My Return to China for Language, Culture, and Ethnography
By: Molli Derfuss
My Story, My Path: About Me
Hello, my name is Molli Xiao Xiao Derfuss. I am a third-year undergraduate student at Florida State University pursuing a Dual Degree in Art History and Religion with a minor in Chinese. As a Global Scholar, I am taking time this summer to engage in a community that is both intimately personal and incredibly vast: the Chinese American adoptee community.
For 9 weeks this summer, I will participate in NYU Shanghai’s 2026 Summer Chinese Language Immersion Program to study Mandarin, re-engage with my heritage culture, and conduct a video ethnographic project to contribute to Chinese American adoption discourse.
A Braided Thread: My 3 Summer Goals
What will be accomplished in Shanghai this summer is threefold: language immersion and study, cultural re-engagement, and ethnographic research.
Language Immersion & Study
NYU Shanghai’s Summer Chinese Language Immersion Program (NYU Shanghai Program Website) is an intensive language-learning program designed to rapidly increase students’ Mandarin proficiency through accelerated study and cultural engagement in the Shanghai, Pudong area. Speaking, listening comprehension, character writing, and grammar development are just a few areas targeted in this language program. Together with local excursions and intimate instructor-student relationships, this program blends language learning with rich cultural engagement. After this summer, I am confident in my ability to apply the skills developed during this program to advance my scholarship and bolster my academic resume for graduate school applications.
The second and third products of this summer trip are inextricably bound and necessitated by the other.
Cultural Re-Engagement
First, my cultural re-engagement is predicated on my adoption from China in 2006.
On September 18th, 2006, my family arrived at my orphanage, marking the beginning of my emigration journey: the inauguration of my migrancy. Annually, I commemorate this day with a ritual that mirrors the identity it created. I commune with my loved ones, and eat “Chinese” food, or, perhaps more correctly, “American-Chinese” food—as a Chinese-American girl. This day is charmingly referred to as my “Gotcha Day,” but what makes this day different than my birthday is not that I was received (”got”), but that I was held…and never let go of.
So, returning to China is more than an excursion; it is an exercise of identity-making, specifically cultural identity. Since my baptism on September 22, 2023, my spiritual identity has been secured in Jesus Christ. (So that makes three anniversaries, celebrating the beauty of new life and the perfection of God’s plan). It is my cultural identity that is challenged by the distance between my home in the United States and my birthplace in China. My return will be emotional but beautifully vital to understanding and creating for myself my cultural identity.
Ethnographic Research
Second, I am conducting a video ethnography to document my return and capture the voices of Chinese adoption: my own, adoptees, and those left behind in China after the flight of approximately 180,000 Chinese children.
I chose a videographic format to conduct this research because of its emotional immediacy and intuitive accessibility. Increasingly so, I’ve chosen to record my experience through a documentary because my eldest brother, Jason Derfuss, chose to record my adoption journey through a documentary, and I’d like the chance to respond—a perfect way to celebrate the 20th anniversary of my adoption.
This documentary will narrate my trip back to China. My lived experience and interviews with “Adoption voices” both in the States and in China will be my data. The result will answer my research question or CBI (Community-Based Inquiry): how does a “return” to China contribute to cultural identity construction at the site of Chinese-American adoption?
Join Me Again Later and Continue the Thread
Thank you for allowing me to introduce myself. I look forward to sharing my threaded journey with you!
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