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Yesterday I attended a private event. I am one of one hundred Hong Kong Adoptees that was put up for overseas adoption to families in the UK. The first organised group of trans-racially adopted children to the UK.
The BAAF have undertaken a research study, I was one of many full participants in this study (specific details unfortunately I cannot divulge as the research findings have not been fully analysed yet).
I spent the day and evening in the company of Hong Kong adoptees many of whom came from the same orphanage that I had. Looking at this sea of Chinese faces and the mixture of British regional accents at once gave me both pleasure and sadness.
We have all learned to exist. But for many of us we are still lost, abandoned and incomplete. Neither one thing nor the other. Mistrusted and more often than not rejected by the UK Chinese community because many of us do not speak Chinese. Un-recognised by the host country we walk in no man’s land. We are the ghosts in an already invisible community.
So I’m making an indie documentary about transracial adoption, cultural displacement and identity.
Here’s one of the reasons why.
Late 2011 I wrote and performed a one woman play. As part of a mini British-Chinese diasopra writer’s season; In The Mirror.
Hosted by the award winning New Diorama Theatre and in association with True Heart Theatre. This piece drew upon my experience as an adopted child growing up in conservative southeast England.
There Are Two Perfectly Good Me’s: One dead, the other unborn from Lucy Sheen on Vimeo.
Recorded by Ruben del Dios Armesto
© Lucy Lai-Tuen Chau Sheen January 2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED