Personal Column: Adoption abroad

I was found abandoned in a tenement block in Hong Kong on Christmas Day in 1962. A stranger took me to a police station and I spent the first few months of my life in St Christopher's children's home.

The following year, I flew to the UK with four other Chinese babies to be adopted by British parents. Our arrival was so unusual it was written about in the Daily Mirror.

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My adopted parents had been unable to adopt in the UK because my mother is Catholic and my father Church of England. Couples of mixed religions were not deemed fit to adopt.

As a baby in Hong Kong, I was given two names: the English name Christine, and the Chinese name Tin Nga Kei, which means angel from heaven. When I arrived at my adopted parents' house in Hillingdon, north London, just before my first birthday, my English life as Christine began.

My earliest memories relate to school. I absolutely hated it. It was the first time in my life I realised I was different from everyone else. Essentially, I felt abandoned. I was only happy when I was with my family. I felt safe with them. Every single day, my poor adoptive mother would hand me over to a teacher kicking and screaming. It was a daily trauma for many years.

Right from the start, I didn't fit in. I lived in a suburban area where almost everyone was white. I was the only non-white child at my primary school and children can be cruel. Of course there were racial taunts such as "chinky".

I was always an outsider on my own.

If I had any fantasies about my real parents, as most adopted children do, I probably pictured them as these fabulous white people.

I recall feeling totally disconnected in history classes. It was only later I could see that this was because it was all about British history - even though I grew up here, it was so far removed from where I came from it was difficult to relate to. It wasn't my history - it was everyone else's.

My family life was very happy. I had a younger brother who was adopted in the UK and a little sister who was the biological daughter of my parents. We were all treated equally and behaved like typical siblings.

But it must have been difficult for my parents. They told me right from the start that I was from Hong Kong and they tried to instill in me a sense of pride in this fact. But they had never even been to Hong Kong themselves and knew very little about it.

Looking back, what the social workers should have advised my parents to do but didn't, was tell me about Hong Kong. I had no clear idea about where it was, what it was like - the culture, the language, the food.

It wasn't my parents' fault as nobody told them to do this. But it might have made things a bit easier. As a result, beyond the cartoon Hong Kong Phooey and the pandas in the news, I simply had no concept of Hong Kong. I just remember thinking "I want to be white more than anything".

My mother was also very worried about how I'd cope as I got older. I didn't often get invited to other children's houses or to sleep-overs. I was always quite fearful and shy and introverted as a child. It was in my 20s that I became more comfortable with where I came from. I accepted I was not going to change. I went on to obtain social worker qualifications at Bradford University where I met my husband and we now have two daughters.

I visited Hong Kong for the first time in 1991. My mother came too and as a surprise, arranged a visit to the building that was once the St Christopher's home, where I had spent the first few months of my life. I felt strangely disconnected and unemotional.

But the second time I visited Hong Kong, four years later, it was different. The sense of what I had lost really hit me. This was where I was from but I spoke a different language, had a different culture - I lived in a different world. When you are adopted overseas and move to a new country, you immediately lose any way of reconnecting with your birth family, your heritage, your sense of identity, your culture. I felt very emotional when it came to leaving.

I'm planning to go back again next year to try to find out more about where I came from. One of the few things I own from that part of my life is a small black and white photograph of me in the children's home.

I also have a piece of paper so old and thin I've had it laminated. It is my social history report and tells the short story of how I was found. It has a policeman's description of my "round face, big eyes and flat nose" and how I was healthy and warmly dressed when I was found.

I don't think I have ever acknowledged the desire to search for my birth family because I have always believed they are untraceable. I don't let myself have that longing.

But when you've been adopted from overseas, you need tangible evidence of your other life, of your world before you were adopted, otherwise it is hard to believe or to understand.

That's why when I go back to Hong Kong next year, I want to try to find the tenement block where I was left as a baby.

I am neither for nor against overseas adoption. I'm a firm believer that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

On one level, Madonna's son is not going to want for anything. He will have a life that most people can only dream of. But on another level, there is the question of his psychological well-being.

When he returns to Malawi, how is he going to feel as he stands in his best designer gear with his mobile phone and bodyguards in an impoverished village before his father?

It is a very Western view that money can buy happiness. But the emotional and psychological effects of uprooting a child need to be considered too.

Along with feeling extremely alienated and angry, he is also going to feel very guilty and ask "why me?".

Anyone who is adopted from abroad is destined to struggle with these issues for the rest of their lives.

Chris Atkins works for the support service After Adoption (www.afteradoption.com) and co-founded the Transnational and Transracial Adoption Group (www.ttag.org.uk). For more information, read 'In Search of Belonging', by Perlita Harris, published by the British Association for Adoption & Fostering (www.baaf.org.uk)