Found

From 1979 to 2015, Chinese law banned families from having more than one child. Few families could afford to pay the $8,500 fine. Many women had abortions and many others, especially those who gave birth to less valued girl babies, left the blanketed infants in crates and boxes, at building doorsteps, on busy streets, outside orphanages, some with money and birthdates pinned to them, in the dead of night. FOUND follows three adoptees, Sadie, Chloe, and Lily, teenagers living privileged middle-class lives in the U.S., who through DNA discovered they were cousins. Together they hire Liu Hao, a dedicated Chinese tour guide/detective/DNA researcher, who specializes in bringing adopted kids to China to see where they were found and, if they choose, to seek their birth parents. As a Chinese girl who knows her parents nearly gave her up, too, Liu is especially sympathetic to parents looking for abandoned children and adoptees seeking biological parents. The girls are unprepared for the emotional impact of being in China, seeing the spots they were abandoned, visiting their orphanages, meeting the loving workers who took care of them, and even meeting a family that gave up a baby. Adding to the built-in emotions is the evident poverty of the kinds of parents who had to give up babies in the early 2000s. The girls share feelings about their origins and allow their emotions to be recorded. They demonstrate wisdom beyond their years as they come to understand what their biological parents must have experienced.