I was abandoned on a hillside as a baby. Years later, I found my long lost mother via a DNA test
- trushali Kotecha
- Apr 11
- 7 min read
23 March 2025 9:00am GMT
For decades, Rachel Rollinson wondered about the family she left in Hong Kong. So what happened when she reunited with her birth mother?
Writer Rachel Rollinson with her birth mother, who she met in 2023
Each year I celebrate two birthdays. The first, given to me by the orphanage, on Feb 13, is a raucous one with my friends and family. The second, my real one, is on Dec 16 and quite different. It is always a quiet, reflective day with my immediate family.
This hasn’t always been the case. Up until 2023, I had no idea when my real date of birth was. In 1964, I was abandoned on a hillside in Hong Kong, found and taken to an orphanage where they had guessed my age to be around 10 months.
At that time it was common for babies to be given up. It was a time of great upheaval in China with the famine causing refugees to pour into Hong Kong. Some families simply couldn’t cope. Sometimes it was because the mothers were too young and felt their only option was to abandon their baby in a stairwell and hope that they would be found.
I was one of 107 babies, mostly girls, who were brought over to the UK to be adopted. My British parents, who had two boys of their own, heard about the initiative and took on me and another older orphan girl. I was two and a half by the time I arrived, wearing a little turquoise embroidered jacket.
Rollinson wearing the turquoise jacket as a child, which she still has today Credit: Lucy Rollinson
My parents never concealed my origins from me. My middle name is Loi, which means “beautiful grass which came from the hillside”. The director of the children’s home tended to give you the name of where you were found. I always thought I was lucky I hadn’t been found in a stairwell.
Dad was a doctor at Westminster Hospital and Mum was a nurse. It was a very British upbringing. We’d walk the dogs on Wimbledon Common and I played the piano and violin.
The only time I really remember feeling different was on a beach in Dorset when I was about six and some other children sang a horrible song about dirty knees and Chinese. I had been brought up British and didn’t feel Chinese. Along the way though, I got used to name-calling: after a while, it’s water off a duck’s back.
At home, we would celebrate Chinese New Year. My sister and I were given an animal toy for each year and Mum might cook a Chinese meal. We never had a Chinese takeaway. We watched a lot of Chinese programmes, so any culture that I learnt was via osmosis.
Unfortunately, Dad passed away in 1976 due to a brain tumour – I was 12. One of his last wishes was for us to see where we came from. And in 1979 Mum took us back to Hong Kong to see the children’s home we had lived in.
It was still the old Hong Kong then, before all the skyscrapers. It was Christmas time and all the decorations were up. I was too young to really think that my birth family might be out there, somewhere. But back home in the UK, there were times in my bedroom when I’d wonder about them.
DNA discovery
After school I went on to study nursing – everyone at the hospital would ask me where I was from – and settled in Brighton. I was 25 when I met my husband Pete in Ibiza. We’ve been together ever since, moving to Lincolnshire when we had our three children, now aged 21, 24 and 26. Having my own children and experiencing the love I felt for them did make me wonder how my birth mother could have put herself through the heartache of giving me up.
Rachel met her husband Pete when she was 25
Then the wheels of fate started slowly to turn. In 2012, my sister phoned up and said someone was looking to speak to Hong Kong adoptees for a study. Two years later, 70 of us met up and it was amazing. We all had similar issues. Some had good adoptions. Some didn’t. Some had been brought up in less cosmopolitan places than London and had been paraded around villages for people to see.
I felt lucky and for me, the focus has always been on enjoying life now rather than feeling sad about the past. But I did want to know more. I managed to get my adoption files from Action for Children and in 2015, 30 of us went to Hong Kong. My adoptive mum had died five years earlier, but I knew she would have supported me. The files revealed what I was wearing when I was found: well-dressed in yellow and wearing different charms to keep me quiet and peaceful. Sadly there were no names or other clues about my real origins.
Rollinson had a ‘very British upbringing’ and ‘didn’t feel Chinese’
This time Hong Kong had changed. My children’s home had been sold and turned into yuppie flats. When I came home, I decided to upload my DNA to a website, which felt scary yet exciting. That was until the only matches were 6th cousins. I tried another website and this time managed to find a third cousin in Canada.
I’d pretty much given up when I found the DNA and family genealogy website MyHeritage. Yet again, I uploaded my raw DNA and didn’t think much would come of it, but in July 2022 I was matched with a first cousin. Tentatively, I sent him a message: “Hi, how are you? I think we’re related somehow. Would you be able to have a chat with me?”
It turned out he had just gone on it for fun, but he was able to put me in touch with his aunt who’d had eight children. It didn’t seem quite real that this might be my mother, but just before Christmas 2022, I did a DNA test with my potential brother. In January 2023 the results came back. He was a full match. I had found my mother after all this time.
Meeting my birth mother
Suddenly I was in a WhatsApp group with all these new family members and me trying to translate what they were saying. Fortunately, some of the younger nieces and nephews spoke English. It was overwhelming. There were so many messages and pictures of them all introducing themselves. My head was spinning, but assistance from Winnie Davies of Look 4 Mama, who had helped other adoptees, helped.
Rollinson holding up a picture of her birth mother
Finally, I found out the truth of my abandonment. I had been abandoned due to poverty and cultural beliefs. I was the first girl born after three sons, and a Taoist temple had advised my parents to give me up, believing I was a bad omen. A third party had done the actual dropping me off. What happened was typical of Chinese culture and superstition at the time.
Sadly, my birth father died in 2014 but that February I could Facetime with my mum. She was smiling and really excited. We had to communicate through my nephews who were quite shy. I could tell they were thinking, “Help! Not another auntie!”
In April I went over with my husband and children to meet my Hong Kong family. I had a million questions but I managed to distil it down to just three that I wanted answered: What’s my date of birth? Where’s Dad laid to rest? And what medical problems are there?
We arranged to meet at a station near where my birth mother lived and that’s where I first saw her. Before I could even hug her my sister jumped in and insisted on taking a selfie for another sister who was in Taiwan.
But then I got my cuddle with my mum. It was emotional. It felt strange being somewhere public with so much noise around us as I had all these feelings coursing through me. So we went for Dim Sum – one thing I learnt straight away is that my family loves food just as much as I do!
It was there that Mum produced my original birth certificate. She’d kept it all this time. And it turned out the birthday I’d been celebrating all my life was only two months out from my real one: 16 December 1963.
‘There were so many similarities between me and my siblings,’ says Rollinson, pictured with family
Afterwards, we went back to the flat where I could have been raised. It was so small; a typical Chinese family apartment of just two bedrooms. I couldn’t imagine what my life could have been like. There were so many similarities between me and my siblings. We are all of a similar height. My two younger sisters have the same tight, curly hair that you can’t straighten. We all wear glasses. And it was strange seeing my face on my brothers.
Dad was 87 when he died and my siblings took me to see his grave, which helped me feel a sense of connection to him. But on the way back to the airport my sister told me Mum was poorly. I kept in touch on WhatsApp and they kept sending me pictures of her. She was in and out of the hospital and then in October she passed away. She was 86.
Finding closure
It was as if she had been waiting to see me again before she went. It meant everything that I’d had that chance. I went to the funeral; an amazing two-day ceremony. My siblings introduced me to all these people. All they kept saying was: “This is sister”. I’m not sure whether the people I was being introduced to had any idea who I was but I just smiled and waved.
I’ve been back since and every time it is to big hugs, grins and photo sessions. One of my brothers even lives in Cambridge now. With all the changes in Hong Kong, he felt it was safer to come to the UK.
Sometimes I wonder what I would be doing if I had grown up in Hong Kong, but then family life takes over and you move on. Hong Kong feels a very long way from Lincolnshire. I’m getting on with my life and every now and then I’ll pop over and catch up with everybody.
I’ve never felt any anger. I’ve always thought that what will be, will be.
It was very obvious that Mum was sorry for what had happened. She was traumatised after it and had even tried to find me later but didn’t know how. Friends say I should write a book, but I always say no. What I feel like I’ve got now is closure. And that is wonderful to have.
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