‘My parents abandoned me in China. Now I’ve made it to the US and I want to find them’

A Chinese preschool teacher who made her way to the United States after being abandoned in a orphanage as a young girl has started a search to find her birth parents.

Dang Miaomiao overcame her tough start in life – she was probably abandoned as an infant due to the fact that she was born with scoliosis, a medical condition that affects the curve of the spine – to win a place at an American college, where she was able to continue her studies thanks in part to sponsorship from an American couple.

Having studied and worked in the United States for 12 years, Dang, who was raised in an orphanage in Luoyang, in the central province of Henan, said it was time to start the search for her biological parents.

“Over the past few years, I focused on settling in the US. As time passed by, I began to think about my past and wonder how I came to this world,” Dang said speaking from her home in Seattle.

“I am worrying if I didn’t try to look for my birth family right now, people who have any clues will start dying because I was abandoned more than 30 years ago,” she said.

According to her official documentation she was born on July 1, 1983 – a date determined by the staff at the orphanage.