Why I Search: An Ongoing Quest
Cassidy in the countryside of China. Copyright © The Nanchang Project
By Cassidy Sack (she/her)
Adoptee
Nanchang Project Co-Director
From Chongqing; Living in USA
Seven years ago, I began a personal journey to search for my biological family. Growing up, I felt disconnected from my heritage, my first language, and the Chinese American community. My only ties to China were eating Westernized Chinese food and being acquaintanced with two Chinese adoptees at school. As I was completing my undergraduate degree, I stumbled upon success stories of adoptees raised abroad who had miraculously located their relatives, whether their entire families in China or siblings adopted to other countries. Until then, I had never considered finding my own biological parents; for much of my life, I had even rejected my Chineseness. This instantly sparked my curiosity. I decided to try my first DNA test, leading me down a rabbit hole of learning how to search for my first family. I discovered Facebook groups dedicated to this journey and I received individualized guidance from some adoptive parents who had spent years searching for their children’s birth parents. They helped me set up a WeChat account, introduced me to their contacts in China, taught me the histories of international adoption and the so-called one-child policy, and walked me through creating a search poster for online distribution. With these supports, I began to build a personal network for my local search.
My desire to uncover answers about my past only intensified. I yearned to travel back to Chongqing and conduct an on-the-grounds search, but I faced a significant hurdle: I had no one to accompany me. At that time, I was in my early twenties, unable to speak Mandarin, and had never traveled outside the United States alone. The thought of navigating a foreign country by myself was terrifying. I continued my search from afar until a fellow adoptee from my original travel group, who happened to be from the same area and just a few months younger than me, agreed to join me. We booked our tickets to China for summer 2020.
Unfortunately, like many others, our plans were derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Waiting for China to reopen again was agonizing. Every day felt hopeless, like the opportunity to find my birth family was slipping away. I tried to keep my mind occupied with real life, work, and my family reunion volunteerism. In 2022, Erin and Faith, co-founders of the Nanchang Project (NCPT), offered me the position of Co-Director. Their dream had always been for Nanchang Project to become led by adult Chinese adoptees, and I was honored to help make that aspiration a reality. Since I joined in 2022, we have recruited over 50 Chinese adoptees as volunteers, and NCPT has successfully facilitated 26 reunions—80% of which occurred this year—achievements I am incredibly proud of. From NCPT’s founding in 2018 to the publication of this post in September 2024, our total count for DNA matches is 67.
At last, in early 2023, China announced its reopening to foreign tourists. I seized the opportunity to finally return to my homeland, and I did so solo. Drawing on the relationships I had built over previous years, I arranged to meet up with searchers and friends who would guide me. I spent a month in Chongqing, visiting key people who knew me from my early life, traversing the beautiful countryside, navigating authentic Chinese cuisine as a vegan, befriending locals moved by my story, and meeting birth families whose personal accounts were deeply impactful. Witnessing their pain and longing firsthand was unforgettable. The trip was both challenging and healing, providing me with insights into my origins and invaluable knowledge. Although I did not find my birth family, it was a life-changing and necessary experience.
In March 2024, Nanchang Project made its first search trip back to China since the pandemic. This time, we ventured beyond Jiangxi province. Erin and I settled on Hunan, a province underrepresented in community search efforts despite being one of the first to participate in China’s international adoption program. To our surprise, 250 Hunan adoptees signed up for our search posters! Our travel team included Erin and me, Hunan adoptee ambassadors Li and Emerald, our wonderful Search Partners, Wendy and Michael Zhu, and a Chinese TikTok influencer. We spent two weeks searching in five cities, tested over 20 families while in Hunan, located several foster families and one participant’s finder, accepted interviews from local media, and reunited three families—including Emerald with hers! The experience in Hunan far exceeded our expectations, and the kindness of the people we met was heartwarming.
Like my first trip to Chongqing, my visit to Hunan stirred up a multitude of emotions. Initially I attempted to compartmentalize my emotions, but it all inevitably caught up to me. I encountered many birth families: a birth father who met us at our hotel, a sister searching for her meimei, an elderly father who walked over an hour in the dark to find us, parents who lost several children to sickness and accidents, a family from neighboring Hubei province who drove down and insisted on treating us to lunch (we did find their daughter after this trip), and two families whose daughters had been stolen. Every encounter revealed hardships endured by the families—the daily agony of not knowing their child’s whereabouts, the extreme poverty they persevered through, and the glimmer of hope our efforts provided. The stories we heard were unimaginable, but it was a particular meeting at the end of the trip that broke me.
After persistent urging from a resident of an adjacent city, Erin and I changed our final itinerary to visit him hours away. What we found was a dedicated father who had been searching nearly thirty years for his daughter since the day they were separated, even visiting multiple orphanages and petitioning the government several times. He brought a briefcase filled with documents, years of text conversations, letters of support, and petitions, showcasing all his efforts—yet he still had no leads on his daughter. Overcome with emotion, he expressed his anger and despair, and I found myself unable to hold back my own tears. His unwavering determination to find his daughter and support other families was moving. He kept copies of our flyers to help spread the word about the 250 Hunan adoptees we were searching on behalf of. This humble father treated us to lunch and dinner, and expressed how he wished I were his daughter, given how closely our ages matched. Since returning to the United States, I have stayed in touch with him and he has submitted his full story for our upcoming book on search and reunion.
Increasingly, fellow adoptees have asked how I balance the weight of my work with Nanchang Project and my personal search. I share my experience with the Hunan birth father to illustrate what motivates me. While reunion is the ultimate goal for many searching adoptees, the reality is that success often hinges on luck. Several families have come forward to claim me, but none have matched me so far. I acknowledge that I may never locate my biological relatives in my lifetime, yet I find solace in helping reunite other families. It is a sincere privilege to connect with birth families and be entrusted with their most sensitive stories. If I can help one more family reunite, then that is one fewer family pondering their lost child’s fate late at night.
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