All her life, Kati had been led to believe that her adoptive parents had no idea who her biological parents were. She knew that she had been adopted as a baby, of course, but she had no idea that Ken and Ruth were hiding something from her all those years – something huge. As it turns out, the note that they’d found attached to her blankets when she was picked her up at the market actually had quite a bit of information in it.
In fact, the note may have actually contained the names of her biological mother and father. But how could the Pohler’s hide all of that from her for so long?
Hidden Meaning
The Pohler’s had originally decided to adopt their daughter from China for a few reasons. They had a few family members who’d adopted a child from there already, so with all of their connections, they felt confident about the process. They also had a friend back in China – one who they entrusted with the note with.
To whoever read the note, it was clear that Kati was loved from all four corners of the world. And once she was ready, she’d discover it.
Questions
As Kati became a young woman and moved away from the nest, she started having to deal with things she hadn’t been exposed to in her youth. No one in her hometown ever asked her about her adoptive parents or the adoption in general. Everyone knew she was adopted, but no one felt the need to question the family about anything.
However, when Kati spent a semester abroad during college, people started to ask questions that she wasn’t ready to answer. Why wasn’t she ready to answer them? Because at that point, she didn’t even have them.
China’s New Law
During the early 1980’s, China had enacted the one-child policy as a part of a birth planning program designed to control the rapidly growing Chinese population. Before the policy, each couple was allowed to have two children, which would have meant an entirely different fate for Kati, whose biological parents, Qian Fenxiang and Xu Lida, found themselves in a horrible position in the midst of the changing policy.
The couple already had one child when they found out they were pregnant with Kati, which forced them to make an incredibly tough decision.
What to Do?
When Xu Lida and Qian Fenxiang discovered that they were pregnant with their second child, they found themselves in between a rock and a hard place – the hardest of places. At first, the news was joyous – until the new government policy emerged, that is. By the time the couple got word of what was going on, it was far past the point of stopping the pregnancy, as Xu Lida was nearly six months pregnant at the time.
They were frantic in trying to figure out how to handle the situation. But they weren’t about to let their child go that easily. They thought at first that they may just be able to hide the child from the government. They would soon find out that the government was equally prepared for a fight.