Amy Cubbage’s first foray into parenthood began as it had for tens of thousands of American families before her: in a hotel room in China.

和她之前的无数美国家庭一样，艾米·卡贝奇初为人母的经历始于中国的一个酒店房间。

In 2008, Ms. Cubbage and her husband, Graham Troop, had just been handed a 2-year-old girl named Qin Shuping, who was living with a foster family in the southern Chinese city of Guilin. The couple from Louisville, Ky., had waited more than two years to be matched with a child.

2008年，卡贝奇和她的丈夫格雷厄姆·特鲁普刚刚领养了一个名叫秦淑萍（音）的两岁女孩，她住在中国桂林的一个寄养家庭里。这对夫妇来自肯塔基州路易斯维尔，他们等了两年多，才匹配到一个孩子。

But in that hotel room, in a country the couple had never been to before, the toddler was inconsolable.

但在那间酒店房间里——这对夫妇从未来过中国——这个蹒跚学步的孩子一直哭闹个不停。

“I cried because I was like, ‘What have we done to this child?’” Ms. Cubbage recalled.

“我哭了，因为我在想，‘我们对这个孩子做了什么？’”卡贝奇回忆道。

More than fifteen years later, the toddler is now known as June Cubbage-Troop, a freshman at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh who is on the acrobatics and tumbling team.

十五年后，这个蹒跚学步的孩子已经变成了琼·卡贝奇-特鲁普，是匹兹堡杜肯大学的大一新生，还是学校杂技社成员。

“I used to think about my birth parents, but not really anymore because I’m happy and I love my parents,” Ms. Cubbage-Troop, 18, said. “I’m pretty content with my life.”

“我过去常常想起亲生父母，但现在不怎么想了，因为我现在过得很幸福，我爱我的父母，”18岁的卡贝奇-特鲁普说。“我对我的生活很满意。”

“我对我的生活很满意，”18岁的琼·卡贝奇-特鲁普说，她现在是匹兹堡杜肯大学的大一新生。

China announced this month that it was halting nearly all foreign adoptions, marking the end of a program that forged several generations of American families. More than 82,000 Chinese children have been adopted in the United States since 1992, around the time the program began, according to the State Department.

中国本月宣布将暂停几乎所有外国收养，标志着一个造就了几代美国家庭的项目的结束。根据美国国务院的数据，自1992年该项目启动以来，逾8.2万名中国儿童被美国家庭收养。

Several of those adoptive families said they were glad that the program was coming to an end, recognizing that it was a glaring byproduct of a harsh policy restricting many Chinese families from having more than one child. Though most treasure their adoptive experience, many also see the program’s abuses and the underlying trauma that came from removing children from their birth parents and culture.

其中一些领养家庭表示，他们很高兴这个项目即将结束，因为他们认识到这是一项严厉政策显而易见的副产品，该政策只允许许多中国家庭生一个孩子。尽管虽然大多数人都很珍惜他们的收养经历，但许多人也看到了该项目的弊端，以及将孩子从他们的亲生父母和文化中带走可能带来的创伤。

Many participating parents and adoptees described the phaseout as bittersweet. For tens of thousands of aspiring parents, particularly single people and gay couples, the program for years offered a relatively straightforward path to starting a family, free of the bureaucratic hurdles that often bogged down the adoption process elsewhere. It also provided an opportunity for Chinese children with special needs to receive the medical and financial support overseas that they needed to thrive.

对于逐步取消收养项目，许多参与该项目的父母和被收养人都用苦乐参半来形容。对于数以万计渴望成为父母的人来说，尤其是单身人士和同性恋伴侣，该项目多年来为他们组建家庭提供了一条相对简单的途径，免去了在其他地方经常使收养过程陷入困境的官僚主义障碍。它还为有特殊需要的中国儿童提供了一个机会，让他们在海外获得所需的医疗和经济支持。

格雷厄姆·特鲁普（左）、琼·卡贝奇-特鲁普和艾米·卡贝奇，2008年摄于中国。卡贝奇记得，第一次见到自己的女儿时，她不停地哭闹。

The need for international adoption in China had also seemed obvious. Between the late 1970s and 2016, China limited many families to one child because of overpopulation concerns. Many of the orphans were baby girls who, adoptive parents were told, had been abandoned because of the harshly enforced one-child policy as well as the traditional Chinese preference for boys.

中国对国际收养的需求似乎也是显而易见的。在上世纪70年代末到2016年间，中国因人口负担过重，许多家庭只能生一个孩子。许多孤儿是女婴，收养父母被告知，由于严格执行的独生子女政策以及中国的重男轻女传统，她们遭到了遗弃。

The program’s reputation was tarnished when reports emerged that some babies had been abducted by traffickers or seized by family planning officials during the enforcement of birth restrictions. The babies were then sold to orphanages, who marketed the children as orphans to unwitting foreign families who were willing to pay relatively large sums of money.

当有报道称，在实施计划生育期间，一些婴儿被人贩子拐走或被计划生育官员强行带走，该项目的声誉受到了损害。这些婴儿随后被卖给孤儿院，孤儿院再把这些孩子当作孤儿推销给不知情的外国家庭，这些家庭往往愿意支付相对高额的费用。

International adoptions from China have slowed since peaking in the mid-2000s, as China’s economy has grown and more money has been allocated to support orphans. Nearly all foreign adoptions in recent years have involved children with disabilities, according to the Chinese government.

随着中国经济的增长和更多资金用于孤儿，来自中国的国际收养自2000年代中期达到顶峰后有所放缓。据中国政府称，近年来几乎所有的外国收养都涉及残疾儿童。

Brian H. Stuy, a father of three girls adopted from China, grew critical of the program over time and now runs a company that helps Chinese adoptees collect information about their adoptive histories and their birth families. He believes there is still a need for international adoptions of children with medical concerns, but said that he was ultimately glad the program was over.

布莱恩·斯图伊是三个从中国收养的女孩的父亲，随着时间的推移，他对这个项目越来越持批评态度，现在他经营着一家公司，帮助中国被收养者收集有关其收养历史和出生家庭的信息。他认为，仍然需要对存在健康问题的儿童进行国际收养，但他终归认为这个项目的结束是好事。

“As it relates to the adoption of healthy young infant girls, it should never have existed,” he said. “There was never a need.”

“既然收养的是健康的年轻女婴，这个项目根本不应该存在，”他说。“从来没有这种必要。”

Many Chinese American adoptees also expressed mixed feelings. The experience of being adopted is often described as one of both immense gain and profound loss of one’s birth family and immediate environment. That loss is amplified in international adoptions because adoptees are often severed from their birth culture and language. And all of that has been compounded for Chinese American adoptees, many of whom have been unable to verify their date and place of birth, the names of their birth parents and how they ended up at an orphanage.

许多被收养者也表达了复杂的感受。在他们的描述中，被收养的经历经常被说成巨大的收获，同时也是巨大的损失——失去了原生家庭和直系亲属的环境。这种损失在国际收养中会被放大，因为被收养者往往与他们的出生文化和语言割裂开来。对于许多中国裔的被收养者来说，这一切都更加复杂，因为他们很多人无法核实自己的出生日期和地点，不知道亲生父母的姓名以及他们是如何来到孤儿院的。

As a child, Charlotte Cotter knew that she had been adopted from an orphanage in Zhenjiang, a Chinese town famous for its black vinegar. She knew that she was 5 months old and one of about 20 babies swaddled in thick layers in the chilly orphanage nursery when she was adopted.

夏洛特·科特从小就知道自己是从镇江的一所孤儿院收养的，那是一座以醋闻名的中国城市。她知道自己当时只有五个月大，在寒冷的孤儿院托儿所里，像她这样裹着厚厚襁褓的婴儿大约有20个。

Ms. Cotter came to learn more years later, when she experienced something rare for Chinese American adoptees: Through Chinese social media, she was able to track down her birth parents. During a tearful, if slightly awkward, reunion in China in 2016, she was finally able to get answers to some long-burning questions.

多年后，科特才开始了解到更多信息，当时她经历了一件对被领养中国裔美国人来说很罕见的事情：通过中国的社交媒体，她找到了自己的亲生父母。2016年，她在中国与亲生父母团聚，虽然气氛略显尴尬，但也让人热泪盈眶。她终于得到了一些长期困扰她的问题的答案。

Her birth parents, both farmers, told her that her birth was technically illegal under the family planning policies. They said that they had passed her to an intermediary, believing she would be given to a well-off military family in the area who could not have children of their own. Her birth parents said they had no idea that she had ended up in an orphanage and adopted abroad.

她的亲生父母都是农民，他们告诉她，根据计划生育政策，她的出生严格说来是非法的。他们说，他们把她交给了一个中间人，相信她会被送到当地一个富裕的军人家庭，因为他们自己不能生育。她的亲生父母说，他们不知道她最后被送进了孤儿院，并被外国人收养。

But meeting her birth family also raised more questions for her. One year after she was born, she learned, her parents had another child — a son — whom they kept. Why had she been the one given away? What would her life have been like if she had grown up with her birth family?

不过，见到亲生父母也让她产生了更多疑问。她得知，在她出生一年后，她的亲生父母又生了一个孩子——一个儿子——他们把这个儿子留了下来。为什么她是被送走的那个？如果她和原生家庭一起长大，她的生活会是什么样子？

Ms. Cotter, 30, said that she had tried not to dwell on such questions and had largely come to terms with her adoption. In 2011, she co-founded a nonprofit to connect Chinese adoptees around the world. And like some other Chinese American adoptees, she has taken a special interest in China. She focused on East Asian Studies at Yale University, is now fluent in Mandarin and has traveled to China numerous times to study and lead volunteer trips.

30岁的科特说，她尽量不去纠结这些问题，并在很大程度上接受了自己被领养的事实。2011年，她与他人共同创立了一个非营利组织，将世界各地的中国被收养者联系起来。和其他一些被收养的中国裔美国人一样，她对中国特别感兴趣。她在耶鲁大学主修东亚研究，现在能说一口流利的普通话，并多次前往中国学习，以及带领志愿者旅行。

2016年，夏洛特·科特前往中国，在淮安郊外的祖宅见到了生父颜三洪（音）和生母杜丽琴（音）。

“In everybody’s lives there are different forks where you could have gone one way or another, and sometimes you have control over them and sometimes you don’t,” Ms. Cotter said. “This one just happened to be particularly dramatic.”

“在每个人的人生中，都会出现不同的岔路口，你可以选择走这条路，也可以选择走另一条路，有时你能控制它们，有时却不能，”科特说。“这一次恰好特别的戏剧化。”

Before adopting Charlotte, Brenda Cotter attended a conference in which she heard Korean American adoptees speak about the challenges of growing up in predominantly white communities in the Midwest. One adoptee, she recalled, described living in constant fear of being approached by Asian people and being deemed to be insufficiently Asian.

在收养夏洛特之前，布伦达·科特参加了一次会议，听到韩国裔的领养者谈到了在中西部以白人为主的社区成长所面临的挑战。她记得一位被收养者描述说，自己生活在持续不断的恐惧中，担心被亚洲人接近，担心自己在别人眼里“不够亚洲”。

“It got me right in the gut,” Brenda Cotter, a retired intellectual property lawyer in Newton, Mass., said. “So we tried as hard as possible to make our children feel comfortable saying and feeling, ‘I’m 100 percent Chinese.’”

“这让我大受震动，”布伦达·科特说道，她来自马萨诸塞州的牛顿，是一位退休的知识产权律师。“因此我们尽可能让我们的孩子感到舒适，以便他们能够坦然地说出和感受到‘我是百分百的华人’。”

She and her wife, RuthAnn Sherman, enrolled their daughters, both adopted from China, in Chinese cultural classes. They made books for the girls making clear that they had birth families in China. They celebrated Chinese holidays like Lunar New Year as well as Christmas and Hanukkah. And they took a family trip to China so that the girls could learn more about their birth culture.

她和妻子鲁森·谢尔曼让她们的两个从中国收养的女儿上了中国文化课。她们还为女儿们制作了书籍，明确说明她们的原生家庭在中国。她们庆祝农历新年等中国节日，也会庆祝圣诞节和光明节。她们全家去中国旅行，这样女孩们就可以更多地了解她们的出生文化。

Other adoptees, however, were raised in areas where they saw few other Asians and had little access to resources or support for navigating racism, including within their own families. Some have described struggling with questions of identity as well as feelings of alienation and depression.

然而，也有一些被领养者在很少见到其他亚洲人的地方长大，他们很少有机会获得应对种族主义的资源或支持，包括在自己的家庭中。一些人描述了他们在身份认同问题以及孤立感和抑郁情绪中挣扎的经历。

“Lots of people told me to go back to my country, lots of people also told me I was not Asian enough,” said Camille Wuesthoff, 28, an adoptee who was raised by white parents in suburban Florida. “But my parents were not equipped to raise a Chinese baby — they were not able to help me understand the racism and discrimination that I was experiencing.”

“很多人叫我滚回自己的国家去，很多人还说我‘不亚洲’”，28岁的被收养者卡米尔·伍斯托夫说，她在佛罗里达州郊区由白人父母抚养长大。“但我的父母没有能力抚养一个中国孩子——他们无法帮助我理解我所经历的种族主义和歧视。”

Finding birth parents in China was already difficult, but some adoptees worried that the end of the international adoption program would make that even harder. Under China’s leader, Xi Jinping, the country has taken a more authoritarian turn in recent years. Huihan Lie, founder of My China Roots, a company that has worked with more than 150 Chinese international adoptees hoping to track down their birth families, said that local officials who might have gone out on a limb before now had little incentive to act because of concerns about attracting unwanted attention from higher-ups.

在中国寻找亲生父母本来就很困难，但一些被收养人担心，国际收养项目的终止会让这一切变得更加困难。在中国领导人习近平上台后，中国近年来变得更加专制。“中华家脉”的创始人李伟汉说，以前可能会冒险的地方官员现在几乎没有动力采取行动，因为担心会引起上级不必要的关注。这家公司曾与150多名希望找到亲生父母的中国被收养者合作，试图找到他们的原生家庭。

Some adoptees want the Chinese government to apologize to its adoptee diaspora or at least acknowledge their pain and trauma. They have held out hope that China might one day begin an official investigation into the abuses within its international adoption program, as South Korea did in 2022 with its own program, which preceded China’s.

一些被收养者希望中国政府向海外被收养者道歉，或者至少承认他们的痛苦和创伤。他们一直希望中国有一天能对其国际收养项目中的虐待行为展开正式调查，就像韩国在2022年对其国际收养项目所做的那样，韩国的项目早于中国。

Questions remain about what will happen to the country’s orphans with medical needs. The government has acknowledged that Chinese families have traditionally been less willing to adopt children with disabilities than international families have been.

如何处理有医疗需求的孤儿的问题仍然存在。中国政府承认，与国际家庭相比，中国家庭传统上不太愿意收养残疾儿童。

“It’s still a mind-set problem. Chinese adoptive families still want a completely healthy child,” said Ren Yan, who works at Lupin Foster Home in Shanghai, which cares for orphans with congenital diseases. “So if it ends internationally, there will be a large number of children who will be stranded in welfare homes.”

“像中国的收养家庭的话，他还是观念问题，他还是想收养一个完全健康的孩子，”在上海鲁冰花舍工作的任燕说。该机构专门照顾患有先天性疾病的孤儿。“所以如果国际上停止的话，其实有很大的一批孩子会滞留在福利院里面出不去。” 

Ms. Ren said the children at her foster home mainly came from poorer provinces that lacked sufficient medical resources, such as Henan, Guizhou and Jiangxi. She estimated that half of the 100 children admitted since the home’s founding in 2011 had been adopted, nearly all by American families.

任燕说，她的寄养家庭的孩子主要来自河南、贵州和江西等缺乏足够医疗资源的贫困省份。据她估计，自2011年该院成立以来，已接纳的100名儿童中，有一半被收养，几乎都是美国家庭收养的。

Since 2008, June Cubbage-Troop has had 11 surgeries for a cleft lip and palate. It has hardly been a hindrance. At the age of 4, she started taking gymnastics and by high school was training 25 hours a week. At Duquesne, she starts her days with 6 a.m. weight-lifting sessions.

自2008年以来，琼·卡贝奇-特鲁普已经做了11次唇腭裂手术。这个问题几乎没有妨碍到她什么。四岁时，她开始练习体操，到高中时，她每周训练25小时。在杜肯，她每天早上6点开始举重训练。

And while her parents made it a point to expose her to Chinese culture and food growing up, she will now have the opportunity to establish her identity on her own. She has bonded with her roommate, a teammate who is also a Chinese adoptee, over makeup techniques specific to Asian features. Next on her to-do list is to join an Asian student association.

虽然父母在她成长的过程中一直让她接触中国文化和食物，但现在她有机会自己建立自己的身份。她和室友（也是被收养的中国儿童）因为针对亚洲人特征的化妆技巧而成为朋友。她的下一项任务是加入一个亚裔学生协会。

“I want to learn more about Asian culture and be around more people that look like me,” she said.

“我想更多地了解亚洲文化，和更多像我一样的人在一起，”她说。

She has also set her sights farther afield. She has already found a study abroad program that will allow her to spend a summer in Guilin, the city of gentle rivers and limestone peaks where she was born.

她还把目光投向了更远的地方。她已经找到了一个出国留学项目，可以让她在桂林度过一个夏天，这个山清水秀的地方，正是她的出生地。