Nanchang Project Helps Chinese Adoptees Search For Heritage

As May draws to a close, so does AAPI Heritage Month — a time to celebrate culture, identity, and history. But for adoptees like myself, especially intercountry and transracial adoptees, heritage can be an infinitely layered and emotional conundrum. Grief, hurt, shame, confusion, loneliness, disappointment — all of these and more may linger beneath pride, joy, and belonging. For some, heritage is a vital thread that connects them to their roots. For others, it’s a puzzle with missing pieces that will never be completed, a story they’ve never felt fully part of. The adoptee experience is as diverse as it is personal, with some diving headfirst into their origins, while others approach with hesitation, unsure of what they might find or how it fits into their lives. 

For many adoptees, the relatively recent rise of commercially available DNA testing (Ancestry, 23andMe, and more) has revolutionized the birth family search. What was often a labyrinth of dead ends and unanswered questions has, through advancements in technology and the rapid expansion of genetic databases, transformed into something unexpectedly tangible. Connections once thought lost are now within reach, reshaping not only the search but the emotions surrounding it. For those who were told — or resigned themselves to the belief — that finding biological relatives was a futile dream, these tools have delivered a fragile, cautious hope, a bittersweet reminder of the profound complexity of heritage and identity.

This gap between curiosity and connection is where organizations like the Nanchang Project step in. “Nanchang Project’s mission is to help reunite Chinese adoptees with their first families,” says Katie Lauder, communications manager at the Nanchang Project. “We offer free DNA tests to birth families in China and have a search partner referral program for adoptees who want to conduct their own searches, whether remotely with a searcher or in person in China. We also offer assistance with registering in the National Reunion Database, which is China’s own system, through the mail. The whole point of everything is to support Chinese adoptees in reconnecting with their heritage, learning more about their time in China, or anything that has to do with their adoption and relative search, if they’re interested in that.”

The nonprofit eases the weight of navigating the technological potential of DNA testing alongside the emotional, logistical, and cultural complications of conducting a birth family search. Through a combination of advocacy, education, and direct support, Nanchang Project offers adoptees not just resources but also community and understanding. 

“We are the only Chinese search organization that has adoptees in leadership positions,” Lauder says. “Everything we do centers the adoptee and supports them on their journey because it’s not really about anybody else. You’re the one who’s making the decision about whether or not you actually want to start [searching] and why. We always want to make sure that anybody we help or interact with knows that their priorities and desires will be honored. I think that’s one of our biggest strengths. We’re not going to pressure people to reconnect with family or start a search they aren’t ready for, either. We also offer our blog as a platform for adoptees to express how they feel about their search, the One Child Policy, and their adoptions in general.”

Language barriers can make searching for birth families in China especially challenging. Understanding documents, communicating with relatives, and navigating the process can be overwhelming without support. Knowing this, Nanchang Project has a network of volunteers who can assist as translators.

“We do have translators on our team,” Lauder confirms. “They are currently working on our book project, which is a compilation of birth family stories and adoptee stories. They’ve been busy with that, but [a translator network] is something that we’re hoping to build out too.”

Beyond language support, Nanchang Project helps simplify what can feel like an overwhelming journey, offering adoptees a clear path to follow in their search. The search process itself, as Lauder explains, involves several key steps. 

First: gathering adoption documents. “It’s really important to find as many of your adoption documents as possible,” Lauder says. “There should be a white booklet with your adoption certificate, which includes your name, the year, your adoptive parents, and a notarized seal confirming the adoption date. Another key document is the certificate of abandonment. It can contain important details, like where you were found, who found you, and any specific conditions — for example, if you were found with a note or anything like that.”

After gathering documents, Lauder recommends reaching out to social welfare institutes and connecting with online communities. “You can check if your social welfare institute still has information,” she explains. “You can do that by joining Facebook groups or any type of search group on any platform. There are a lot of adoptive parents who started these communities in the 2000s, and they have a lot of information to share.”

Finding others from the same social welfare institute or province can also be helpful. “There’s tons of information that isn’t documented, but through other people’s experiences and word of mouth, you can get a sense of what was going on when you were adopted,” Lauder continues. “You can learn whether your social welfare institute had good record-keeping or find commonalities in people’s situations, like whether it was common to be found in a specific location or transferred elsewhere. This is all basic information you can gather without starting anything or purchasing stuff.”

The next step is to take a DNA test. “You can do an autosomal DNA test, like 23andMe or Ancestry, or a paternity test through the National Reunion Database,” Lauder says. “After that, you can upload your autosomal DNA to GEDmatch, which is a genealogy website. It compares your results to a bunch of different tests, so you’re not stuck in just one database. It’s important to spread out to as many databases as possible, so you can make connections to cousins, possible siblings who may have also been adopted, or birth families who’ve been tested by various organizations.”

The National Reunion Database stands out for its accessibility and reach. “It has the highest number of birth families because it’s based in China,” Lauder adds. “It’s free for Chinese families, and they can do it at their local police station.”

After DNA testing, Lauder suggests leveraging search posters and social media. “You can join province-based search poster groups or use Chinese social media,” she says. “It comes with its own navigation because there’s that language barrier and cultural barrier too, but those are all things that you can do without leaving your home.”

The final step is deciding whether to travel to China and hire a search partner. “Visiting villages is definitely a big, important thing. A lot of people have their finding location listed as a capital city, and it’s a lot harder to search in a capital city because it’s just so densely populated. You have to decide whether or not searching there is worth your time because it’s like a needle in a haystack. That’s why it’s good to join a community and try and find locations that are outside of the capital where children were most likely found.”

Logistical and administrative preparation is indispensable before a search, but emotional preparation carries just as much weight — if not more. It seems like an impossible task, to prepare for uncertainty while also facing the chance to gain clarity about every hope, fear, fantasy, suspicion, and estimate. How can adoptees come close to being fully prepared?

“Learn more about China during the time you were adopted,” says Lauder. “The majority of us were adopted during the enforcement of the One Child Policy, so learn about what that actually meant for people in China. I was adopted in the ‘90s, so the story I was told was ‘oh, your family just couldn’t keep you, so they gave you up for a better life’ or whatever. But I think one of the missing aspects is that Chinese families did not want to be separated from their children. If the One Child Policy hadn’t existed, they wouldn’t have been abandoning their children. The whole concept of forced separation is a big one that isn’t talked about a lot.”

“It was also a super traumatic experience for these families to have lost their child,” she continues. “That can cause a lot of strain within the birth family’s relationships, so sometimes parents aren’t together anymore. And the likelihood of having older siblings is very high because [the adoptee] is the over-quota child. At least one older sister and one younger brother is pretty common. Some families have multiple older children, so there may be one to two or three older siblings and then the younger brother, and you’re some middle child in there, so that can be a lot to take in.”

“Also birth dates,” Lauder adds. “Those are all just estimated by the orphanage because not everybody was left with a note from their parents saying they were born on this date at this time. There’s also the added layer of: is it through the Gregorian calendar or is it the Lunar calendar? The date that’s in our documents is probably the Gregorian calendar, but when you’re searching, [birth] families don’t always know what day you were born, and a lot of them maybe remember it through the Lunar calendar, so being able to convert to the Lunar date is helpful. If you do find your first family, they may not remember your birth date because technically all of our births were supposed to be secret, so they were probably not paying attention — and lots of other stuff was going on at the time. It was also probably a really traumatic time for them. They were separated from their child, and this is painful for them, so they may not have committed to memory the day that you were born and the time that you went missing.”

And possibly the biggest blow to prepare for: “There’s the fact that you may never find answers to your questions. Realizing that your birth family are their own people who went through their own trauma, and most likely did not heal from that trauma, so trying to get answers from them — if you do find them — will be hard. Or they might just not give them to you. Just prepare yourself for that possibility,” says Lauder. 

Fear often speaks louder than reason, and for adoptees and birth families alike, the path to reunion is often fraught with unspoken anxieties — fears that bind them together yet keep them apart. “Adoptees and birth families are scared of interrupting each other’s lives,” Lauder observes. “And scared that the other is not willing to reunite. There’s that shared fear of secondary rejection.”

For birth families, this fear is compounded by decades of shame, regret, and loss. Many grapple with the haunting reality of why they had to let their child go, and the guilt of believing their child might resent them for it.

Adoptees, too, bear the weight of uncertainty. “There’s the fear of the unknown,” Lauder says. “I think that’s why a lot of people don’t want to start searches. They’re content with what they have right now and they don’t want to disrupt that.”

While the search process can uncover truths, it also opens the door to unexpected emotions and outcomes. For some adoptees, this journey may lead to a sense of closure, connection, or understanding. For others, it may lead to answers that are as difficult to process as the questions they sought to resolve. Every step of the way, it’s important to approach this process with compassion — not just for oneself but also for the family on the other side of the search.

As AAPI Heritage Month concludes, let’s remember that heritage is not just about what we inherit but also what we build. For some, it’s a tether to the past; for others, a story still unfolding. And an adoptee’s exploration of identity and connection isn’t simple or universal. This article isn’t a call for adoptees to go now and seek out their birth families — every individual’s journey is incredibly personal and valid. Instead, it’s an invitation to recognize the work of organizations like Nanchang Project and the possibilities they offer to those who choose to walk that path.

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The Nanchang Project (NCPT) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded in 2018, fully operated by volunteers. Our mission is to help connect adoptees to their roots in China. To date, we have assisted in 90+ reunions and registered over 400 birth families. We are proudly also the only organization of its kind that is co-led by Chinese adoptees and adoptive parents, with the intent to be fully run by adult adoptees in the future.

To learn more about the work Nanchang Project does, you can explore their website here.

Nanchang Project will be conducting a search trip to Guangxi Province this winter.