I just finished reading Daughters of the Bamboo Grove. I could not put it down. A true story about twin sisters torn apart during China’s one-child policy, although through determination, they were eventually brought together as young adults.
I have read a handful of books about Chinese adoptions, where birth parents and children have found each other through non-profit organizations that collect information from 23andMe and the people on both sides of the equation, including some historical fiction and others’ memoirs. This book was more powerful than any of them combined.
Written by Barbara Demick, a journalist who worked in Beijing for the LA Times, looked under the hood to reveal how most of these adoptions happened. Many girls were not given up but stolen from their families by the Family Planning Office in China, given to a state orphanage that then received capital to ship these kids off to the United States and other countries.
The book is a window into China’s past. American are all about the future, although as our nation gets older we are paying some attention to history. Europeans are very connected to their past. China doesn’t want to know about what happened last week, they are all about sweeping everything under the carpet. After all China is a run as a dictatorship, almost cultlike, because of the countless attrocities the people still believe that the government did the right thing. It is mind-boggling.
After I finished the book, I watched the documentary, One Child Nation, which reveals the propaganda, the brainwashing, and the mindset. One woman performed over 60,000 abortions for the government when this policy was in effect, and many of these children were born alive, only to be killed and tossed in the garbage.
Not light Saturday reading or watching, but afterwards it gave me a better insight into the MAGA insanity happening in our country, including the reality of China. I will be thinking about this book and documentary for many months to come.
