At an empty concrete lot in southwest China, Loulee Wilson scoops a handful of stones into a bag — a memento from the site where she believes she was abandoned as a baby.
Ms. Wilson, an American college student, was born in China but given away by parents presumed fearful of violating the country’s one-child policy, under which families were punished for having additional children until the strategy was ended from 2016.
Soon after her birth, she was found outside a now-demolished factory in the town of Dianjiang, brought to an orphanage and later adopted by a couple in the U.S.
Now 19, she is among a growing number of Chinese adoptees returning to their birth country to trace their biological parents and understand where they came from.
“If I (find them), that would be incredible. But I don’t know if I’ll be able to,” she said.
Over 82,000 children born in China have been adopted by American families since 1999, according to State Department figures — mostly girls, owing to a Chinese cultural preference for boys.
Many were handed over in the 2000s when Beijing more tightly enforced birth restrictions and laws around overseas adoptions were comparatively lax.
As those children reach adulthood, they are creating “very, very big demand” for reunions with their birth families, said Corinne Wilson, Ms. Loulee Wilson’s adoptive mother.
