Touching Home

In this second of six stories from the series Touching Home in China: in search of missing girlhoods, two American adoptees meet girls who grew up in the rural towns where they were abandoned as babies. The Chinese and American girls discover kinship in their shared beginnings and set out to explore differences of experience and attitude that their distant childhoods created.


Videos, photo galleries, interactive graphics, and audio narrations bring the girls’ blossoming friendships to life – and enable viewers to glimpse life as a girl in 21st century rural China.


The iBooks series Touching Home in China: in search of missing girlhoods anchors a transmedia project on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and a narrative website. At the heart of the story are two American adoptees who return as teens to the towns in China where each was abandoned as a newborn. There, they meet girls who grew up in these towns and learn about what their own girlhoods might have been like in 21st century rural China.  The girls open a fascinating cross-cultural dialogue about family life, school, work, and their aspirations. The project’s social media platforms engage a global audience with interactive news and commentary about girls and women’s lives in contemporary China.