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As It Happens

She was adopted from China. Then she met the parents who gave her up.

Ricki Mudd is one of the few children adopted from China to find their birth parents. She wanted to know why they didn't keep her. The answer was more complicated - and heart-breaking - than she imagined.
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Ricki Mudd was 12 when she met her birth father, Wu Jin Cai, her brother Wu Chao, and birth mother, Xu Xian Zhen. (Photo courtesy of Ricki Mudd)
As It Happens10:00She was adopted from China. Then she met the parents who gave her up.

Ricki Mudd considers herself lucky.

Lucky that her American parents adopted her from an orphanage in China when she was four. Lucky that she is one of only a handful of adoptees who has found her birth family in China. And lucky that she found out how her parents came to give her up -- even though the story was a painful one.

"I'm sure it was very difficult [for them] because I am their child and my birth parents did love me deeply," she tells As It Happens co-host Carol Off.

Her story is the subject of a new documentary called Ricki's Promise.

Ricki Mudd (top centre) with her parents, William and Wendy, and her sisters, Danette, Lacey, Rebecca and Veronica. (Photo courtesy of Ricki Mudd)

When she was adopted, all the Mudds knew about Ricki's birth family is that they likely placed her in an orphanage because of China's one child policy. From 1979 until last year, Chinese parents were only allowed to have one baby. And many gave their daughters up for adoption in the hopes of having a boy.

But, as Mudd learned when she finally met her parents, the truth was much more complicated -- and more heart-wrenching -- than that.

I can't blame my parents or my family, even my paternal grandmother.- Ricki Mudd

Her parents tried to keep her hidden away at first, so the authorities wouldn't know they had a daughter. When that became impossible, they paid a local woman to care for her and let them visit. That "foster mother" also agreed to have her brother, who was childless, register her as his own child.

Instead, she ended up in an orphanage. Their anguish over losing Ricki contributed to her birth parents divorce.

"[My mother] thought she'd never see me again," Mudd explains. "My paternal grandmother was against my existence as a girl. And my dad loved me, but he was also a pious son and the paternal grandmother held a lot of power in the family."

Ricki's brother, Chao Wu, now lives with her family in Washington state. (Photo courtesy of Ricki Mudd)

Mudd says she doesn't have any bitterness about what happened.

"Cultural belief isn't decided by an individual, it's decided by a culture, so I can't blame my parents or my family, even my paternal grandmother," she says.

Mudd is now grown up and going to college. And her brother, Chao, has now moved to the United States to go to school. His parents are paying his tuition and he's living rent-free with the Mudds.

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