The book begins with a photograph taken more than 20 years ago, in which a dark-haired Western woman in white kisses a little girl in the left foreground, two Asian women looking deeply at them occupy two-thirds of the foreground, and a little boy in the right foreground gazes into the camera, his eyes clear with confusion. This is one of Belgian photographer Youqine Lefevre’s old photographs from her adopted parents, and it takes the viewer on a journey back to her roots, as well as to the story of her adoptive parents who adopted her from Yueyang, Hunan Province, China, to Belgium in 1994. But the book doesn’t stop there, Youqine returns to her birthplace in the process of creating a rich documentary of the landscape and people, exploring complex issues including China’s one-child policy (1979-2015), family planning, education, women’s rights and adoption, showing the complex relationship between regency history, policy and the individual.