In China

Information about searching in China, arranging a visit for your orphanage, personalizing business cards to take with you for your search, and distributing posters!

Magnify Your Search!

When you decide to travel to China, you can let either of these organizations know and offer to distribute their posters with information for birth families about adoptees and DNA testing.

DNAConnect has posters that you can distribute and will also direct you to areas to go to search. They will test every birth family that comes forward free-of-charge.

Nanchang Project may be able to put a search poster together with other adoptees from your area. They will also test every birth family free-of-charge.

Customized Business Cards

Personalize the ICSA business card with your own information on one side, and take it with you to China to use as a handout during your visit.

One side shows your own information and the other side links to the ICSA WeChat mini program database with all adoptees listed.

Instructions

Make a copy of the ICSA business card template (Google Slides). **Notice the helpful notes above and below the first slide.**
Insert your current photo, baby photo, and your WeChat QR code.
Customize the text, all with Chinese characters (found on your adoption documents):
1. Replace X1 with your name in Chinese characters as given by the orphanage.
2. Replace YYY1年M1月D1日 with your birthdate, i.e. 1996年7月9日.
3. Replace YYY2年M2月D2日 with the date you were found, i.e. 1996年7月11日.
4. Replace X2 with the nationality of your parents, ie. 美国人 for American, 荷兰人 for Dutch, etc. See notes in the template or use Google translate for help.
5. Replace X3 with the name of your orphanage.
Save the file as a pdf: File > Download.
Upload your pdf to VistaPrint or another printer of your choice to print standard size business cards, 3.5 x 2 inches/88.9 x 50.8 mm.

Viewing Your Records

If you are in China, you can personally see copies of your files. Before, you could do this at the main China Center for Children’s Welfare and Adoption (CCCWA) office in Beijing, but this is temporarily not possible. You can go to the Civil Affairs office for your province. You can also visit your orphanage and ask to see your file there.

Civil Affairs Office and Orphanage

You will need the help of a searcher or someone who speaks Chinese to get permission and arrange visits to the provincial civil affairs office and to your orphanage. The Civil Affairs office prefers to work with a Chinese speaker. See the instructions here. The application shows the information you will need to provide.

List of Civil Affairs offices by province
Application to visit orphanage and Civil Affairs office

China Center for Children’s Welfare and Adoption

Update from Cherry Yan (January 2024): As of now, the China Center for Children’s Welfare and Adoption (CCCWA) is not open for visits. Hopefully they will open at some point in the future. The person that formerly worked at the archives is no longer there and the new person seems very reluctant to allow visits. Recent adoptees visiting Beijing were unable to view their files, even when showing up in person.

You still have the option of viewing your files in person at the provincial civil affairs office. See the instructions above.

We are leaving the instructions for visiting CCCWA on here for now, in hopes it will reopen in the future. View and download the pdf with these instructions here.