For much of my childhood, teenage years, I was told that there was little to know about me – the real me, the Hong Kong me. I had to be content with that. My ancestry, my lineage, who my parents where, how I had come to be abandoned and why, these questions would forever be unanswered.
This year I went to collect my records from the agency that was formerly know as the NCH now known as Action For Children. I don’t know what I was expecting. Except not much.
I was taken in to a rather large room and passed a brown manila file about a fifth of an inch thick. That was the first shock. Nothing about me, nothing to know eh?
Page after page of information. Gold dust. Where I was abandoned, what my condition was. The radio and newspaper adverts that were run to try and find my parents.
Reports that even when I came over to this country I was already speaking my own language. That was the biggest kick in the teeth for me. I have lost count on how many times and methods that I have tried to learn Chinese. From that point on everything is a bit of a blur. Even now I haven’t fully taken everything in. The meeting went on without me really being there. I remember coming out and doing a piece to camera.
How many months on? I’m still trying to process that manila file. I’m sad, angry, annoyed but mainly sad.
Today we know that keeping secrets about adoption and not being open with the child is ultimately very damaging. Back in the late 50s early 60s they didn’t know or perhpas they just didn’t want to face yet another battery of “things” that might put off potential parents from adopting.
Lucy Sheen 2-10-2-11
4gottenadoptee 