Unlike many adopted children, Mei-Ling Hopgood did not go in search of her genetic roots. Instead, at 23, her birth family—mother, father and seven siblings—found her.
Growing up in the Detroit area, Hopgood didn’t give much thought to her first seven months of her life, spent in Taiwan in the care of an American nun. Her eventual home with Chris and Rollie Hopgood and her two younger, adopted brothers was a nurturing place where the subject of adoption was an ongoing discussion.
Just after graduating with a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, Hopgood took a job at the Detroit Free Press and then moved to St. Louis to work for the Post-Dispatch. But no news story would rival the personal one that was beginning to unfold in Hopgood’s life.
In 1997, after an appeal from her Chinese family, Hopgood booked a flight to Taiwan that would bring some answers but more questions. A request by the family to bring large-size clothes for a brother whom the family adopted just before Hopgood was given up was one of many ways the cultures clashed.
The heartbreaks of being female in mid-to-late 20th century China play out not only in Hopgood’s having to leave her family, but also in the tortured life of loss and subjugation led by her birth mother.
In many ways, Hopgood knows she really is the lucky one — and so do her Chinese sisters.
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By Nancy Larson
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