Rediscovering Myself, My Culture, And My Family

My name is Benjamin Steger, and in the year 2000, on March 2nd at approximately 2:45pm, I was born in Nanjing. Shortly after I was orphaned and given my Chinese name; 何金鹏 (He Jin Peng) by my loving caretaker. In 2007, I was adopted by my American family of my parents and two dogs. I grew up in a fairly small town in New England with very few communities that I felt comfortable in. It was not until I was in college when I desired to explore more of my heritage and background, which leads me to today. After years of feeling like I was never whole and failing to find many others who could relate to me, as well as feeling somewhat alone in the world, I set myself a goal for 2024: go to Nanjing.

Since I was a junior in college, being more receptive to my past as an adoptee and after maturing through my transformative years in college, I have understood and appreciated my difference. Despite COVID causing some discomfort and adversities in 2020, I still found myself embracing the uniqueness of my situation. Additionally, I have been told during this period that even though I was born and grew up in China for 7 foundational years of my life, I will still be percieved as a foreigner. American-born Chinese (ABC) would be viewed with a more critical lens and differently than the rest of the population, which hurt to hear but likewise did not dissuade me from pursuing this goal.

My goal of going to Nanjing are to: find my birth parents (if possible), rediscover my childhood by visiting the orphanage, Nanjing Children's Hospital I grew up in, and reconnect with my cultural heritage that was lost from me. These goals were created from my experiences growing up in America as an Asian-American adoptee, which I have highlighted in the article I wrote; My Eyes are Open. A lot of who I am and how I came to be comes from the idea of nature versus nurture or internal and external pressures. Only after I had matured enough to understand my differences from others have I accepted them and accepted others for that difference.

I aim for a goal of $2,000 to support my trip to China so that way I do not have to continuously stress out about working several jobs and in order to get some rest before my trip. This will also cover expected and unexpected expenditures like food, housing, and transportation, which I have calculated. From the total donations to be expected, half of the funds will go into covering for food and transportation. If budgeted correctly, 25% of the funds will be used for food throughout the whole trip and 25% will be used for transportation around the vast city of Nanjing. Expectedly, New York ended up being extremely expensive to which remaining 50% of the fundraiser will be going towards covering. If you cannot donate my story, please share my story to as many people and communities as possible as the volume of people could potentially reach my birth parents. I greatly appreciate any help that you can provide and will maintain travel logs of my journey to share with you and the world! Thank you so much!

My father in China holding me up and I never felt so tall before: March, 2007.

My mother and I holding peace signs, which is very customary in taking pictures in China: March, 2007.