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AS Marsha Frederick put her adopted daughter to bed every night in Texas, she felt peace of mind that she had rescued the toddler from abandonment.
Unbeknownst to her, over 7,000 miles away and across 13 time zones in rural China, a young girl anxiously questioned if her twin would ever return home.
Shuangjie Zeng had been heartlessly torn apart from her twin sister Fangfang—renamed Esther—due to China’s rigid family planning authorities, infamous for employing harsh tactics to uphold the “one-child” policy.
Severe cases saw countless mothers forced to abort their babies, while millions were sterilised.
Remarkably, the twins’ incredible journey toward reunion was made possible through the efforts of journalist Barbara Demick, who shares their astonishing tale in her latest book, Daughters of The Bamboo Grove.
From 1979 to 2015, untold numbers of Chinese families had to give up their beloved babies – born or unborn – by ruthless enforces.
Some corrupt officials even claimed youngsters had been abandoned and sold them through orphanages to American parents – who were none the wiser.
One mother who fell victim to the process was Yuan Zanhua.
Terrified of the notorious family planners, Yuan – who already had two children – gave birth to identical twin girls with “plump cheeks and button noses” hidden in a bamboo grove in September 2000.
But at just 21 months, Esther was with her aunt when men stormed her home and snatched the toddler with no explanation.
Intruders held Esther’s aunt back as others tore the youngster away as she desperately clung onto the hem of her skirt.
The toddler was taken to an orphanage, where she was later adopted by an unsuspecting American couple from Texass in exchange for a sizeable donation.
Back in a poor village in Hunan province, Esther’s family spent years wondering if she was even still alive.
Then in 2009, Demick interviewed Esther’s biological parents and many others for a report for The Los Angeles Times.
Against all odds, the writer managed to track down their missing twin an ocean away in the US – but Esther’s adoptive family did not want to talk.
Grappling with a moral dilemma, Demick decided to let Esther’s birth family know she was alive and well – but concealed her exact whereabouts.
It wasn’t until several years later that the author received a Facebook message that made her bolt upright – Esther’s adoptive family were ready to speak.
After years of longing for her twin, Shuangjie was able to finally reconnect with Esther, first via message and later by video call.
Eventually, after years of sporadic messaging – the sisters were reunited in person in 2019 in an extraordinary twist to their story.
Demick told The Sun: “The trip to China was very gratifying. As a journalist and as a person.
“I’d first stumbled onto this story in 2009, a full decade before the reunion took place.
“Over the years, I’d felt bad that I hadn’t been able to tell the Chinese families more about the whereabouts of their missing daughter.
“And I knew that my discovery of the kidnapping was initially very painful for Esther and her adoptive family.
“The book deals with some of the ethical questions raised by the situation.”
Esther was taken in the midst of China’s controversial 36-year “old child” policy – and after Beijing had opened international adoptions in 1992.
It fuelled an undercover black market for trafficked children – with Western families believing they were saving youngsters from desertion.
That was true in the case of Esther’s adoptive parents, Marsha and Al Frederick, who were told the toddler had been found abandoned at the gate of a bamboo factory in Shaoyang City.
Demick fears there could be many more stories like Esther and Shuangjie’s.
“With 160,000 adoptees around the world, statistically speaking, there must be hundreds of separated identical twins,” she said.
“Usually both were adopted.
“I mention some funny stories in the book: a young woman at her freshman orientation for college was approached by a student who said she looked exactly like one of his high school friends.
“The friend dismissed it as racism. (“Oh, you know, all Asians look alike,” she would remember thinking). They turned out to be identical twins.
“Esther and Shuangjie are intriguing because one is American, the other Chinese, and they offer a rare glimpse into the cultural influences that form our identity.
“A prominent psychologist once likened identical twins raised apart to the Rosetta Stone, the Egyptian stele that allowed linguists to decipher ancient languages– though here, it is the eternal question of nature versus nurture.
“When I started this project, Esther and Shuangjie was the only case I knew of where one twin remained with the birth family in China and the other was adopted abroad, but recently two others have emerged.
China’s one child policy
CHINA introduced the one-child policy in 1979 as a population control measure to try and slow down the growth of the country.
Enforced by the Chinese government, it restricted most couples to having only one child.
But rural families and ethnic minorities were often given different rules – such as allowing a second child if the first was a girl.
Families that complied were entitled to benefits such as better housing, education, and healthcare – and those who didn’t stick to the policy faced fines and job losses.
The enforcement of the policy varied across the country and sometimes involved forced abortions and sterilisation.
While the policy helped reduce China’s population growth, it also led to significant challenges.
These included a rapidly ageing population, a shrinking workforce, and a skewed gender ratio due to a preference for boys – resulting in sex-selective abortions and killing of baby girls.
In response to the growing problems, the policy was relaxed in 2015, allowing couples to have two children.
By 2021, the government eased restrictions even further – allowing three children per family to address demographic imbalances and declining birth rates.
“Thanks to the rise of commercial DNA testing and social media, adoptees are finding genetic relatives at a rapid rate.
“I’m sure we will hear more about children who were snatched from their birth parents like Esther. As well as more stories of separated twins.”
International adoptions were banned by China in 2024 – eight years after officially ending its one-child policy due to concerns over its ageing workforce and economic stagnation.
It was replaced by a two-child policy, which was then expanded to three-child in 2021.
But Demick believes it could be too late to undo the damage inflicted.
“Who would believe it? China is running out of people,” she added.
“Once the most populous country in the world (a title it has recently ceded to India), its 1.4 billion population is expected to drop in half by the end of this century.
“There aren’t enough of those cheap young workers who transformed China into an industrial powerhouse, staffing the assembly lines that produced our Christmas toys and smartphones.
“Apart from the economic fallout of the population drop, there are the social consequences. In some areas, seven boys were born for every five girls, which has created a pool of bachelors unable to find partners.
“Sexually frustrated young men are not conducive to social stability.
“Rural men, who are less desirable on the marriage market, have had to import brides from Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos and Nepal, which in turn has led to bride trafficking and kidnapping.
“The Chinese government lifted the one-child policy in 2015.
“Almost comically, the same cadres who used to force women to have abortions or get sterilised, are now offering rice cookers and water bottles and sometimes cash as incentives for having more children.
“But it’s hard to reverse course. Those births that didn’t take place in the late 20th and early 21st centuries have left China without enough women of child-bearing age to replenish the population.”
