The Americans returned to the Zeng home each day for the rest of the week. Marsha and Victoria learned to use chopsticks; the Zengs listened respectfully to Marsha’s pre-meal prayers without joining in. Conversation quickly moved from pleasantries to the substance of the visit.

Marsha delivered a speech she had rehearsed for nearly a decade, stating she would not have adopted Esther had she known the child was stolen. Youdong deflected blame to the government and expressed gratitude for how Marsha raised Esther. Their exchange carried the stiff, calibrated quality of a diplomatic summit, but tensions surfaced. Youdong could not understand why an older couple would adopt and implied Sam should have been able to block the decision—an assumption the Fredericks found offensive. More pointedly, Youdong asked how much the adoption cost, using the Chinese words for “buy” and “sell” (214). Marsha calmly explained that her family sold their house to afford the $25,000 total, most of which was channeled to the government’s official adoption agency. Youdong then addressed Esther directly, apologizing for his failure to find her.

Physical warmth gradually replaced formality: Yan warmed Esther’s hand near the brazier under the table, and Shuangjie braided Esther’s hair. Marsha presented a photo album of Esther’s American childhood. The Zeng family gave a tour of their large, unfinished brick house. Demick wondered whether signs of recent prosperity like new furniture and a new car might mean the Zengs had a greater net worth than the Fredericks.

An elaborate ancestral shrine covering one wall prompted discussion of the family’s history as rice farmers for hundreds of years. Youdong and Zanhua recounted impoverished childhoods and their matchmaker-arranged courtship. The sisters praised their parents’ stable, gentle relationship and insisted boys and girls were raised equally—though the 93-year-old paternal grandfather, arriving near the end of a visit, declared that having a son was the mandatory “traditional way” (220). Adding to this, in a private conversation with Demick, Shuangjie questioned why her brother was intended to inherit the family home instead of one of the older sisters.

The entire group traveled by minivan to the home of Esther’s uncle, Yuan Guoxiong, known locally as “the pigeon house” for its hundreds of stacked pigeon coops—a side business for the family. The visit carried particular weight: Guoxiong served as Esther’s guardian while she was in hiding for the first two years of her life, gave her the name Fang, and registered her under his surname, Yuan, making him her de facto father.

Guoxiong greeted them with visible skepticism, as if doubting Esther’s identity. Only after he had lifted her hair and found the small identifying bump on her left ear was he reassured. Then, he welcomed her home after 16 years. His grown sons, who had seen Esther as a sister, greeted her briefly before retreating shyly.

Guoxiong’s wife and Esther’s de facto foster mother, Xiuhua, took command of the gathering. She described Esther’s precocious development and enthusiastic appetite before turning to the abduction. She showed the back staircase from which her sons once escaped with Esther to evade Family Planning officials, then reenacted the day in June 2002 when officials stormed the front door and physically restrained her while Esther was wrenched away. Yan, four at the time, recalled running down the street screaming. Most family members teared up; Esther listened without crying. The central message the family most wanted to convey was that Esther had not been abandoned—she was loved and had been forcibly removed.

Afterward, Zanhua led the group on a short walk to the bamboo grove where she had given birth in secret, pointing to the spot where the shed had once stood. The visit closed with multigenerational family photographs.

Demick states that the “heritage tour is a rite of passage for young Chinese adoptees” (227), typically culminating at the location where a child was officially documented as found, sites many treat as sacred ground. For Esther, that address—the bamboo arts factory in Shaoyang listed in her adoption papers—was a fabrication. Esther declined to see it.

The Shaoyang orphanage was more relevant: Esther had spent her final six months in China there. Marsha had been denied access during the adoption, so the group decided to attempt an unannounced visit. The Shaoyang Social Welfare Institute resembled a fortified compound from the outside, but guards admitted the van after spotting its white passengers. The grounds held a manicured park and an empty new playground; the children—mostly preschoolers with disabilities—were in a building with barred windows.

When the group sought permission to tour, a young administrator angrily confronted them, insisting no one had arrived unannounced in his eight years there. Marsha apologized in a friendly, self-effacing way, posing as a clueless tourist. The official calmed but grew suspicious when he learned Esther had been adopted in 2002, at the height of the confiscation scandal. When asked for Esther’s name, Marsha offered only the shared surname Shao, withholding details that could link Esther to the scandal. Before the official could call the director, the group exited hastily, passing the director himself on the way out. Demick reflected that no one from the orphanage was ever formally disciplined for its role in the confiscations. She recalled another orphanage’s director who once admitted that without payments, no babies would be found.

As the New Year holiday wound down, the Zeng sisters prepared to return to city life while Youdong alone remained to tend the farm. At a final meal, Youdong broke his usual teetotalism to serve homemade rice wine for toasts. Esther told her birth parents through the interpreter that she would now call them Mom and Dad, with Marsha’s enthusiastic approval. Zanhua toasted Demick, crediting her with fulfilling a promise to bring Esther back. Youdong distributed red cash envelopes; Demick, uncomfortable accepting gifts as a journalist, redirected hers to one of the children. Zanhua and Marsha shared a long embrace—a shift from Zanhua’s initial reluctance to be touched by Esther’s adoptive mother.

Shuangjie and Yan rode back to Changsha with the group. In the minivan, Esther and Shuangjie managed their first semi-private conversation, asking each other about romance. Neither had been on a date; both wanted to travel before settling down. Shuangjie did not want to marry young like her sisters. Yan, cradling her sleeping son, agreed, advising against early marriage or marrying a village farmer. She admired her parents but criticized rural families spending their lives away from home to build large houses occupied only once a year. The sisters taught each other words in Chinese and English.

Back in Changsha, the contrast with the village was jarring: Spotless subways, QR-code restaurants, and glittering shopping malls prompted Victoria to compare the city to New York’s Times Square. Despite blending visually into crowds, Esther and Victoria felt no more at ease than in Texas as locals consistently addressed them in Mandarin. When a vendor said Esther did not look American, she retorted by asking what an American looked like.

In their final days in Changsha, Shuangjie visited the hotel each day but declined to have the group come to her school or dormitory. In the hotel suite, the twins played card games, patty-cake, and thumb war—a small taste of the shared childhood they were denied. They did each other’s makeup and braided each other’s hair in matching French braids, finding that cosmetic changes brought their appearances into close alignment. They exchanged shirts, bonded over shared loves of fruit and art, and puzzled over differences such as Esther’s multiple food allergies. Both could roll their tongues laterally, a discovery that delighted them.

Demick observed that beyond surface similarities, the twins shared a fundamental temperament: Both were calm, deliberate, and slow to display emotion, traits that appeared to reflect their father’s character. Shuangjie said Esther was braver; Demick suspected that Shuangjie’s pronounced fears, including anxiety about getting lost or being kidnapped, might reflect unresolved trauma from the abduction. Feeling pressure from family and observers to appear more alike, Shuangjie resolved to lose weight and grow out her bangs while Esther offered to cut her hair. Asked whether either envied the other’s life, both said no.

After requesting privacy, the twins spent over an hour alone communicating through a translation app and emerged noticeably closer. They began planning for Shuangjie to visit Texas, which made the approaching separation bearable.

On their last night, the Lantern Festival, Shuangjie arrived visibly ill. A rainstorm reduced the city fireworks display to indistinct smears of color through a banquet room window; the festive dinner sat largely untouched. However, when Shuangjie’s car arrived, she insisted on riding home alone for the first time, saying she wanted to be brave like Esther.