CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews: Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace: Davina's DNA search show's been left behind by the march of science
Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace (ITV1)
Science that seemed miraculous a few years ago is now commonplace.
We would be disappointed if a complex paternity riddle couldn't be solved with a single DNA swab.
Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace is now in its seventh series, helping people abandoned at birth to find out who their real parents were.
And even presenters Nicky Campbell and Davina McCall no longer appear surprised when a five-minute genetic test matches an adoptee with blood relatives they've never met.
But the possibilities created by global DNA databases are now far more astounding than anything Long Lost Family has shown us so far.
Writer Barbara Demick spent years in China reporting on its cruel 'one-child-per-family' policy, which lasted from 1980 to 2015. Parents who dared have a second baby were punished with fines equivalent to several years' income. Officials from the Family Planning department smashed up their homes and confiscated their possessions — often stealing their children, too.
Many thousands of Chinese children were adopted by Europeans, Americans and Australians. At that time, it was unimaginable any of them would ever be able to discover their own roots.
'An adoptee finding her birth family seemed no more likely than locating a particular grain of sand,' wrote Demick, whose book Daughters Of The Bamboo Grove was reviewed in the Mail on Sunday last weekend.
African dish of the night:
Visiting a pizzeria run by an Egyptian father and son, on Tucci In Italy (National Geographic and Disney+), actor Stanley was startled to learn the first pizzas were baked for the Pharaohs.
Surely, if that were true, they'd be pyramid-shaped instead of round.
Demick interviewed one man, Zhou Changqi from Hunan province, who was desperate for news of the daughter taken from him and his wife in 2001.
He'd sacrificed everything in his search, and was now living penniless in a corrugated iron shack. 'I miss my daughter all the time,' he begged. 'I know if she's gone to America, I can't get her back. I'm not trying. I would like to get a picture of her.'
Incredibly, in 2022, a DNA ancestry service brought them together. Zhou's daughter, who grew up in middle-class Indiana, took a test for health reasons, checking for genes that indicated a higher risk of cancer. Instead, she found her birth parents.
Both stories in the first of the new series of Long Lost Family seemed unremarkable by comparison. A woman named Lisa who was left in another baby's pram in the late 1960s discovered she had three full siblings — all of whom were brought up at home by their parents, both now dead.
Fortunately, Lisa enjoyed a happy childhood with her adoptive mum and dad. She must have wondered, though, whether she was any better off for knowing she was the only one of the four to be abandoned.
And a man from Neath, 59-year-old Simon, learned that his birth mother was still alive — but that she didn't want to meet him. That, too, was an unrewarding outcome, though he was warmly welcomed by his extended family of cousins.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
South Korea's last circus, Dongchoon, holds up as it marks centennial
No more elephant and monkey acts. No more death-defying motorbike stunts. No more singing or acting on stage. Several hundred spectators still clapped constantly when acrobats with Dongchoon Circus Troupe, South Korea's last and 100-year-old circus, twirled on a long suspended fabric, juggled clubs on a large, rotating wheel and rode a unicycle on a tightrope under the big top. 'As I recall the hardship that I've gone through, I think I've done something significant,' Park Sae-hwan, the head of the circus, said in a recent Associated Press interview. 'But I also feel heavy responsibility because if Dongchoon stops, our country's circus, one genre in our performing arts, will disappear. That's the problem.' The golden age of circuses Founded in 1925, Dongchoon is Korea's oldest circus. In the golden ages of South Korean circuses in the 1960s when most households still had no TVs, Dongchoon travelled across the country, wowing audiences with then exotic animals like an elephant and a giraffe and a variety of shows including skits, comic talks, singing, dancing and magic shows. At its peak years, it had more than 200 artists, acrobats and other staff, according to Park. Like in many other countries, TVs and movies later syphoned off the audiences of Dongchoon and other circuses in South Korea. Their actors, singers and comedians moved to TV stations, and some became bigger stars. The advent of the internet, video games and professional sports were another blow. South Korean circuses also dropped animal shows that faced protests by animal rights campaigners. Now, Dongchoon is the only circus in South Korea after all its rivals went out of business. How Dongchoon survives Park, who joined Dongchoon in 1963, served as a show host and sometimes sang and acted in the circus's drama programs. He left the circus in 1973 and ran a lucrative supermarket business. In 1978, he returned to the circus industry by taking over Dongchoon, which was put up for sale after devastating typhoon damage. Park, now 80, said he worried Dongchoon could disappear into history after seeing newspaper reports that its assets would be split into parts and sold. 'I thought Dongchoon must not disappear. When we want to study the roots of our country's dramas, we should look back on the traces of Dongchoon. The same goes for the history of our other shows, traditional music performances and magic shows as well as circuses themselves,' Park said. Heo Jeong Joo, an expert at the All That Heritage Research Institute, also values highly the legacy of Dongchoon, which she said incorporated many traditional performers and artists who operated before its 1925 founding. 'Its foundation exceeds 100 years. In a historical perspective, I think it should be designated as an intangible cultural asset,' Heo said. Park said he almost closed the circus in 2009 after his shows drew only 10-20 spectators each for several months during a widespread flu outbreak. It survived after local media reports sympathizing with the plight of Dongchoon prompted many people to flock and fully pack shows for weeks, he said. Dongchoon leaps again at its seaside big top Since 2011, Dongchoon has been performing at a big top at a seaside tourist area in Ansan, just south of Seoul. Its circus workers also frequently travel to other areas for temporary shows. Dongchoon officials said their business is doing relatively well, drawing several hundred spectators on weekdays and up to 2,000 on weekends at Ansan alone. Ansan official Sharon Ham said local tourism has been boosted by Dongchoon's presence. She said Dongchoon shows are popular with both older generations wanting to recall childhood memories of circuses and younger generations seeking something new. 'It was a very impressive and meaningful circus,' Sim Chung-yong, a 61-year-old spectator, said after one show last week. 'But I also thought about how much big pains and hardships those circus acrobats underwent to perform like this.' Dongchoon officials say they now offer only acrobatic performances and refrain from too-risky acts because many people don't like them any longer. Its all 35 acrobats are now Chinese, as a circus job is generally shunned by more affluent South Koreans who consider it too dangerous and low-paying. Park said he bought land at Ansan where he hopes to build a circus school to nurture South Korean circus artists. Xing Jiangtao, 37, has been working for Dongchoon since 2002 — initially as an acrobat and now as its performance director. He recalled that when he first came to South Korea, he and his Chinese colleagues all worked as assistants to Dongchoon's 50 South Korean acrobats but they've all left one by one. 'Now, it's the only circus in South Korea, and I hope we will create good circus performances to show to spectators so that we can help Dongchoon exist for another 100 years," Xing said in fluent Korean.
Telegraph
5 hours ago
- Telegraph
Race Across the World's reunion episode was a charming farewell to one of its best series
Nobody really needed Race Across the World: The Reunion (BBC One). The race finished last week in an entirely satisfactory manner. However, the BBC likes to flog a hit for all its worth, so viewers got this follow-up programme anyway. I'm glad we did. It was a suitably life-affirming farewell to a heartwarming series. Six months since the globe-trotting contest climaxed at the southernmost tip of India, our five intrepid pairs gathered to reflect on their epic 14,000km odyssey across China, Nepal and India. Meeting up with friends you made on holiday often backfires. Once the tans fade and the sundowners stop flowing, so does the conversation. Happily, this was a lot less awkward. They met as strangers but are forever bound together by their shared experience. The forgotten team, former married couple Yin and Gaz, were knocked out before the midway mark but now gained a sense of closure. Yin tearfully admitted how she'd struggled with her heritage while travelling through China. Since returning home, she had built bridges with her family and made peace with her past. Sixtysomething siblings Brian and Melvyn, who finished fourth, rebuilt their brotherly bond on the road.'Things got a bit emotional but a cold beer sorted it,' said the typically phlegmatic Melvyn. Having emerged as the race's cult hero, he stole the show again, declaring, 'Up the oldies!' Still the cheering updates kept coming. Teenage sweethearts Fin and Sioned, who claimed the bronze medal, had caught the travel bug and since been on a trip around Australia. The race runners-up, sisters Elizabeth and Letitia, were inspired to build their own homestay in Kenya. Victorious mother-and-son duo Caroline and Tom were similarly reborn. Caroline was newly carefree, while Tom's confidence had blossomed so much that he was now self-employed and excitedly planning his next adventure. Those who had become tired of the sob stories won't have been appeased by some of the navel-gazing. There was plentiful talk of 'personal growth' and 'moving forward'. Yet the show and its participants are so likeably wholesome, it was hard to be too cynical. Caroline and Tom might have clinched the £20,000 prize but money was barely mentioned. Indeed, the winnings are so incidental to the show's magical mix, it's easy to forget there's cash involved at all. When it comes to Race Across the World, it truly is the taking part that counts. We were treated to unseen clips – cue backpack-laden dashes down streets, like panicking turtles – and breathtaking scenery. Everyone paid tribute to helpful locals and praised the kindness of strangers. Behind-the-scenes footage revealed how embedded film crews captured their every move. It made for a fascinating insight into the vast logistical operation required to make the show. My main complaint was that the location for the reunion – a wood-panelled suite at London's L'Oscar hotel – bore a distracting resemblance to the Round Table showdowns from BBC stablemate The Traitors. I kept expecting a tweed-clad Claudia Winkleman to pop up and demand that somebody be banished. Please, anyone but Melvyn. The last word went to winner Tom. 'It's important to enjoy the journey, as well as the destination,' he concluded. This was a celebratory, albeit non-essential, way to sign off. Now how about applying for next year's race?
Daily Mail
6 hours ago
- Daily Mail
CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews: Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace: Davina's DNA search show's been left behind by the march of science
Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace (ITV1) Science that seemed miraculous a few years ago is now commonplace. We would be disappointed if a complex paternity riddle couldn't be solved with a single DNA swab. Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace is now in its seventh series, helping people abandoned at birth to find out who their real parents were. And even presenters Nicky Campbell and Davina McCall no longer appear surprised when a five-minute genetic test matches an adoptee with blood relatives they've never met. But the possibilities created by global DNA databases are now far more astounding than anything Long Lost Family has shown us so far. Writer Barbara Demick spent years in China reporting on its cruel 'one-child-per-family' policy, which lasted from 1980 to 2015. Parents who dared have a second baby were punished with fines equivalent to several years' income. Officials from the Family Planning department smashed up their homes and confiscated their possessions — often stealing their children, too. Many thousands of Chinese children were adopted by Europeans, Americans and Australians. At that time, it was unimaginable any of them would ever be able to discover their own roots. 'An adoptee finding her birth family seemed no more likely than locating a particular grain of sand,' wrote Demick, whose book Daughters Of The Bamboo Grove was reviewed in the Mail on Sunday last weekend. African dish of the night: Visiting a pizzeria run by an Egyptian father and son, on Tucci In Italy (National Geographic and Disney+), actor Stanley was startled to learn the first pizzas were baked for the Pharaohs. Surely, if that were true, they'd be pyramid-shaped instead of round. Demick interviewed one man, Zhou Changqi from Hunan province, who was desperate for news of the daughter taken from him and his wife in 2001. He'd sacrificed everything in his search, and was now living penniless in a corrugated iron shack. 'I miss my daughter all the time,' he begged. 'I know if she's gone to America, I can't get her back. I'm not trying. I would like to get a picture of her.' Incredibly, in 2022, a DNA ancestry service brought them together. Zhou's daughter, who grew up in middle-class Indiana, took a test for health reasons, checking for genes that indicated a higher risk of cancer. Instead, she found her birth parents. Both stories in the first of the new series of Long Lost Family seemed unremarkable by comparison. A woman named Lisa who was left in another baby's pram in the late 1960s discovered she had three full siblings — all of whom were brought up at home by their parents, both now dead. Fortunately, Lisa enjoyed a happy childhood with her adoptive mum and dad. She must have wondered, though, whether she was any better off for knowing she was the only one of the four to be abandoned. And a man from Neath, 59-year-old Simon, learned that his birth mother was still alive — but that she didn't want to meet him. That, too, was an unrewarding outcome, though he was warmly welcomed by his extended family of cousins.
