What if you didn’t know your real name, your date of birth, or indeed who your birth parents were? What if you didn’t know if you had siblings, brothers and sisters, cousins and nephews? What if they were living parallel lives to yours -- a family tree filled with strangers who happen to be biologically linked?
For Li Ying Andrews, 64, a mother of three, her past has always remained shrouded by mystery. She has only known the barest of facts about her early story: that she was born in Taiwan, that she had a little brother, and that both siblings were given away: she to a Chinese acrobatic troupe, he to an orphanage.
From age two to five, Li Ying recalls only life with her dressmaker uncle and aunt, and her little brother. Then one day, her uncle takes her to an acrobat school. She never sees them again.
She is given to the Chang acrobatic troupe, comprising four brothers who travelled from China to Taiwan in 1949. There, they laid the roots of their teaching school and practice, still flourishing today.
Acrobatics is an ancient art in China with its beginnings going back 4,000 years to the Xia Dynasty, venerated as both a royal court and street art performance culture seeded in people’s everyday lives.
In Taiwan, poverty-stricken families would often give their children up for adoption to these travelling troupes where they would be trained as performers.
Li Ying is formally adopted by the youngest Chang brother, and takes to training like a natural.
At 15, she meets the McGowans, a travelling family of Australian performers called The Trio Fantastic, headed by dad Robert, son Peter and adopted daughter Michelle. Between 1968 and 1975, she tours with the troupe across Asia and internationally: a black and white photo from the time shows a pretty teenager, age 15, in a barren Middle Eastern landscape, her wide smile and open, welcome gaze giving no hint of her traumatic childhood.
Li Ying is eventually adopted by the family. It is her first sense of home, but Robert McGowan dies in 1975 without ever filling in the blanks. She has been searching since then.
This feeling of profound loss, of having so many vital pieces of her life missing, has haunted her all her life. In a sense she is wearing a borrowed identity: even her name, she will learn, is not her own.
At 64, she finally decides to try to find answers, fill in the missing pieces in the scroll of her life.
She travels back to Taipei with daughter Olivia.
For the adopted who are without any biological history, even a simple walk through a crowded street can be a minefield, a search for kin, faces that resemble yours. At one stage, Li Ying wonders if she’s just passed by her long-lost brother on a busy market strip full of haggling customers and vendors.
Li Ying Andrews and her long lost brothers. Source: Supplied
It echoes the sentiment of many like her: “Whenever I thought about having birth parents, it was like putting my mind in a deep, dark, vast space—nothing existed. My constant thought was, “I wonder if someone out there looks like me, and is similar to me.”
Through a local researcher and interpreter, Gladys, they find their first link in the chain: an address for the surviving Changs, the family who adopted her as a child. They meet. Photo albums are shared, questions are asked about her identity. But no one knows anything more.
It seems a dead end. Tears are shed. But mother and daughter persevere, taking a train to the southern Taiwanese city where Li Ying believes her uncle came from. There, with the help of a local sociology professor, they hit the jackpot. Among other things, he finds her original adoption papers. And there it is, in black and white:
Ho Lan-Hsiang. Born 25 December,1953.
To Li Ying, there is a sense of disbelief, then joy. She studies the paper. In a sense, she is meeting herself for the first time.
They then have another stroke of luck; their researcher Gladys manages to track down an old man, now 93, who used to work with her father in his dress shop. He casually unleashes a bombshell: she tells her that her brother is living in a nearby village.
We see Li Ying approach a humble house, open the gate, walk in. The moment of reunion is profoundly moving. Her little brother, now a greying, slim man, walks hesitantly to her. “Didi?”, she asks him uncertainly. Little brother? He nods, wordless; all that needs to be said is written all over both their faces face. They embrace; two siblings reunited after more than 50 years.
The past continues to give up its secrets. Her brother tells her that in 2000, he tracked down their biological mother, now deceased. She gave him a little black and white photo of the two children, he says – and passes it to Li Ying. She stares, wordless again. There is so much in that small, sepia-toned portrait of two tiny, solemn children, a whole universe of emotion and history, loss and family secrets.
Li Ying’s eyes fill up with tears as her brother tells her their mother’s parting wish: that she wanted him to find her. They weren’t discarded like rubbish after all, she learns. They were treasured, wanted, remembered.
“A weight has lifted off my shoulders,” she says slowly. “I used to think I was by myself in this world, but not anymore. We are a family.”
Every Family Has A Secret airs on SBS Tuesday July 2 at 7:30pm. The three-part series continues on Tuesday nights. Catch up on episodes with after broadcast.
