Running to avoid being tagged by the kids while playing a game in the Mentor Program, I suddenly came to think of a future when I might adopt an American child or a child from a different culture. They are so pure, so nice and kind to me, and the language does not seem to be a problem between us.

Thrilled about the idea of adoption, I couldn’t wait to check the requirements of adopting a child from another country. It seems that disappointment always comes hand-in-hand with expectation. The Chinese website Baidu Zhidao, a website similar to Yahoo! Answers, informed me that Chinese adoptive parents are required to have permanent U.S. resident status in order to adopt a child from U.S. foster care, and that parents cannot leave the United States for longer than three months. I was shocked facing the requirements! They are suggesting that I need to have the green card before I am able to adopt an American child, and once I have adopted the child, I will lose my freedom of living in China, where I want the kid to grow up.

This seems unfair considering that adopting Chinese children has become an American trend. There are 5,000 to 8,000 Chinese children adopted by American parents and brought back to America every year. All the requirements for American adoptive parents are that they have a nice family and are wealthy enough to raise the children.

Though shocked by the facts provided in Baidu Zhidao, I didn’t completely fall for what I initially read. I wished that the answers were wrong or outdated, and with that hope I went to the website of American adoption laws and other adoption organization websites. The research didn’t make me feel any better, but assured me that I can’t adopt an American child as a Chinese citizen living in China. Though rules for transcultural adoptions do exist, according to Adoption Services, an adoption agency which has branches all over United States, transcultural or transracial adoption in the nation usually refers to “the placement of a black, Hispanic, Asian child or a child from another country with U.S. Caucasian adoptive parents.” Not the other direction. There are cases where American kids are adopted by foreigners, mostly Europeans and Canadians, but as stated in Adoption.com, “Foreign nationals are permitted to adopt a child born in the United States while residing here in the United States.”

My friends questioned my desire to adopt an American child when she believes that China has already got so many orphans and America has foster care to take care of them. That’s not the case. As of November, the National Adoption Month, there are 115,000 children in American foster care waiting for families. They may live a better life than Chinese orphans because of foster care, but the future for them is no better. More than one third of them have been physically or sexually victimized in the 18 months after leaving foster care without families, according to The American Orphan written by Arleta James, an adoption professional.

The American orphans also need the emotional and financial support of families other than foster care organizations. If adoption is an option generated by love, it should be open to every family that has the ability and love to raise a child regardless of the parents’ race and nationality. It’s so kind of Americans to adopt Chinese kids and love them as their own. I appreciate the kindness and hope one day I can be one of them raising a kid from different culture.