The extraordinary and riveting story of separated Chinese twins with one twin seized by the
authorities and adopted into America by the Samuel Johnson-winning author of Nothing to Envy .
In 2000 a Chinese woman gave birth to twins in a bamboo grove trying to avoid detection by
the government because she already had two daughters. Two years later an American couple
travelled to Shaoyang to adopt a Chinese toddler they thought had been abandoned. Their
understanding had been that China's brutal one-child policy was leading to hundreds of
abandoned girls desperate for the care of adopted parents. What they didn't know - and what
award-winning journalist Barbara Demick uncovered in 2007 while working as a correspondent in
Beijing - was that their daughter had been snatched from her beloved family and her identical
twin. Under China's one-child policy hundreds of poor Chinese were giving up their children due
to soaring fines and threats of violence. More sinister still international demand for
adoptees was sky-rocketing and local officials were forcibly seizing children and trafficking
them to orphanages who were selling them abroad. Daughters of the Bamboo Grove tells the
gripping story of separated twins their respective fates in China and the USA and Barbara
Demick's role in reuniting them against huge odds. Painting a rich portrait of China's history
and culture it asks questions about the roots impact and consequences of China's one-child
policy the ethics of international adoption and ultimately the assumptions and narratives
we hold about the quality of lives lived in the East and the West.
