with her Asian roots or harboring a desire to uncover her ancestry”. | When Hopgood was in her twenties, her birth family showed up. They end up being “a boisterous, loving, bossy, complicated middle-class family who hound her daily life by phone, fax, and letter, in a language she doesn’t understand until she returns to Taiwan to meet them. As her sisters and parents pull her into their lives, claiming her as one of their own, the devastating secrets that still haunt this family begin to emerge. Spanning cultures and continents, Lucky Girl brings home a tale of joy and regret, hilarity, deep sadness, and great discovery as the author untangles the unlikely strands that formed her destiny”.
- Literature
A Single Square Picture: A Korean Adoptee’s Search for Her Roots
Kim Ji-yun, who grew up in Seoul, Korea soon became Catherine Jeanne Robinson, who had an American family and lived in Salt Lake City, Utah. Twenty years later, she returned to Seoul in search of her birth mother and found herself “an American outsider in her native land”. Katy was left “conflicted, shattered, exhilarated, and moved in ways she never imagined”. This book is “a personal odyssey that ascends to the universal”, and is “a story that will resonate with anyone who has ever questioned their place in the world — and had the courage to find the answers”.
- Media
Found (2021)
The story of three adopted Chinese-American teenage girls who discover they’re blood-related cousins on 23andMe. Their online meeting inspires the young women to confront the burning questions they have about their lost history and travel back to China.
- Media
Approved for Adoption (2012)
An animated film about a young Korean boy joining a Belgium family and his return to his birth country. The story follows him over the course of his life, and the times when his adoption influenced whether or not he felt accepted.
- Media
Somewhere Between (2011)
A documentary on four different teenage girls adopted from China under the One Child Policy who are currently living in the United States. The film explores their struggles with racism, identity formation, belonging, and race and gender.
- Birth Family Search
Twinsters (2015)
This documentary tells the true-life story of identical twin sisters separated at birth who discover each other online. They meet and confirm their identity with a DNA test, and they set out to explore aspects of their background together. One twin lives in the US while the other twin lives in France.
- Birth Family Search
Blue Bayou (2021)
A Korean-American man raised in the Louisiana bayou works hard to make ends meet for his family. However, he must confront ghosts of his past when he discovers he could be deported from the US and sent back to South Korea.
- Birth Family Search
International Child Search Alliance (ICSA)
ICSA is an all-volunteer international group of adoptees and adoptive parents offering multiple sources of information to help adoptees from China search for their birth families. Advice is given on ‘Getting Started’, ‘Hiring a Searcher’, ‘Birth Parents Searching for Children’, and more. There is also How-To-Guides that include DNA testing, using the app WeChat, Joining a Province Search, visiting the CCCWA, and more.
- Birth Family Search
Lion (2016)
The extraordinary birth search family based on a true story. When a little boy from India gets lost on a train and taken thousands of miles away from home gets adopted by an Australian couple. With his unforgettable memories, his determination, and the online technology Google Earth, 25 years later Saroo sets out to find his first home.
- Birth Family Search
Twin Sisters (2013)
This documentary film is happy and heartwarming about twin sisters who are adopted by two separate families who find their way back to each other via social media. This movie brings up topics such as growing, learning, understanding, and identity.
- Birth Family Search
First Person Plural (2000)
This documentary film tells the true story of an 8-year old girl who is adopted by an American family, only to discover years later that she has a birth family in Korea. The documentary explores themes of identity, race, assimilation, and birth family reunion.
- Birth Family Search
Searching for Go-Hyang (1998)
This film is about twin sisters who are adopted into the US but return back to Korea 14 years later in hopes of exploring and reconnecting with their homeland and roots. This story addresses issues of national identity and cross cultural adoption.
- Birth Family Search
aka DAN: Korean Adoption Documentary
Dan Matthews is a Korean adoptee who journeys back to Korea to reunite with his biological family, including a twin brother he never knew he had. He has all this documented and shared on his YouTube channel for his fans/followers to follow along to.
- Adoptee Groups
Adoptee Hub
“””Our mission is to connect, collaborate, and preserve adoption legacies through community, culture, and post-adoption services. Adoptees deserve the opportunity to know their history, have a sense of belonging, experience their birth culture, and have access to services in a supportive safe space throughout their adoption journey.”
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