IMAGINING KINSHIP AND REARTICULATING IMMIGRATION: TRANSNATIONAL ADOPTION FROM CHINA FROM 1882 TO THE PRESENT A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN AMERICAN STUDIES DECEMBER 2017 By Yanli Luo Dissertation Committee: Mari Yoshihara, Chairperson Jonna Eagle Elizabeth Colwill Suzanna Reiss Chih-ming Wang Key words: transnational adoption from China, cultural representations, fictive kinship, Chinese immigration, immigrant-adoptee dichotomy ! Acknowledgments This dissertation has developed from my MA thesis on transnational adoption from China and represents my personal and intellectual growth throughout my MA and doctoral programs in the Department of American Studies at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. I thus owe a tremendous debt to those, in the department and outside, who have always supported and encouraged me, questioned my assumptions, pushed me to think deeper, and opened my eyes for more inquiries. Without their assistance and good wishes, this project could not have been made possible. I have been so blessed to have Mari Yoshihara as my advisor in my doctoral program, chair of both my MA thesis and doctoral dissertation committees, and a mentor for the past six years. Since the beginning of the MA program, I have been so fortunate to be in her academic writing workshop, in which I have made tremendous progress in writing effectively, thinking critically, and giving constructive comments to other writers. She has read countless drafts of both my thesis and dissertation, delivered incisive, substantive comments, expanded my scholarly vision, and provided editions, corrections, and clarifications on every page I submitted to her. She is also the one who always trusted and encouraged me in my final, overwhelming stage of writing and revising this dissertation; without her support, it might have taken a far longer time to complete the dissertation. The same amount of gratitude goes to the rest of my dissertation committee. Jonna Eagle served as my advisor in my MA program, and was a committee member in both my thesis and dissertation committees. She inspired and guided me on my path to exploring cultural representations and cultural studies in general. Her critical comments and patient line-editing of most of my drafts have sharpened my arguments and helped make my whole dissertation far stronger. I have benefitted immeasurably from Elizabeth Colwill, whose expertise as a historian and feminist scholar have inspired me in many ways and expanded my knowledge in both fields. i I was also illuminated by our numerous conversations in which she listened attentively to my rough thoughts and helped refine them into coherent chapters. Suzanna Reiss offered me tremendous help for all my chapters as well, but particularly in my chapter on Cold War adoption from Hong Kong, which developed from a term paper for the course of Cold War she taught. I am also so fortunate to have Chih-ming Wang in my committee. With his expertise in China studies, adoption studies, immigration studies, and Asian American literature, he has helped, especially with his critical questions, refine my overall argument and my interventions in these fields. I have been so grateful to be enrolled in the Department of American Studies and to work closely with a group of friendly, supportive, and academically rigorous professors and colleagues devoted to interdisciplinary inquiry. David Stannard, with his unique style of teaching, created an especially free academic environment which triggered my interest in transnational adoption and provided the impetus for the first draft of my dissertation proposal even in my first year of my graduate school. Kathleen Sands, a committee member for my MA thesis, also contributed, though indirectly, to this dissertation with her thoughtful comments on my thesis drafts and encouragement of every kind. She and other members in the Department, especially Mari Yoshihara, Jonna Eagle, and Elizabeth Colwill, also offered their invaluable friendship and concern in my days of dealing with a serious disease. Without their intellectual and spiritual sustenance, I would never have gone this far. I am also indebted to my colleagues in the Department of American Studies. All the members in the writing workshop, Keiko Fukunishi, Yuka Polovina, Jeanette Hall, Sean Trundle, Sanae Nakatani, Yohei Sekiguchi, Yu Jung Lee, Kevin Lim, Eriza Bareng, and Stacy Nojima, have offered precious time reading my chapters, provided thoughtful comments, and shared every piece of helpful information they could find about this research project. Jonathan Valdez, Shannon Cristobal, and Guoqian Li were also there giving me their encouragement. I owe special ii thanks to Heather Diamond, an alumna in the Department of American Studies and established writer who kindly put a lot of time and efforts into reading and meticulously editing my drafts. I also feel grateful to people outside the department who provided help and guidance in my archival research and dissertation writing. Special thanks to William Greene in the U.S. National Archives at San Francisco and Grant Din in the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation, who offered me generous instructions and guidance about how to find immigration files and paper children’s oral histories for my first chapter. Many thanks to the Hong Kong Public Records Office and the Library of Hong Kong University, in which I collected all the primary sources I needed for my chapter on Cold War adoption from Hong Kong. I feel particularly indebted to the Academy of Hong Kong Studies (AHKS) at the Education University of Hong Kong. AHKS generously offered me the Hong Kong Studies Research Fellowship and provided me with a quiet but friendly environment with abundant resources that were a great help in writing my last three chapters. My last and deepest gratitude goes to my family. My husband Chunbo Gu has continually supported me from China, both financially and spiritually. My fourteen-year-old daughter Zimo Gu has been sweet company on the lonely writing days and a great helper and patient nurse when I was sick. She was also the most influential person in the process of my pursuing the doctoral degree. In the most difficult moments when I was about to quit, her calm and simple words— “Mom, you can’t give up, or you will be a loser”—reminded me that I had every reason to stay and complete my degree. Thanks go to my parents who have kept me in their thoughts every day, and to my parents-in-law who have supported and cheered me in every step of my growth. Thanks also go to my God who has always been there and given me whatever I needed. This dissertation is dedicated to all of them. iii ABSTRACT Since the 1990s, adoption from China has become a striking phenomenon in the United States. Adoption of Chinese children, usually female, by primarily white Americans has been highly visible in America, and media coverage of celebrities—such as Hollywood stars Meg Ryan and Woody Allen and former U.S. ambassador to China Jon Huntsman—adopting Chinese girls further adds to this visibility. However, such high visibility overshadows other forms of adoption from China. Even in the Exclusion Era from 1882 to 1943, transnational adoption from China existed, primarily in the form of so-called “paper sons” (and a few “paper daughters”), who entered through counterfeit, usually purchased, documents that proved their legal status as children of American citizens. In order to immigrate, paper children created non-blood parent- child, or de facto adoptive, relationship with their paper families. Moreover, in the 1950s and 1960s, more than 1,000 Chinese children, most of whom were from Chinese refugee families, were adopted into the United States from Hong Kong predominantly by Chinese Americans. My dissertation examines transnational adoption from China by situating it in the Chinese immigration history from 1882 to the present. Departing from existing research mainly undertaken from sociological, anthropological, or psychological perspectives, I explore an understudied area—representations of transnational adoption in cultural texts. Adoption does not occur in a vacuum. I argue that transnational adoption has become a site of power contestations through which different parties—individuals from the sending and receiving countries, Chinese and American nation-states, and the British empire as represented by the Hong Kong Colonial government—made meanings to serve their own purposes. In this process, racialized, gendered, and ideological meanings and discourses about Chinese children, women, immigrants, white adoptive parents, China, the British empire, and the United States have been produced and circulated. Juxtaposing the discourses produced by mainstream media from these political entities with the narratives and voices of individuals exposes how these dominant discourses are iv selective, incomplete, competing, contradictory, and sometimes inaccurate and ineffective on the one hand, and highlight the centrality of racialization and gendering in U.S. family formation and nation building, on the other. v CONTENTS Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................................ i Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iv List of