Lillie's Ethnicity

A couple of months ago I emailed a woman named Jane Liedtke. She is the founder of Our Chinese Daughters Foundation, lives in China with her daughter and works to make sure that families have opportunities to learn about their child's first country. I sent her Lillie's picture and asked her about what ethnic group Lillie might be from. I had previously had a doctor tell me that she thought Lillie looked very "traditional Chinese", so I expected to hear that she looked like the Han majority. I was surprised with her answer:
"She has features that would seem like she's not han but from a minority group such as Tu or Dong which are in the region - (such as her eyes and forehead), also has a very Jiangxi looking face shape which is downriver toward Wuhan. Not the typical Sichuan face for sure."
I looked into these groups, found a little information but not anything very detailed. Then, the National Geographic issue about China came out in May. I didn't get much time to really read it, but recently finally sat down with the magazine, only to find out there is an entire article about the Dong minority! The picture below was the first on the page and immediately caught my attention.

I then went to the website and found several more pictures. Here is the site:

ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/05/china/guizhou/amy-tan-text

There are several pictures and a "video" of pictures together. Though I wouldn't say that I saw similarities in all of the pictures, there were a few that showed children that I thought really favored Lillie. In the video, there is one picture of three little girls with wet hair, one of which really looks like her.

I know that I will never really know much about Lillie's past, but it was exciting to see more about a group of people that might hold a connection to my daughter's story. Check out the article and the pictures.... It's very interesting! And...let me know what YOU think!