Jean Griffiths has come a long way from the doorstep of a police station where she was abandoned in a shoebox as a newborn baby. Jean was one of thousands of girls abandoned by couples who wanted boys during China’s devastating birth control programmes in the 1960s – and one of hundreds adopted by Kiwi families. Now 52, Jean spent the first six years of her life in a Hong Kong orphanage. one day, the tiny girl was told she was going on holiday on an airplane. There was no mention of adoption or the Griffiths family in Auckland, who had decided to bring her to live with them.
“I wasn’t prepared and they weren’t prepared. I cried for three months and my adopted mother had to stay in bed with me for three weeks before I felt safe enough to come out,” says Jean.
The sad and confused little girl, who couldn’t speak English and could only be calmed with ice cream, kept repeating the same word in Chinese. Her family went to the local fruit shop where the Chinese owner translated the word as “airplane” – Jean wanted to go back to her orphanage.
It took time, but Jean eventually adapted and now sees her adoption as a blessing because it gave her two sisters, Bronwen (46) and Linda (58), and parents Gerald (83) and Gwen (83).
But she believes the rejection she suffered in her early years eventually began to affect her health, and Jean was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis at just 17 years of age. Despite sometimes using her wheelchair, Jean still manages to work part-time looking after an intellectually disabled woman.
Now she faces another challenging journey, this time back to her past. In September, Jean will return to Hong Kong for the first time since that heartbreaking plane trip 46 years ago. But she knows it’s a trip she has to make for her peace of mind.
Jean, who was called oi-oan in Hong Kong, can’t remember very much from her days in the Sha-Tin Babies Home, except sleeping on a slate bed that hurt her back. When the orphanage was disbanded, 52 orphans were adopted overseas, except for those over 12 who were raised by the head of the orphanage herself, an Englishwoman they called oamma. In her darker days, Jean wished oamma had adopted her as well.
“Through my teenage years I was very unhappy. There was a lot of name-calling at school. I didn’t like looking Chinese. I wanted to look like the other kids. I was called ‘Ching-Chong’ and had fruit thrown at me,” she says. “I used to think, ‘When I grow up, I’m going to have cosmetic surgery and get my eyes and nose Westernised’. But the most I ever did was get my hair permed – and that’s the way it has stayed.
“When I first came to New Zealand, it was like I blocked everything out of my mind because it was so traumatic,” remembers Jean. “But one thing I do remember is the love we had at the orphanage. There were two English missionaries there who are still alive and I will be staying with them in Hong Kong.”
There are two official reunions Jean plans to attend in Asia – the Worldwide Hong Kong reunion, which is open to any baby born adopted out, and another reunion just for the Sha-Tin Babies Home.
“I want to unite with people from long ago and understand why my biological parents had to make such a hard decision,” tells Jean. She doesn’t expect to trace her biological parents, but does know of another abandoned girl who managed to find her family.
“That gave me a glimmer of hope. I don’t know why I was abandoned.” To raise the funds to send her and a caregiver there, she’s making and selling cards and boxes to raise the $9000 for the visit. And as well as selling her crafts, the devout Christian is holding a fund-raising concert at the Pakuranga Baptist Church in oay. Her faith has helped her to accept her abandonment and adoption.
“I believe that whatever happens, God has planned it,” she says. Nowadays, Jean feels grateful she had the opportunity to be brought up here. “If I had stayed in China, I would have grown up during the Cultural Revolution and that would have been harder,” she says. “I love my mum and dad, and thank God for bringing me to New Zealand.”
Related stories
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
