Ghost & Shadow Helix  March 2026

This piece examines the complexities of identity, loss, and transformation through the lens of China’s One-Child Policy. I created a serpentine form using origami fortune tellers folded from tea bag wrappers and strung together with fishing line, evoking the skin of a snake. Each fortune teller represents a child, particularly those adopted into the United States, while the tea bag material symbolizes the mothers left behind—steeped in sacrifice, often unseen, and discarded. In Chinese culture, the snake embodies grace, wisdom, and the continual shedding of old layers to reveal new life. In mythology, snakes are linked to deities like Nuwa and Fuxi, suggesting power and origin. As “little dragons,” they carry an echo of divine force, even as they slither close to the earth and to pain. This symbolism resonates with the dislocation and adaptation experienced by both mother and child in the aftermath of forced separation. The fortune teller, a familiar childhood object, evokes both playfulness and fate—hinting at the many lives redirected by policy, distance, and adoption. This piece reflects the hidden bonds between children and their birth culture and between mothers and the lives they were denied. The materials—fragile, stained, folded, and stitched together—underscore the quiet endurance of those affected. The result is a hybrid creature: part plaything, part relic, part offering. By combining domestic objects with mythological symbolism, I aim to evoke the emotional complexity of separation, adoption, and identity across time, culture, and memory. 

Under China’s One-Child Policy, families who chose to keep a second child faced heavy fines that they often could not afford. Many delayed or avoided registration, leaving these children without legal identity. As a result, children were denied access to public education and transportation. As adults, they were denied employment and even the ability to marry and forced to exist in the shadows of officially recognized siblings. 

These “ghost children” lived parallel lives, visible within families yet erased from society. The double helix structure reflects the life they might have lived as recognized citizens—two strands of existence, one acknowledged and one denied. The double helix spirals around a cage-like form, symbolizing confinement within the social and political constraints of the policy. This examines disassociation, inequality, and the quiet endurance of those rendered invisible, whose absence continues to shape identity, family, and memory.