The Lost Daughters of China: Adopted Girls, Their Journey to America, and the Search for a Missing Past

The elegant prose is spiced with bits of ironic cultural dissonance. A discount shopper, Evans "felt more than a little strange buying China-made [baby] clothes with which to bundle up a tiny baby, one of China's own, and bring her home." On a bus tour through southern China, she is one of a "bunch of Americans with Chinese infants singing 'Que Sera Sera' in the middle of a sea of traffic. Will she be happy? Will she be rich?" To suddenly hear Doris Day over the horns of a Kowloon traffic jam is heady stuff indeed.

The Lost Daughters of China is at its best when describing Evans's tally of emotional loss and gain. At one point the bureaucratic adoption process is unaccountably delayed, but her father dies during that time and she's able to sit by his bedside. The most mysterious example of this emotional calculus is Kelly's birth mother. Evans invents many plausible scenarios that caused this unknown woman to abandon her three-month-old daughter at a market. These incomplete, necessarily provisional stories help give a face to the larger cultural processes that compel new parents to abandon 1.7 million girl babies annually. The stuff of headlines--human rights, infanticide, rural and urban poverty--is rendered personally relevant in Evans's compelling book. --Kathi Inman Berens

Product Description
In 1997 journalist Karin Evans walked into an orphanage in southern China and met her new daughter, a beautiful one-year-old baby girl. In this fateful moment Evans became part of a profound, increasingly common human drama that links abandoned Chinese girls with foreigners who have traveled many miles to complete their families.

At once a compelling personal narrative and an evocative portrait of contemporary China, The Lost Daughters of China has also served as an invaluable guide for thousands of readers as they navigated the process of adopting from China. However, much has changed in terms of the Chinese government’s policies on adoption since this book was originally published and in this revised and updated edition Evans addresses these developments. Also new to this edition is a riveting chapter in which she describes her return to China in 2000 to adopt her second daughter who was nearly three at the time. Many of the first girls to be adopted from China are now in the teens (China only opened its doors to adoption in the 1990s), and this edition includes accounts of their experiences growing up in the US and, in some cases, of returning to China in search of their roots.

Illuminating the real-life stories behind the statistics, The Lost Daughters of China is an unforgettable account of the red thread that winds form China’s orphanages to loving families around the globe.

Using scholarly and other reliable print resources, the author presents an accurate (as far as we in the West know) description of WHY Chinese girls are abandoned in such great numbers. She outlines the horrifying reasons behind the one-child policy in China, discusses how the law is enforced or not enforced in various Chinese regions, and the cultural preference for boys. More importantly, the book includes some information on the grief felt by those parents forced to abandon a daughter.

When our daughters from China are older, they will almost certainly want to know why they were abandoned. This title cannot speak to all individual circumstances, but it certainly clearly explains the social, demographic and economic pressures that force child abandonment.

N.B. the author takes pains to outline why, in China, abandonment is an adoption plan.


Evans Has Done a Tremendous Service by Writing this Book   May 8, 2001
Xoe Li Lu (Sea Girt, New Jersey USA)
43 out of 49 found this review helpful

Karin Evans has done a great service by writing this book. While it is an invaluable resource to present and future adoptive parents of Chinese children, it is also an important reminder for everyone of the situation in China that has lead to the abandonment of countless baby girls.

Evan's story is tremendously moving, although she never resorts to gimmicky heartstring pulling. She tells the barefaced truth about Chinese adoption, complete with the anxiety, frustration, confusion and utter joy that accompanies the process. She also very intelligently outlines the underlying factors that enable Americans to adopt Chinese babies in the first place. While never accusing or pointing a finger, she thoughtfully presents well-researched information about China's one-child policy and the cultural preference for male children, and discusses government attempts to curb population. She explores the anguish experienced by Chinese birth parents who must give up their children in hope of giving them a better life, and she is respectful of the painful decisions these parents are forced to make. In addition, Anchee Min's brief preface is haunting. Lost Daughters of China is not only for those considering Chinese adoption, but for anyone interested in child welfare and/or Chinese social policy.


Many books will tell you "How." This one tells you "Why."   September 28, 2000
Constant Librarian (Columbia, MD United States)
32 out of 37 found this review helpful

I do not give five star ratings lightly. This book is a gem. As other reviewers have mentioned, this book is part Chinese adoption "how to" and part travel diary. Both those sections are admirably done, but I treasure this book because Karen Evans presents a succinct summary of the causative factors of child abandonment in China.

I would strongly recommend that anyone who has adopted from China or may adopt in the future read this book, for the sake of your daughter. Ideally, adopted children should have some contact with their biological parents. This isn't possible for our Chinese daughters. They will almost definitely want to know why they were abandoned. Evan's book explains the subordinate position of women in Chinese society, the factors that drive the need of Chinese parents for a son, and the origins of the one-child policy and how it works (or doesn't work.)

In addition, _Lost Daughters of China_ will educate anyone with an interest in the status of women in the world.


The Lost Daughters of China   June 1, 2000
Sally S. Tanselle (Lebanon, IN USA)
23 out of 27 found this review helpful

As the grandmother of an adopted Chinese four year old, I treasure this book for the evocative way the author told of her feelings about her journey to China to get her daughter, so much like my own daughter's story, so much like my own feelings. In addition to the emotional pull of the story, however, is the intelligent approach explaining this socio-cultural phenomenon. Evans' research is thorough, bringing together many facets of a complicated situation. She is an advocate for parents and their daughters, whether the parents are American or Chinese.


A must for any family that has adopted   September 9, 2005
Walter A. Watts (Augusta, ME)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful

How can you sum up the importance of this book except to say that as one who has a beautiful adopted daughter from China, the author and I have walked the same path, asked ourselves the same questions and feel the same joys and pains that go with the successes of adopting. A story beautifully told that helps us all understand the life of our daughters before they came to us, why they were available for us and how to answer so many of the questions that we have and what our daughters will be asking. I tip my hat to a job well done amid many tears. Thank you for putting into words what so many of us cannot.