Daughters of the Bamboo Grove: From China to America, a True Story of Abduction, Adoption, and Separated Twins
Barbara Demick
In 2000, a Chinese woman gave birth to twins in a bamboo grove, trying to avoid detection by the government because she already had two daughters. Two years later, an American couple travelled to Shaoyang to adopt a Chinese toddler they thought had been abandoned.
Their understanding had been that China’s brutal one-child policy was leading to hundreds of abandoned girls, desperate for the care of adopted parents. What they didn’t know - and what award-winning journalist Barbara Demick uncovered in 2007, while working as a correspondent in Beijing - was that their daughter had been snatched from her beloved family and her identical twin.
Under China’s one-child policy hundreds of poor Chinese were giving up their children due to soaring fines and threats of violence. More sinister still, international demand for adoptees was sky-rocketing, and local officials were forcibly seizing children and trafficking them to orphanages, who were selling them abroad.
Daughters of the Bamboo Grove tells the gripping story of separated twins, their respective fates in China and the USA, and Barbara Demick’s role in reuniting them against huge odds. Painting a rich portrait of China’s history and culture, it asks questions about the roots, impact and consequences of China’s one-child policy, the ethics of international adoption, and, ultimately, the assumptions and narratives we hold about the quality of lives lived in the East and the West.
andDaughters of the Bamboo Grove
‘Demick turns the seemingly-prosaic human dramas of our societies into a cinematic and heart-rending epic tale with consequences that cross continents. In her work, every individual’s story gets their due—its beauty, dignity, and wonder made evident through her writing.’
‘This immensely empathetic, moving, and thought-provoking narrative offers readers an extraordinary window into the complex dilemmas of international adoption.’
‘A bittersweet but engrossing narrative of how one family was compelled by Beijing’s “one-child policy” to give an “unauthorised” child up for adoption to American parents.’
