Somewhere Between
A film by Linda Goldstein Knowlton. 2013. 88 minutes. English and Chinese. Subtitled.

Study Areas: adoption, China, birth family, teens & young adults, identity.

Somewhere Between is a film about seeking: four teenage girls adopted from China seek to reconnect with their birth families and Chinese identities; seek to explore the unknown chapter of their earlier lives before the adoption; and seek to answer the essential, and sometimes difficult, questions shared among many internationally adopted children: “Who am I, and why am I here?” 

Fang (Jenni), Haley, Jenna, and Ann are four Chinese girls adopted by American families at a young age.   Director Linda Goldstein Knowlton closely follows their unusual life journeys as they search for their pre-adoption lives and attempt to re-engage with their Chinese identities.  In front of the camera, these teenage girls describe from their own points of view how they make sense of being adopted Chinese children in American society and how their biological and cultural linkage with China may have impacted the way they connect with others and understand themselves. 

According to her adoption papers, April 25th of 1993 is the date Fang (Jenni) was born.  “I don’t know if that’s my exact birthday,” says Fang during a celebration for her fifteenth birthday with family and friends. “I doubt it is, because the orphanage gives the kids their birth dates… I feel I’ve been fifteen for a long time…I don’t actually know what my real age is, but I don’t feel like I’m turning fifteen.”  In China’s orphanages, children’s birth dates may not always be accurate. Orphanages sometimes assign a child an earlier birth date simply to create a more appealing case for potential adopters, for example.  For many adopted Chinese children like Fang, their real age and birth date may forever remain a mystery. In a modern society where life trajectory, daily experiences, and self-perceptions are so powerfully structured by time and age, this lingering question is not without its significance.

Fang left China when she was five. She was old enough to remember some pieces of her life before the orphanage - her mother’s long, braided hair, and her father laboring in the field.  For Fang, China is much more than a distant country she left behind many years ago or a location which created a painful childhood memory from which she wants to escape.  Due to her adoptive mother’s deliberate efforts to continue her Chinese cultural upbringing, Fang speaks fluent Chinese and visits the country regularly. On the one hand, she carries pride in her Chinese culture, but on the other, she sometime feels confused about how she should culturally identify herself ‒ neither Chinese nor American, but “a child stuck between two countries.”

Although the racial makeup of families has become much more diverse nowadays in America, international and interracial adoptees may still easily stand out in their communities and be viewed as “others.”  In a society where people’s identities are often defined and measured in a group of mutually exclusive check boxes, the already complex identity has become more puzzling to the girls and serves as the impetus for the explorations in this film.

Adopted and raised in a Christian family at Nashville, Tennessee, Haley believes her adoption is not only because of “luck” as so often reckoned by the others, but the conduct of God’s will.  Since she was little, Haley has been curious about her birth family and her life before the orphanage.  Haley returned to her home town and set up a search board there, which eventually led her to her birth parents. She discovered that she was the fourth girl born to a poor rural family in central China. With the desire for a son and the struggles to provide for a large family, Harley’s birth mother sent her baby girl away to a couple in a neighboring town.  However, the foster family soon left her at an orphanage. In the end, Haley’s two families united and she met with her birth family ‒ parents, three older sisters, and a younger brother.  The lost piece of her life was found and a broken connection was recreated.

All four girls in the film were born in the early 1990s when poverty and male favoritism were two major reasons for the upsurge in female orphans in less developed areas in China.  While some girls are eager to locate and rebind with their Chinese families after adoption, many of them struggle to cope with the grief and pain of being abandoned as they form their own identities and build relationships with others.  Jenna is a highly driven, hardworking girl, a self-identified “perfectionist.”  She participates in both academic and athletic endeavors with great enthusiasm and always pushes herself to achieve in everything she undertakes. She attributes her perfectionist tendencies and fear of failure to her fear that that she was disowned by her birth parents. She believes her drive for excellence and success is her way to compensate for the deep fear of rejection which has grown from the small but painful suspicion of being rejected by her own mother for being “a girl” or “not good enough.”

During several visits to China, Fang formed a special bond with an orphan with cerebral palsy, Run-Yi Lu, whom she affectionately called “the girl in pink.”  In the end of the film, Fang helps Run-Yi find an adoptive family in the America. She also discovers a new life purpose—fighting for the fair treatment for women in China.  Haley receives her Chinese name Yuan, meaning “fate,” from her birth father, which she treasures. Jenna learned to be more self-aware of her inner fears and decides to volunteer in a Chinese orphanage.  Ann considers the possibility of finding her birth family like Haley did.   Somewhere Between is a film about discovering the past, but more importantly it is also about how to fold one’s past into one’s present and future.  It presents the audience with rich, intimate, and non-judgmental narratives about interracial/international adoption and opens frank discussion about the profound issues of racial and cultural identities, senses of belonging, self-acceptance, and reconciliation. This film is a valuable resource to people who are interested in learning about international adoption, particularly about the experiences of interracial adoptees and their families.  It would make a great addition to high-school and college courses on race, gender, and Asian-American studies.

Gehui Zhang is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Last Updated: September 11, 2014