Adoptees from China and Taiwan all end up well, and that's the problem

Adoption Adoptees from China and Taiwan suffer from the idea that they are part of an exemplary minority. “No one has looked into us.”

'No, no cheese cubes,' winks 26-year-old Nikwi Hoogland as she sets down a snack platter with prawn crackers and chocolate. The snacks brought by her guests are displayed on the picnic rug in the living room of her brand new single-family home in Veenendaal. The buffet is a mishmash of food, from sushi to sausage rolls, brownies, wraps and skewers with mozzarella and tomato.

Most praised is the onigiri – rice ball with filling – from Liam Austin. “Look”, demonstrates the 23-year-old from Hoofddorp, “and then you fold it in the seaweed sheet. And then you do like this, and like that, and then put some shimichi powder on it.”

"Oh my God!"

"Wow!"

"Do you have those Asian skills ?"

Tell me what you eat and I'll tell you who you are, a French philosopher once claimed. Well, success. What is your identity if you were abandoned by your parents as a baby, ended up in an orphanage and then teleported to the other end of the world, while everyone around you acted like it was the most normal thing?

“Just eat what you feel like,” says Hoogland. "Do not feel burdened." The company – three men and six women – comes from all over the country and has one similarity. They were all adopted from China or Taiwan in the 1990s – or around 2000 – because of the one-child policy, poverty or otherwise. They ended up with their contemporaries – 9,000 from China, 1,000 from Taiwan – in the Zeeland polder, on the Bible Belt, Brabant, Friesland, the Randstad, scattered everywhere. Sometimes they were the only 'other' in a white enclave. 'The Chinese' of the village. But then one who doesn't speak Chinese. Yes, no hao . Of the company, one can count to five — y?i, èr, s?an, sì, wu .

asian party

Most adoptees have now passed their twenties – the age at which more questions arise about roots, identity and place in society. A knowledge point was missing and so Hoogland, herself adopted as a nine-month-old baby from China, founded Adoptiepedia . The foundation started a year and a half ago on Instagram and is the first interest group for Chinese and Taiwanese adoptees in the Netherlands. Adoptiepedia is a source of information and organizes activities such as workshops, support groups and 'dumpling days' to get to know each other and increase acceptance. Hoogland has now spoken to about six hundred contemporaries and she regularly hears: “You are the first adoptee I ever speak to!”

Also read:The interview with René Hoksbergen, professor of adoption

Initially, the picnic was supposed to be in the park, but the weather was not cooperating, so the group settled down at Hoogland's new address. She has only lived there for four days and there are boxes everywhere. The corner sofa has just been removed from the plastic, against a wall is the piano on which she played Bach's preludes as a model child in Nederhorst den Berg – and now her own songs.

“I actually like that we are inside,” says Simone Sommers (27) from Uden, co-founder of the foundation. "They just don't see us walking around with such a flag outside."

“Yes, we all have a camera!”

“It is sometimes a bit uncomfortable at those Asian parties .”

"Is there seriously an Asian party?"

"Yes, it's nice. Not unlike a bar with white people.”

“Everyone is just a little smaller there.”

There is a mishmash of food on the picnic: rice balls, sushi, sausage rolls, wraps, chocolate and skewers with mozzarella and tomato.

Photo Daniel Niessen

They don't all know each other. Liam Austin suggests that everyone tell what they do in everyday life.

“Privacy consultant”, says Xinthia Krielaart (27). “GGZ-agoog”, says Simone Sommers, who also does volunteer work and provides informal care, studies and a family. Mei Hua Steenwinkel (24) is studying nursing, Guan Bouman is studying Enforcement, Supervision and Safety and Liam Austin is doing aerospace engineering.

Almost all of them end up well, and that is precisely the problem. “We are seen as a model minority, ” says Hoogland. “We show work ethic, ambition, and then it comes across to the outside world as: well, that's going well. No one has looked into us. But in the meantime, everything is going on.”

Just the questions people ask you. Ask for examples and the company will roll them out in one go. "Do you eat rice every day?" 'Do you speak Dutch?' "Do you like stew?" "Are you thankful you were adopted?"

Dealing with emptiness

Racism, too. A comment like “sambal bij” while walking down the street. "Poep Chinese." "Customers blame me for corona," says Twan van den Berg (17) from Heinenoord, who works at a drugstore.

If you had grown up in the Netherlands with Chinese parents, in a network full of Chinese, you might laugh at such comments at home. “But hey, my parents are white,” says Liam Austin. "They mean well, but they don't understand." He feels quite accepted, like most, and at the same time: “I feel like I don't really belong anywhere. I am just not everything.”

Also read:'The racism against the Chinese is a pimple that is now breaking open'

It is not for nothing that many adoptees are only concerned with roots questions after their twenties, says Hoogland. “Before that, we were working really hard to fit in. First with your adoptive family, then with society.” 'Blending' is what she calls it: doing your best to be accepted, adapting, acting like a chameleon. A survival technique. “If you blend in, you won't be rejected. You will not be abandoned, not again.”

Adhesion problems? Five out of nine raise their hands. The word 'relationships' sounds like “phew” from many mouths.

"You want to bond but you're so afraid of breaking up."

"And that's what happens, because you act like it out of fear."

Adoptees often suffer from psychological complaints above average. Stress, anger, anxiety and panic attacks. Some of this group also ended up in youth care, sometimes with wrong diagnoses because the label 'adoption' does not exist in mental health care.

It is by no means pure misery, Simone Sommers emphasizes. “I grew up in a nice family.” Xinthia Krielaart: “I should be bothered by something, but I often think: when will it come?” “You don't get adopted just like that,” says Liam Austin. “What would have become of me if I hadn't been adopted? Would I now have worked in an Apple factory?”

"Be honest, the whole idea of ??adoption is different," says Nikwi Hoogland. “The moment of giving up is a void that you have to deal with as a baby. Some orphanages were so understaffed that babies were lying on the floor. They started to cry and cry even louder, just to be heard. Or: they became silent. Very quiet. Because no one responded.” Introverted behavior is a well-known phenomenon among adoptees. Extroverted too.

Photo Daniel Niessen

Questionnaire from the adoption agency

In the Netherlands, most babies ended up with loving parents who meant well. They had taken a course on adoption, had undergone a screening, some of them picked up the child themselves at the orphanage. But did they really have an idea? Highland doubts it. "Some adoptive parents avoided complicated conversations, they wanted to see their child happy."

In one family, adoption was openly discussed, in others deliberately not. A child is a child, was often the well-intentioned thought.

Also read:A lot goes wrong under the 'varnish layer' of adoption

But as a result, problems were not always recognized. Not even by the government, the Commission of Inquiry into intercountry adoption noted in a critical report at the beginning of this year . Blinded by the notion of welfare – 'if you only save one' – from the 1960s on, abuses that appeared in the media, such as child trafficking in countries of origin and fraud with birth certificates, were ignored. And the government ignored the struggle in some of the adoptive families. Every form of aftercare, the committee wrote, was lacking. As a result of the report, all adoption procedures have been suspended.

“I can only remember a questionnaire,” says Xinthia Krielaart. “Once in a while, from the adoption agency.”

Everyone, at once: "A list of questions?"

"Weird, isn't it?" says Nikwi Hoogland. “You are put in the hands of strangers as a baby and after that no one asks you again if you are okay.”

“You know what I find bizarre”, says Simone Sommers, “my date of birth is not fixed. It's a guess, based on my fontanelles. I am two years older than I thought.”

'A child or a Fiat Punto'

Once young adults, some of the adoptees go in search of the biological parents. But adoption files, the commission of inquiry found, are by no means always complete and are sometimes falsified. That makes figuring out the past impossible for some.

Mei Hua Steenwinkel: “I wish I had a note.”

“I have my file”, says Twan van den Berg. "I'm really lucky in that area."

Liam Austin turns to the other men, Twan and Guan. “Do you not also have the question: why have I been relinquished, as a man? Technically, we were worth more in China, weren't we?”

"Some adoptees had a deviation, didn't they," says Simone Sommers. “Which one?” says Liam Austin. "Six toes?"

Guan Bouman: “I really have no idea”.

“If I look at it very black and white,” says Liam Austin, “I was just a commodity.”

“Adoption cost about 25,000 guilders.”

“A child or a Fiat Punto!”

“We all came through the delivery service.”

"With the plane!"

"UPS..."

Nikwi Hoogland was the only one who met her biological parents, through an agency that helps with the search. “It turned out that I had the same hairline as my biological mother.” It helped her understand who she is. “You find out that you are more than your surroundings.”

Not everyone feels the need. Simone Sommers: "What doesn't know doesn't hurt."

Do they hold a grudge against their biological parents? “I do have nightmares about that,” says one present.

“I just think it's unfair that they put me away,” says another. "Because I think: maybe they could have done more."

With tears in her eyes she is comforted from both sides. Liam Austin, shaking his head: "No, that was really not an easy choice."

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