Long Wait for Home

A video portraying the lives of birthparents in China.

As you embrace your newly adopted child, you can’t help but wonder about the empty arms left behind. In Long Wait for Home, Changfu Chang’s sixth documentary about international adoption, the complexities of Chinese politics, economics, family life, and culture are given faces and voices that will speak to your heart.

After interviewing more than 100 adoptive families in the U.S. for his previous film, Love without Boundaries, Chang “recognized the overwhelming need and desire to connect with their child’s birthparents.” Chang, a former Fujian Television journalist who’s now a professor of Communication at Millersville University, in Pennsylvania, spent the next four years networking and following leads from the sporadic media coverage of abandonments to track down more than 20 couples who had relinquished children.

For many, this film will offer their first real glimpse of what birthparents in China experience. We hear from three couples, all of whom faced great risks in carrying a second child to term, and then letting that child go for the chance of a better life. The Xu family fled their hometown after the authorities tore down their house upon learning that the woman was pregnant, then underwent a dangerous birth while hidden on a boat.

Later in the film, we see a photo of their daughter at 11 years old, looking healthy and happy, with the American parents who adopted her. It may be difficult to relate to the birthparents’ plight, the poverty, and the fear of government recrimination that color this child’s—and so many adoptees’—early stories, but the love and courage her birthparents exhibit will resonate. As Mr. Xu speaks into the camera, his voice breaking with emotion, he assures his unknown daughter, “All these years, every night, your mother and I have been talking about you, thinking about what you look like.”

The filmmaker also sought views on international adoption from the “man on the street” in China. Most expressed sympathy for the birthparents, hope for the young children who find homes abroad, and gratitude to parents who adopt “our Chinese children.” Even so, as the narration notes, the Chinese media maintain a much harsher view of birthmothers. Chang solicits commentary from adoption experts, as well, giving a balanced view of how adoption is perceived in China.

Parents and adoptees alike will find that this realistic, gritty, and heartbreaking film provides some answers to the ever-present question: Why?

Reviewed by Deborah Johnson, a Korean adoptee, adoption social worker, and director of a heritage travel company, Kindred Journeys International (kindredjourneysinternational.com).

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