Book episode!

What happens when a policy meant to shape a nation reaches into the most intimate corners of a family’s life? Journalist Barbara Demick'sDaughters of the Bamboo Grove becomes a prism for a China where babies vanish, families fracture, and two identical lives grow up worlds apart. One twin speaks Mandarin, the other English. One hides in a bamboo grove; the other lands in Texas. Demick joins The Jacob Shapiro Show to explore the lives shaped, and misshaped, by China's restrictive one-child policy. Shapiro and Demick probe the emotional aftershocks of separation, the uneasy collision of two cultures when twins are reunited across continents, and the moral ambiguity of institutions that believed they were doing the right thing.

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Timestamps:

(00:00) - Introduction and Guest Introduction

(00:46) - Discussing the Book: Daughters of the Bamboo Grove

(02:04) - Barbara's Journey and Discoveries in China

(05:15) - The Impact of China's One-Child Policy

(11:28) - Adoption and Family Planning in China

(21:21) - Cultural and Demographic Shifts in China

(25:35) - Cultural Juxtaposition of Twins

(26:35) - Impact of COVID on US-China Relations

(27:35) - Adoption and Diplomatic Relations

(28:31) - Challenges for Chinese and American Families

(30:57) - Adoptees as Cultural Ambassadors

(32:02) - Religious Influences in Adoption

(34:42) - Economic Comparisons Between Families

(39:18) - Psychological Trauma of Adoptees

(45:13) -Author's Career and Future Projects

(50:27) - Upcoming Book on Berlin

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Referenced in the Show:

Barbara Demick - https://www.barbarademick.com/

Daughters of the Bamboo Grove - https://www.barbarademick.com/book/daughters-of-the-bamboo-grove/

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Jacob Shapiro Site: jacobshapiro.com

Jacob Shapiro LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jacob-l-s-a9337416

Jacob Twitter: x.com/JacobShap

Jacob Shapiro Substack: jashap.substack.com/subscribe

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The Jacob Shapiro Show is produced and edited by Audiographies LLC. More information at audiographies.com

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Jacob Shapiro is a speaker, consultant, author, and researcher covering global politics and affairs, economics, markets, technology, history, and culture. He speaks to audiences of all sizes around the world, helps global multinationals make strategic decisions about political risks and opportunities, and works directly with investors to grow and protect their assets in today’s volatile global environment. His insights help audiences across industries like finance, agriculture, and energy make sense of the world.

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Hello listeners.

Welcome to another episode of the Jacob Shapiro podcast.

Today I am joined by Barbara Deik.

She is the author of Daughters of the Bamboo Grow from China to America, a

true story of abduction, adoption, and separated twins, published in May, 2025.

it's a really wonderful read.

We'll have a link to it in the show notes.

And, Barbara was very generous with her time to tell us some of her

perspectives based on the reporting.

Listeners, if you ever want to get in touch about anything you hear on

this podcast or anything else, you can write to me at jacob@jacobshapiro.com.

Other than that's all the housekeeping I have.

Enjoy the episode.

Hope you're all keeping well.

Take care of the people that you love.

Cheers and see you out there.

Barbara, thank you for.

Coming on the podcast and more importantly, thank you for writing this

book, daughters of the Bamboo Grove.

We will have a link to it in the show notes and we'll say it

again, at the end of the podcast.

I think this book would've affected me no matter what

stage in my life that I read it.

But, as you can probably tell from the artwork behind my head,

I have two young daughters.

One is three, one is one, and I was reading, I actually devoured your book.

Devoured it on a set of flights from New Orleans to Missoula, Montana,

where I was earlier this week.

and was quite emotional, at the end of the flight just because

of everything that was in it.

And I thought you did a tremendous job of weaving what is a deeply

personal and emotional narrative with some of the larger.

Grander geopolitical one, child policy, China corruption,

international adoption trends.

So I want to commend you for that and also say, thanks for coming on the podcast.

It's great to have.

Okay.

thank you for those kind words.

I feel like we could stop here, but, let's go farther.

That's it.

I'll set you up easily.

I don't want you to step on the book because I want people to explore it more.

but tell us in your own words, what the book is about and

what really drove you to it.

Because I'm sure you have no shortage of stories that are.

Constantly tugging at your attention, but what made this one, one that you

decided you wanted to devote in a large, substantial portion of your

time and energy and life towards?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Th this book found me more than I found it.

I always tell people who are writing books, don't go looking for a book topic.

you have to.

Find one, one has to find you.

And in this case, I was the China correspondent for the LA Times

for many years, and I like to muck around in the countryside.

And I started, exploring rumors, which really were rumors at that stage

that during the one child policy, the very harshly enforced law set

of laws that required people to.

Reduce their family size.

Some officials in charge of enforcement were actually confiscating

babies who were too poor to pay the fines for excess births.

and this was like an incredible allegation because, I knew lots of

people who had adopted girls from China.

It was very popular among my cohort of friends, college friends.

Just my contemporaries.

and the narrative was that these girls had been abandoned.

the Chinese didn't want daughters, they wanted boys, so on and so forth.

So I started traveling around these very remote, very poor

parts of China, interviewing.

And I met a lot of people whose children were taken, forcibly or by trickery.

these were families who generally had.

Several children.

they lived in, as I said, really poor villages, very remote.

Many of them were illiterate or semi literate, and they

didn't have connections.

And you know this.

And one of the stories I heard was from, a mother and her 9-year-old

daughter who told me, this 9-year-old daughter had a twin sister.

And, The twin sister had been taken away when she was a toddler, and they

had no idea what happened to her.

They thought maybe she was, harvested for organs.

This was a village in Huon province, up a mountain, crossing a log bridge

to get there because the roads were out, very remote I interviewed them.

I took some photos, I took a video.

And, as I was leaving the mom, and the little girl, the little 9-year-old

girl said, oh, I wanna play with my sister, da dah, it's, I miss my twin.

We don't know where she is.

We don't know if she's alive.

So as I was leaving the, The mother said to me, yeah, come back and

visit sometime and bring my daughter.

And I was, these this conversation will come back to haunt me later.

And I was like, yeah, 'cause this just seemed impossible, They

had no idea where she was, but.

I'm, spoiling, but I did find her and should I say I, I

eventually did bring her back.

You did?

and it took a lot of, it looked, took a lot of time and I'm sure

we'll get into that as well.

One of the questions I wanted to ask you in the narrative of the story was

because it wasn't just that they had.

Twin daughters.

they ended up having, what was it, four children or, five children in the end?

This family, I think they

ended up with five.

But this was, a, to the extent that anybody's typical, a typical young couple,

they, got married, their firstborn was a girl, which they were happy about because

under a little loophole, if you were from a certain rural area and your first was

a girl, you could have a second baby.

So they had a second baby.

Again, a girl, and actually they were pretty happy.

this is an unusual family.

I shouldn't say they're typical.

The dad was really into having daughters like you, like daughters.

I related to that part deeply.

I was like, yes, give me all the girls.

That sounds great.

Yeah, he was very, he wasn't into boys, he was really

into girls and, but the, his father was trying again and there was.

I was saying try again, have another, so the wife got pregnant again.

Was convinced she was gonna have a boy because she was very big.

and she.

Didn't want, she was trying to avoid the family planning officials, who

would sometimes force abortions very late in the pregnancy.

So she was hiding in this bamboo grove behind their house.

Hence the name Daughters of the Bamboo Grove.

And, you can guess what happened.

She was very big because she was having twins and there were two more girls.

So they then had, four girls and they were, Knew they were in

big trouble, but they were not displeased about having daughters.

In fact, the dad kind of felt like it was like, a rebuke to his father

who was saying, you need a boy.

He was like, I have four girls and I'm really happy.

And, that's that.

But they were in trouble.

And it was a small village.

Twins were a novelty, so they tried to hide one twin by leaving her with an

aunt and uncle in the same, village.

I just keep on going?

no, And it didn't go particularly well.

Yeah,

no.

and, but the question I wanted to ask you was, 'cause I found

it hard to get into their heads with why did they keep having children?

I, it's impossible, I think, to do the cultural translation there, but I,

feel like if I was in their shoes and I was worried about the family planning

officials coming and stealing and I'm having to pay all these fines and they're

incredibly poor, but, they end up having the four girls and then I think a son,

they finally get a son as the fifth child, even after their, the, twin is kidnapped.

I, I, almost can't even put myself in their minds about the

level of resilience and optimism they had to have to keep going.

I don't know.

Do you have any sense of that?

Yeah.

I, these, are rural people and both the mother and the dad

came from big families, five, six kids.

That was the standard.

And, the, rules were always changing in China, during, Mao's early

years, it was like he was like.

The heroic mothers, the more people, the better.

As long as we have people, we will, we will succeed economically.

And then, it switched completely to, the key to modernization economic

success is, Population control.

This was, something from, that started really around the seventies.

If you remember the population bomb, maybe you're old enough for that one.

It was like, billions of people are gonna starve to death

because we have too many people.

And that those ideas had spread through, Through the US and Europe

and Asia and, everybody wanted to, the, UN and the, environmental groups

wanted to control the population.

So this was, the thing, a friend of mine who wrote a book about this called, it,

was like sideburns and bell bottoms.

It was the fashion of this era.

And I think in a way.

The Chinese families, these people were, not educated.

they were not connected, but they weren't stupid.

And I think they knew that this policy couldn't last.

there's a, saying, I've heard a lot from rural Chinese.

The, commun, the Chinese Communist Party is like the

weather, it changes day to day.

So they just kept going.

And, there, there was tremendous pressure to have.

To have a boy.

There's all sorts of, Chinese traditions that the boy has to, venerate the

ancestors at the cemetery, and that the mother can only be buried with

her husband if she's had a boy.

And I think the thing that, that was really.

Pushing Chinese to keep going for, a boy as the tradition was that the,

oldest son would take care of the parents in their old age, whereas

the daughters would marry out.

It has a fancy, anthropology, anthropological name, I think, Exogen.

I, need to check that.

But, the girls married out and they would take care of their husband's.

Parents.

So there, there was real, and they, had no social security net,

there was no retirement fund.

So that was, they needed, they felt like they needed the boy.

And a lot of people spoke about, wanting girl, but needing a boy.

As is this particular family, the father especially, it

was very into his daughters.

He's, a very, soft spoken.

Gentle person who, you know, I write in the book, I say if he was in

Scandinavia, he probably would've chosen to be the stay at home dad.

Taking care of his daughters rather than, being the man of the family.

But, doesn't smoke, doesn't drink, just, very gentle person.

Yeah, it's, a fascinating, yeah, but I take your

point though about the Chinese Communist Party being like the weather.

it's actually disjoint because, China has done a, true 180 on this, and just earlier

this year in July, China rolled out.

a countrywide childcare subsidy program.

You probably know this, offering up to, 10,000 yuan, annually per

child going all the way up to, even three children, until the age of 10.

and it's such a sharp juxtaposition.

Juxtaposition with the one child policy and how fervently China

went after the one child policy.

Yeah.

But they were just crazy about it.

there were more people working for what was euphemistically

called family planning.

Than, in the People's Liberation Army.

It's, sometimes when the Chinese wanna do something, they really do something.

And this was the key national policy and it was very, brutally enforced.

the, Family planning would, fine you several years salary and if

you couldn't pay, which these rural people couldn't pay, they

would start to demolish your house.

They would, confiscate farm animals and, then they started

confiscating children because,

the, same time international adoption had started up and international

adoption was very lucrative.

And there, there was a whole system here when, people adopted from China,

most of the money went through Beijing.

And to be honest, I never found any sign of real corruption

on the Beijing end of it.

But they were also supposed to make a cash contribution of $3,000

US new hundred dollars bills to the orphanage that raised.

Their, kid that fostered their child.

And these orphanages were government owned.

They were part of what were called social welfare institutes that

also took care of the disabled and the elderly who had no families.

And this, money, this $3,000 cash, which the families would carry,

in, in fanny packs to China.

This kept this system going because these orphanages were not well funded.

so there, there was a big incentive to, to get these kids for adoption.

And, so something else I need to explain here because, it wasn't like

all the kids who were, stolen, but.

After about roughly 2000, we had what, became to be known

as supply chain problems.

And, these Chinese adoptees had become like the adoptees of choice.

Internationally.

but especially in the US their, moms were healthy, good prenatal care.

Chinese rural women tend not to drink or smoke.

They're, much, much better than we are.

And,

there was this like narrative that the kids had been abandoned and

you were rescuing these babies.

And that was maybe true in the eighties and the nineties, but by 2000.

China, rural China had become much wealthier and people were just less

inclined to relinquish their daughters.

they would like this family, they would hide them, or they would,

try to raise the money, but they did not wanna give them up.

And China was wealthier and the status of women was.

Increasing.

And so, there just weren't enough kids to be adopted and the,

demand from the US was enormous.

everybody wanted to adopt, a Chinese girl.

This was the, the model minority, if they were going to adopt a child of

another race, Chinese seemed acceptable.

it was just a whole, number of factors.

Yeah.

The, numbers are staggering.

Can you share with the listeners what, types of numbers we're talking

about in terms of how many Chinese children were eventually adopted

in the United States or other

Western?

it was 160,000 worldwide, about half to the US and it really peaked in 2005,

and this is as it was peaking in 2005.

they were just running out of adopt healthy, adoptable babies and, the,

supply had dwindled and the Chinese government, ended international

adoption officially last year.

But really over the last decade or so, most of the kids were adopt, who are

sent out for adoption were special needs.

As in

Yeah, I'm.

what percentage, I know I'm gonna start asking you some impossible questions.

So it's fine if this is just, your gut instinct based on, some

of the reporting that you did.

But what percentage of that figure do you think were children who

were abandoned, who were legitimate adoptions versus, and I know

corruption is the wrong word for it.

It's when, you impose a top down policy like the one child policy and you don't

put in the policy frameworks around things like orphanages, markets will react.

They will do things to try and fill in the gaps, and you make,

you turn individuals into monsters because they're part of a system.

So I'm not trying to go after anyone.

Yeah.

that's exactly, the case because

when you're, I just have to say this, as somebody who's written, a number

of books, I've been a journalist.

When you're, trying to tell a story, that's a commercially saleable story.

You always want good versus evil.

But when you get closer to the story and see the nuance, you

can understand what happened.

Because, I met some of the people in family planning,

and they, believed they were doing good, and there, there was, of

course when there was this much cash floating around, there was corruption,

there was people who pocketed it.

But a lot of that money really did go into supporting.

These, very poorly funded orphanages.

There was a whole, wave in China in these years of, institutions

should be self-sufficient.

They should find ways to make money.

And these orphanages were under, tremendous pressure.

But in answer to your, question about how many were, taken.

A guy I worked with, Brian Sty, who's investigated this a lot.

He's an adoptive father, guessed 10%, mostly after 2000.

But I think the answer is more nuanced because there were various

degrees of coercion and the policy itself, the one child policy.

Was coercive and like I like to say, talking about these cases, not that

the girls were abandoned, but they were relinquished because I think without the

one child policy, very few of these girls would've ended up in the adoption market.

Yeah, sure.

the narrative is true.

Chinese families did prefer boys, and they did sometimes abandon girls, but.

By the time this started in the eighties and the nineties,

it wasn't happening that much.

So you could say anywhere from 10% to 90% because I've, interviewed families

and I've seen your documentaries about families who are heartbroken about girls.

They relinquished.

Heartbroken and many of them have started looking for their daughters, celebrating

their birthdays and, just felt like.

They had very little choice.

Yeah.

some of the most poignant moments in, the book to me were, when

you finally reunite the twins.

and it's not that simple.

'cause in your head you're thinking, oh, great.

Like they're gonna hug, they're gonna play, everything's gonna be great.

But they literally can't speak the same language, and their cultural

context is completely different.

And they have no frame of reference for who the other is.

Or how the other lived and just like basic things, are getting lost in translation.

Yeah.

And I can't imagine,

I liked the story of the two families because I had been, I had

been covering China and Asia for a very long time, but I thought through these

two families you could see a lot of.

The misunderstandings and cultural miscues between China and the US just

through the two families and how they, their expectations about each other.

So to me it felt a really fresh take on this larger geopolitical story.

Yeah.

it certainly is, and it, makes it more human.

I even wrote down that the, the first words of the mother to her long lost

daughter is eat, before it gets cold.

just like, a dagger to the heart.

Yeah.

A Chinese, friend of mine who read that line said, oh, that's so Chinese.

Yeah.

You know that So Chinese, but there's there's Chinese mothers and

Jewish mothers and there's just, the families themselves are very.

Very revealing.

I may, be trying to say, make this sound more serious, because stories about

separated identical twins are like, an old trope, like the parent trap or something.

But there, there's really, I think, a lot of, depth in these families.

Yeah, ba. This is another impossible question I'm gonna ask you, but

based on your experience on the ground in China and studying the one child policy

and interacting with these families, I mentioned it, you have China now pivoting

completely where they're trying to encourage people to have more children.

they're not calling it the three child policy, but they might as

well call it the three child policy.

Do you think that there will be.

A shift in, in the same way that China was so zealous in enforcing the one

child policy, that there will be a shift towards the other side that will see a

massive demographic explosion in China.

Do you think that's just not possible because of urbanization versus,

rural environments and more and more rural folks coming into the cities?

Like I, I'm just curious how you think like the next stage is

gonna be based on what we just,

it's not.

You can see already it's not happening and, demographers have, predicted

that China's population will be cut in half by the end of this century.

the population is shrinking and it's very funny to me because, not funny

ha, but the, these family planning officials who, they were an army.

Unto themselves, they're still employed, but instead of, penalizing families

for having, too many kids, they're offering them incentives, rice cookers,

water bottles, sometimes cash to have more kids, but it's not happening.

and really what, the story in China is urbanization.

When people are living in.

800 square foot apartments with one bedroom.

I'm talking to you since you used a lid in Brooklyn.

it's, they're just not inclined to have, five, six kids.

And, the other current problem is that there aren't enough women of

Childbearing age because a lot of them were adopted, aborted, given up.

there's, there was a tremendous gender imbalance.

you need women in their twenties and thirties to produce more Chinese babies,

and there's not enough of those women.

And the women, that I know a lot of Chinese women of that.

Age are not really keen to have a lot of babies.

one, one side effect of the one child policy is that only children, only

girls, especially in the urban areas, born to educated parents, became, got

a considerable investment in their own education and they're, not interested

in, being part of this, child producing.

cohort.

So they, a lot of women are like, at most, I'll have one.

Yeah.

it's incredible.

I was reading a, report on Chinua about some of these new subsidies that they're

offering for people to have more children.

And the article talks about how, they interview this, local family that

says, oh, and when the third child.

Was born, quote unquote community workers came to our home to remind

us to apply for the birth subsidy.

So we go from the family planning office coming to snatch away the

children to, Hey, we need you to sign up for the birth subsidy.

It's just absolutely incredible how much things have shifted.

But, but to your point, and it, it

shifted very quickly.

I'm just gonna say please, so this, the, people I know in this village, the aunt

and uncles have grandchildren and one of their kids had a third child around.

When was it Maybe, 2018.

And they were still fined, it was just, it, shifted so quickly.

It's this 180 degree turn, and it's, I, don't know what the

family planning people think.

It's, I don't know.

We talk too much about Orwell, but it's, remember even they say we've

always been at war with East Asia, they've rewritten the history.

We've always wanted more babies.

it's, a kind of a craziness.

Yeah, no, it's, absolutely crazy.

it's also ironic when you think about, the institutions of China

needing to be self-sufficient.

This is supposed to be a communist country.

You would think that the government would be there to support sort

of these spots, but it doesn't.

but also to your point, the, one of the twins, the Chinese twin that

you're talking about, correct me if I'm wrong, it sounded like she didn't.

Necessarily want to have kids or wasn't thinking about having kids

anytime soon, whereas the girl who was, taken to the United States and

settled here, already, has children.

So that was also a very interesting cultural juxta.

no, the twin who's in the United States doesn't have

children, but she is married.

Oh, I'm sorry.

She's married.

She wants, and so

she's, she's thinking about it, but she's not gonna do it.

But it's true, the, Chinese twin is not really keen on getting

married young or having children.

And her, there are two older sisters in that family who both married

very young and had kids and The Chinese twin is like, Nope, not me.

I wanna, travel and have a life.

Yeah, it's an incredible, cultural juxtaposition there.

An another thing I wanted to ask you about, because you get into it at the end

of the book, because it, feels as momentum is building and as technology is allowing

more and more people to find their birth parents or for birth parents to find

their children in the United States with things like 23 and Me and easier access

to DNA testing, we get the pandemic and a lot of maybe these people to people

ties that might've had, Maybe positive, constructive people to people relations

between the United States and China.

They just go away in, in part because of the COVID shutdown.

And it, doesn't seem like that has quite come back yet, but obviously you had to,

send this to the publisher and, print it.

has your view changed on that at all?

Do you have.

Any more optimism that maybe China is opening up again and that maybe, the

US and China, I know it's November 20th for all we know in three weeks

we'll be back onto the trade war.

But do you have any sense that maybe things are opening up again?

Maybe?

I, do.

I do actually.

And, I was talking to, a friend who covers, the diplomatic scene for the

New York Times and, we're both China people and he, was saying, he thinks,

people say, oh, Trump dislikes China.

Trump hates China, blah, blah, blah.

And that's really not true.

I think Trump admires China.

He sees it as a, strategic rival.

But I do see the last couple of months a bit of loosening, China has been

very anxious to get American tourists.

And if anybody's listening and they wanna go to China, this is a really

good time to get a 10 year visa and go.

not if you're a journalist, but if you're a regular person, prices are low.

they're very welcoming.

they do want visitors.

Esther, the American twin could certainly go back to China.

For Chinese coming to the US this is more difficult.

It's very difficult to get, a visa to the US right now, and it's difficult for

a lot of Chinese even to get a passport.

Ang j is a teacher.

I don't know if she's classified, as a, a vital employee, but she

might not be able to get a Chinese passport, or at least not very easily.

We had done this reunion in 2019 and the plan was really for, Schwan jet to

come to the US the following year, but that was 2020 and everything shut down.

But it, I see, a slight reopening and I see, Chinese adoptees going to China, and

there's some, groups that are bringing adoptees to look for their birth families.

So there, there is a reopening.

This might be wishful thinking on my part, and I know

the numbers are relatively small.

China's a billion plus people in the United States, hundreds

of millions of people.

Do you think there's any chance that you know, the people to people

ties that are being forged by these 160,000 adoptees that, that.

do you think that will have any impact on the US China relationship?

Do you think that it will do anything positive or constructive, or do you

think it's just gonna be isolated to this, the dustbin of history?

And I know that China has reasons to cover this up.

to your point about Orwell, they need to insist that nothing ever went wrong.

This is not, the case.

And I know they would, you say it's not a good time for journalists to

go into China, probably not a good time for you to go to China, I would

suspect, with, with all the writing that you've done out there about this.

am I being too wishful thinking there?

You think?

Oh, I think that's definitely true of me.

I, my, my book, this book was not as sensitive, but the

book before was about Tibet.

but I think, I do think things will improve.

I, look, I'm not, you can tell I'm not, I, see very clearly all the flaws of the

Chinese system, but I'm not a China hawk.

I think you can tell from.

What I'm saying, and I think, I think, I hope things will open up maybe

not for journalists during COVID.

A lot of, a lot of American journalists lost their visas and I don't see

that coming back very quickly.

But the adoptees are going, they're getting visas and,

no, I think, from the outset when they started.

International adoption.

there was a sense that these adoptees would be like cultural ambassadors.

some of the, Some of the adoptees would joke, self deprecatingly, like

we were like the pandas, but sending these like ridiculously cute little

girls to the US was thought, to be something that would enhance relations.

And, it could, Among the Jo adoptees, it's, some are very into going to

China, learning the language and looking for family or, seeking their roots.

Others really avoid anything to do with China and are very angry, but.

Yeah,

hope, hope, spring Eternal.

but, that actually goes back to a question I actually wanted to ask you about Esther.

'cause one of the things that you mentioned about her was that the

family that adopted her, was were, they were evangelical Christians.

It seemed like faith was a big part of, there were their worldview and

obviously that's controversial in China and out of place, with China.

what was Esther's sort of relationship?

With religion.

And was that at all a roadblock when she was meeting her Chinese family?

Did that even come up at all?

I was just curious if, religion was a stumbling block there at all.

it's a very interesting question.

e Esther's parents who were both, older and had children from previous

marriages, had adult children from previous marriages really adopted for,

almost missionary reasons they didn't.

Need to have, more kids, but they, Marsha, the mother especially, really

felt like her heart was breaking over these abandoned girls and she wanted to.

Save them.

And she, she had started briefly, an NGO called Adopt the World

that was going to help other Christian families adopt from China.

And in fact, that's how I, that's how I found Herp because she

had posted some things online.

and something that, that.

I wasn't aware of until I started working on this.

It's like an, awful lot of international adoption has been through Christian

agencies and the religious community.

from, my perspective as a journalist living in New York now, my friends

who adopted were mostly professional women in their, late thirties or early

forties who had put off childbearing.

Found themselves unable to get pregnant.

Very secular, but the larger number were adopted into Christian communities.

but Marsha, the mom, the adoptive mom who lives in, in rural

Texas, was really, good about.

Coming around.

She, when she found out that her daughter had been taken from the birth family, she

was very anxious to make amends and she came with us, to this reunion when this

rural Chinese family and she, we had a lot of meals there, really delicious meals.

I could talk about food for hours.

But, she, she said Grace before every meal, and I think the Chinese

family was somewhat mystified, but they weren't offended by it.

I also wanted to ask you, The part of the thing around

the Chinese family that we're talking about here is that they were, a rural

family and they were relatively poor.

but you, note towards the end of the book that you're not

actually sure today, whether the American family is wealthier than.

The Chinese family that maybe there has been enough growth that the Chinese

family might actually just like on a per capita level or on a wealth basis,

actually have exactly more wealth, than the family in Texas that had, and I,

don't know, I thought that was such a great microcosm of what's happening Yeah.

at a global economic relationship

with us.

Because, there's this assumption that the adoptees are so lucky, they're

so lucky to be Americans and in many cases they are and they feel lucky.

And, I would say.

Most of the adoptees I know, love their adoptive parents as well as any

kid gets along with their parents.

Your kids are still young, it's always challenging.

Oh,

don't worry.

my, my 3-year-old was already bossing me around this morning

and not happy when I told her to hold my hands crossing the street.

but the adoptees I know really resent this, this.

Suggestion that they're the lucky girls.

The lucky girls, they just hate that because, really they weren't lucky.

They were abandoned.

They had very early trauma and some are not, don't fit in well with their adoptive

families and some who fit in well with their adoptive families still, feel like.

There, there's a lot of, there's a lot of trauma, psychological trauma

associated with adoption, really a lot.

And, in terms of the, the money hard, it's hard to say.

When I went to China with the families in 2019, we had this reunion.

I felt like.

The Chinese family was better off the American family.

the, it was a very, American story of falling out of the middle class.

The, adoptive father who had a, a good job got sick,

it was just the usual, not quite enough health insurance,

not quite enough childcare.

The adoptive mother, who also had a good job, had to retire early to take care of.

Her adoptive daughters, she actually had two, besides the twin and,

was living in a manufactured home.

not, in poverty, really with, almost no disposable income.

Whereas the Chinese family had built this, huge house and.

Their village.

And every member of the family was, going out and doing, various kinds

of migrant work, bringing in cash, so they had, they had this house,

they had, a fair amount of land.

they didn't own it because this is a communist country, they had access to it.

and, The chin, the adopted daughters were homeschooled and at that

time didn't have much of a career.

That was 2019.

I think a lot has changed since then.

Things go up and down.

The Chinese economy has had a very tough time recovering from the COVID.

Lockdowns more than the US and Esther, the adoptee, happens to be.

An extremely talented photographer who's, really making a good living

as a. As a wedding photographer,

she's really just very talented and very entrepreneurial.

And you could say that's, American, Texas can do attitude.

whereas the, Chinese twin, had some setbacks.

Her, school closed during COVID.

Xi Jinping has had a sort of a campaign against private kindergartens.

For various political reasons.

I think their, roles may have.

Their, relative positions of wealth may have changed.

Interesting.

you were you were mentioning about the trauma that, especially for, the adoptees.

and I wanted to ask, 'cause obviously Esther is one of the

adoptees that you know, more.

and I, it seems to me that there's, trauma.

If you think that you were abandoned by your birth family, there's also trauma.

If you think you were taken, and for many of these children who are now

becoming adults, it seems like they have to shift their self narrative

from I was abandoned by my family to, I was taken from my family forcibly.

I can't even imagine.

the psychological work that you have to do to cope with either one of those

traumas and then having to switch from, it's not this trauma, it's this trauma

and what that does for self definition.

so I just wanted, wondered if you could talk a little bit about that Yeah.

And what your experience is with how they're dealing with this.

'cause it just seems,

I have a case that's really directly addresses, This question.

It's a young woman named Mia Griffin, who's introduced in

the last chapter of the book.

The last chapter of the book is an epilogue about, adoptees looking

for, birth parents and birth parents looking for adoptees.

This young woman, who lives in Indiana and is, in, graduate

school studying psychology,

was adopted also from who non province, really grew up with

a lot of abandonment issues.

she would,

really had her adoptive parents.

wonderful, loving people, but really had a lot of like, why was I thrown out

like garbage and, had just, all, these issues associated with abandonment.

And then it turned out she wasn't abandoned.

And this is, I hope, not too complicated a story, but when I was doing this

series of stories, I had, I had interviewed, this was like 2009.

I had interviewed various Chinese parents who were Looking for kids who were taken.

And one was a, also a rural man in Huon Province who, who lost his

daughter through trickery when he and his wife were having marital issues.

And he had been, he had really spent, all his money and all his, time

looking for this missing daughter.

He had a son too, from this marriage.

he, had put his, he had through somebody else had put his DNA in 23.

And me, somebody had said, look for your daughter in the us she might be here.

And sure enough, so, this Mia Griffin in Indiana a few years

ago, she had done a 23 and me test.

basically to find out if there was any cancer in the family.

And, she logged on and there was a message saying, this man Xi shares 49.9% of your

DNA probably or relationship father.

And she was just blown away, blown, completely blown away.

And she.

she actually contacted me 'cause I had written a bit about this issue and I went

out to, Indiana earlier this year and we talked to this man on a WeChat video

call and she was just blown away because this family, she thought abandoned her.

Her father had spent 20 years looking for her.

Had lost.

Had sold every little possession he had, gave up his job.

He had never stopped looking for her.

she's had to switch gears from oh my God, I was abandoned to, what do I owe

my biological family who are very, poor And, when I'm, she's not wealthy, she's

a graduate student, but she's, Living a, fairly middle class life in Indiana.

So it, yeah, it, was just, I, actually need to check in with her, but it's, it

was just a dramatic change of perspective.

I, wrote about her in the New Yorker.

You can find the story online at ranon May.

like I elaborated on what was in the book,

again, for these, adoptees, and they're all, as I said, they're all, like any

population, they have very diverse views.

Some want to find their biological families, some don't.

Esther the twin has a, a slightly older sister, raised in the same household

who's also adopted from China, and she's You before you look, you've

gotta think about what doors you want to open and what needs you have.

And she said, for me, I don't have that need.

And you know these stories, like even my book, it's it's not a fairytale.

Esther, Esther was very lucky her.

Biological family was intact and, really was understanding and

respectful that she was American.

it was really, the reunion was beautiful.

Perfect.

But they're not always like that.

there's some Chinese families who do expect money from their.

Their adopted kids or some kind of filial support or just embarrassed by it.

And sometimes it's great and sometimes it's not great.

And these, adoptees in the US they're, in Americans.

They don't remember, anything before their adoption.

with our last sort of five to 10 minutes together, obviously

I wanted to put the focus on your new book 'cause I think it's wonderful.

But you've written, other books in the past.

You've written about, Sarajevo and North Korea.

You are, you mentioned Tibet and why you might not be a first on the Chinese

Communist Party's invitation list.

so I wanted to take a step back from the narrative that you just wrote, and ask,

how does this fit into your career so far?

What do you think is gonna, what is gonna attract your attention next?

And, what do you think are the threads that sort of tie these projects

together from your old worldview?

Because I'm, sure that they're all linked, in interesting

ways, at least in your mind.

Yeah.

something you said when we first started that I, actually made me happy is that

you, read the book quickly on a flight.

my, my books are for nonfiction relatively short.

I write in a. I don't have a lot of flowery description.

I have a lot of plot, but I really write them for people who, wanna

learn about the world, but don't have time to read an academic tome.

And I was talking to somebody actually last night about this one

is you can really learn a lot about China, on, a three hour flight.

'cause it's not a hugely long book.

But, I, love nonfiction.

I think the best stories are true.

I read a lot of fiction too, but I think like you can, you can have an enjoyable

immersive read and be educating yourself.

So that's how I felt about the other books, the North Korea book,

which came out in 2009, 2010.

Nothing to Envy is,

in a town in North Korea, it's one, it's, it a microcosm this one city

and it follows, these lovers through the pandemic and some other people.

There's six, six main characters and, sometimes on Amazon reviews

I think, oh, we like this novel.

Or it's it's all true.

it was fact check.

Part of it was excerpt the New Yorker, down to whether something

was a pumpkin or a squash.

Like every fact was checked.

But it's, a true story.

And what I wanted, what I wanted from that book was to, bring

American or other readers who didn't.

I really know anything about North Korea or career at all.

Like I wanted to give them a book they could read and understand where they

could learn a lot and appreciate that the North Korean people are not these,

blood thirsty automatons who wanna bomb the us.

I just, I wanted them to bring them inside North Korea.

the Tibet book is very similar.

In a way, it's set in a village in Tibet that has been a, center of resistance

to the Chinese Communist Party.

And it's all based on real people.

It's their story.

And I've gotta say like most books about Tibet by foreigners are like,

oh, my spiritual journey, how I like, discovered Buddhism, blah, blah, blah.

I, respect that.

I feel a lot, I respect Buddhism, but.

It's about them.

It's about Tibetans.

It's not about me.

It's not even about the Dalai Lama.

It's about, what it's like to be a Tibetan in the 21st century,

like living on the edge of, or within this modern, wealthy China.

And do you, continue to fight them?

Do you join them?

And it's about Tibetans and there's been very little Tibetan,

There have been very little writing about Tibet that's been written

from inside Tibet or inside the Tibetan Plateau, in recent years.

'cause it's hard to go there and hard to report.

And th this book is a little bit different 'cause it's, those

two books are like microcosms.

but it's also, I wanted to bring leaders, really into rural China.

Understand, and there's a lot of journalists who cover China, or

at least who did, and they write about like the ordinary people.

And the ordinary people are usually like, I don't know, bus

drivers, teachers, factory workers.

But these are really the ordinary people, they're like out of,

the next generation out of.

Pearl bucks the good Earth.

And yeah, I just, I feel like people, everybody is busy.

if you're gonna read, you should learn something.

So

it's a, novel concept.

No, I, would put your book on China right up there with Peter Kessler's,

best stuff too, which is also a great window into, some of the Fantastic,

I,

yeah.

I love his new book about teaching.

It's.

Yeah, just, great.

what, I know it's, I shouldn't ask you this question 'cause you're

still, in the weeds with this book.

you did a book, you did a book event just last night.

What's next?

Do you have a sense of what's next or are you gonna take a break?

No, actually I've started on what's next

and it's completely different.

It's a book that's, set in Berlin, and Berlin was actually

my first foreign posting.

just, I went to Berlin.

A few years after reunification.

and this goes back to my, my, my microcosm approach.

It's one street in Berlin.

It's happens to be a street that I've lived on.

And it's,

it's, the we're entitled of the book is nine Blocks a hundred Years.

And it goes from what was, Germans call the, golden twenties through

the, descent into fascism, genocide, war, destruction, then division.

this street happens to have been divided during the Berlin

Ball years, reunification.

And then you have this, reemergence in Berlin of this like hip,

multicultural, wonderful Berlin, but.

Embattled again, so that, that's the book.

Sounds great.

How are you?

2000,

probably 27 or 28.

How much time are you gonna spend in Berlin working on that?

Is it, are you gonna be there for six months or?

I, I've gone, in and out, I've been teaching in Berlin.

I, am co-teacher in this, really great.

Journalism class on how to be a foreign correspondent runs three

weeks over the summer in Berlin.

And, so I've, tagged on a couple of weeks each time, and I was just there for a

month and I'll probably go back next year.

So I, I go.

Go in and out.

That's great.

we look forward to it.

And, the book, again, listeners will have this in the show notes, but it's

Daughters of the Bamboo Grove from China to America, A true story, of abduction.

And Barbara, thank you so much for coming on the show.

I, hope that you'll come on when you're done with your Berlin book

and we'll talk about that one.

Yes, thanks so much.

Really appreciate it.