JUST AS I finished editing the second draft of this book, I received a call from the BBC’s international news office asking me to comment on the following story.
A young Chinese couple had sold three of their own flesh and blood to pay for three years of internet connection.
While in prison awaiting trial in Jiangyong county in southern China’s Hunan province, the pair of post-90s lovers were not in the least distressed when questioned by the police. In fact they asked, smiling, ‘When do we get to go home?’ In the space of three years they had sold three of their own children, saying, ‘We didn’t want to raise them, so we sold them off in order to earn money to go on the internet.’
The man’s father had died when he was a year and a half old. At thirteen he went with his mother to Guangdong province to find work, and in doing so lost his right to state education, as he moved from the place where he was registered. As a result, he lacked even the most basic knowledge of human life. His partner was in her second year of middle school when they met, and they ‘tasted the forbidden fruit’ on their first date.
The Chinese have a saying that ‘our children are either the flesh of our palms or the back of our hands, to part with either is agony’. But this couple appeared to have turned traditional values on their head, selling their own children without a second thought. Many Chinese sociologists believed that while their biological and psychological needs were perfectly natural, their attitude to the results of sex was very unusual. It was more than just a lack of sex education, they had barely received any education on human nature. Their extreme indifference towards their own flesh and blood suggested an exceptional lack of education on even the most basic human nature.
I was shocked by this story, but I also very much wanted to know how this total lack of awareness of their own human nature came about.
China’s first generation of only children, who I have been following for ten years, began to reach normal marrying and childbearing age in 2002. By now more than 10 million families from this generation are raising their own only children. This has given rise to an ‘age of only-child parents’ that is unprecedented in Chinese history. According to some statistics, over 75 per cent of only-child parents are financially independent. They are relatively adaptable in society, but lukewarm about having children, terrified that their own child will usurp their position as overlord in the family. Many only children lack a sense of responsibility after they become parents, and the phenomenon of parents who are unwilling to raise their children has become widespread; some even resent their child for the time and space they take up. If romantic love and motherly love, the two greatest loves in life, can be knocked down like straw men in many only-child families, then what remains sacrosanct in human nature? However, at the same time as judging and blaming them for their lack of humanity, how many people actually understand the price that these parents, only children themselves, have paid?
The writer Lu Xun1 wrote that it is not the dead who suffer the pain of death, but the living who are left behind. At a time when romantic and motherly love are perishing amid the indifference and warped views on human nature of some only children, will it not be us and our descendants who feel the pain? We are left grieved and indignant at the news of children sold to pay for internet access, distressed that so many only-child parents cannot rejoice in romantic and motherly love, and our hearts ache for the only children left scarred by their lonely struggles between good and bad.
Out of all the heroes and heroines of this book, the one I discussed these issues the most with was Moon.
I first met Moon in 1989, when she was only nine years old. Her father was a colleague of mine at Radio China. After I left China, Moon’s father was transferred to a government post in Guangzhou, supervising news broadcasting. Not long after he took up the job, he phoned me asking for help. He said that a TV station under his jurisdiction was trying to make a foreign history documentary by ‘cooking a meal without rice’. At the time, there was barely enough content for one broadcast every day. Apart from experimental channels and some natural history films from the National Geographic Society, China had almost no foreign history programmes. He hoped that my husband Toby and I could pull some strings and help him build bridges with Western broadcasters. We in turn very naïvely thought that after nearly thirty years of Reform and Opening-up, it might now be possible for the Chinese media to work with foreign companies. When we visited in 2003, Toby brought Moon’s father several documentaries on European history as a taster and an experiment.
China has always been very stringent on foreign publications; even Second World War history programmes had to go through three levels of ‘political reliability’ checks. Moon’s father set up a meeting to review Toby’s documentaries.
In the meeting, several Chinese news officials did not understand either the timing or the contents of the documentaries. Why were we planning on broadcasting them at peak time after the news, a slot that they saw as an opportunity to make money from entertainment programmes? If the TV station did not earn money how was it to expand? Moreover, they didn’t understand how there could be no documentaries about China on the international stage. ‘We are an ancient nation, one of the Four Great Civilisations, a giant in the world, how do we not have an important place in Western media?’ they said. Toby told them frankly that there was virtually no news about China in mainstream global media, and almost no mention of China’s 5,000 years of civilisation. Several news officials frowned at Toby’s remarks. ‘That’s impossible,’ they said. ‘It can’t be true, can it? Chinese newspapers have almost more international news than domestic! We sometimes think that everybody in the world must wake up wondering about what is going on in China today.’
Afterwards, over dinner, Moon’s father said to us quietly, ‘Don’t worry about those officials not believing the world’s apathy about what is going on in China. Although to tell you the truth, I’ve also got my doubts. My daughter Moon has been studying in the UK for a year and a half already, and she’s never mentioned anything about the world not understanding China.’
Toby replied jokingly, ‘If that’s so, I’d like to meet your daughter. Perhaps the world she sees is different to the one we live in.’
Later on this joke became a reality, as it prompted Moon to come and stay with us after completing her Master’s in Britain. By this time, the callow little girl from my memory had been transformed into a bright, lively and beautiful young lady, with classic Chinese good looks. A melon-seed-shaped face, sloping shoulders, narrow waist, petite stature, and very gentle and quiet.
One day after supper we sat around the table discussing China’s distance from the world. Toby said that if China itself does not open the door, it will be very difficult for outsiders to get in. However, it is also not fair for Western media to make frivolous comments about China based on distant sounds heard through the keyhole. Moon replied that it was more that the outside world did not want to know about China, rather than China not wanting to open up. The two of them debated this issue at some length. Toby, who normally goes to bed at half past nine, eventually got up to go to bed. To our great surprise, Moon leapt to her feet and grabbed hold of Toby’s lapels saying, ‘You can’t go, we’re not done yet!’ Toby, who is 1.9 metres tall, lowered his head and looked down at this slight, gentle Chinese girl hanging on to him for dear life. For a moment he seemed genuinely at a loss as to how to react. I suspected this was the first time in his life that someone had grabbed his lapels during a discussion. Moon however was unwilling to give an inch, vehement about what she considered to be ‘the truth’. Her English had the fast rhythm of people from the Yangtze delta, and reminded me of what my grandmother used to call ‘Shanghai Yangjingbin’.2
Toby said helplessly, ‘I really am very tired, I have to sleep, we’ll talk again tomorrow, all right?’
I could see that Moon was about to say that this was not all right, so I gestured to her to let Toby off the hook.
From then on, every time I got into an argument with Toby, and my English was not up to the task, I would find myself wishing I could be more like Moon, and grab him by the lapels, but I never quite did!
Compared with other parents of only children, Moon’s parents were not that worried about their daughter, and hardly ever telephoned me to prise out information on their daughter’s life. Her mother once said to me: ‘Children only go to their parents when they need something, when nothing’s wrong they don’t even think about family. It’s only when they’ve grown up in body and mind that family will be in their thoughts daily. If they manage to learn about right and wrong before marriage and a career, that’s just good luck for the parents, as some people reach old age without ever having grown up.’ Her wise words have proved true over the years of watching many children grow up around me, including her daughter Moon.
Over the year that Moon spent in Britain for her Master’s course, she only came to me for help three times. First when she felt lonely, next when she was torn between her studies in the West and in China, and lastly when she was faced with the choice of either being with her parents in China or developing her future overseas.
Moon always came and went in a hurry, and would always fly off before I had a chance to digest her questions, so I was usually only able to give her a few brief suggestions. For her feelings of loneliness and helplessness in another country far from home, especially when she had fallen in love with someone she thought inappropriate, I could only console her by saying that finding pleasure while abroad is one of the tests of life. Only those who are truly able to embrace the art of living will find points of sympathy when surrounded by a different culture. As for sex, emotions and love, these are three separate things, with different degrees. One can be pleased to see someone and sad when he is not there, and then there is being willing to change yourself for someone else; only the latter can be called true love. Love is eternal, but it has to have a moral bottom line. As for feeling torn between China and the West, I told her this was something that required some traffic-light thinking, to guide behaviour and prevent clashes between people from different cultures. With regard to not wanting to let her parents down by staying abroad, I told her it was not a question of location, as her happiness and success would always be her parents’ greatest wish for her.
However, it was not until Moon’s studies were over and she came to stay with us for a while that I realised her questions were not as simple as I had thought. Rather they represented a bottleneck of the many problems faced by all only children studying overseas.
Moon told me that during her time as an overseas student she always seemed to be the one most affected by the clash between East and West. She felt beset on all sides by English explanations, Europeanisms and Americanisms, Western ways of thinking; from three meals a day to her classes, there was nowhere for a Chinese student to hide!
The thing she found hardest to accept in her studies was why Westerners looked down upon China’s riches and abrupt rise to prosperity. And why did they not believe that Chinese only children could be self-reliant too? Isn’t the point of studying to learn from intelligence? Why did they have to ask so many challenging questions? In China, challenging scholars is considered wild arrogance and gross disrespect! Why do lecturers praise students, then not let them pass exams? Isn’t that hypocrisy? In China, lecturers never praise students, but they always reap the rewards come exams. As the saying goes, ‘strict teachers produce top students’. In this international age, why is only the British-American education system used, instead of one more compatible with China, India or Arabic-speaking countries? After all, our combined populations and landmass far exceed those of the English-speaking world!
Once, Moon talked to me about the subject she was studying, multi-media. ‘When I began it was a trail-blazing subject globally, but my British supervisor thought I shouldn’t add in so many Chinese elements. He was worried that Westerners in the industry would be afraid of the sections they did not understand, and reject my work as a result. One supervisor hinted to me, “Chinese culture is not the sun in the sky, you know.” I came this close to asking him, “So what is, British? American?”’
Moon’s graduation piece was a thought-provoking digital advert. She arranged various news snippets from around the world on a screen, including ancient legends, different languages, lectures from experts and whispering voices, which gradually morphed into the smiling face of American President George W. Bush. The text then coalesced into three topics: democracy, freedom and human rights. When clicked on, the words opened a series of short films. Democracy led to a war film, freedom turned into a scene of street violence and drunkenness, while human rights led to a clip of weeping mothers and crying babies. When Bush’s face was clicked on, the image shattered and sent shards flying into democracy, freedom and human rights, which then exploded. As the flurry on the screen subsided, an oil company logo gradually appeared to the lingering sound of Chinese drums and gongs.
This three-minute piece left a deep impression on me. Not just because of its multiculturalism and the way it used modern scientific method to attack the hypocrisy of political power and the voraciousness of material desires throughout history, but also because it bolstered my hopes for Chinese only children. They are currently watching from the wings, but will one day be responsible for our future.
Her project was so successful that the university chose her to take part in an international academic conference, the first Chinese student ever invited. We were all excited and proud of her, yet Moon went around with a long face. I asked her why she was not more pleased with herself, and she replied that she had already spent two weeks trying to learn six pages of English by heart, but just could not take it all in.
‘Why do you have to learn it by heart?’ I asked, puzzled.
‘If I don’t know it by heart, how can I make the speech?’ Moon replied, equally puzzled at my question.
I did not know whether to laugh or cry. ‘Think for a moment, Moon. You’re presenting an interactive piece, so your speech shouldn’t be fixed in stone. You need to be able to improvise on the spur of the moment, as the audience might ask you to click on different pictures. They might interrupt your speech and ask you to go into specifics. If all you can do is recite a speech from memory, you won’t be able to answer their questions. Is that really interactive communication? Besides, this is your own concept, your own work that you’ve produced after long consideration, why would you want to present it to them in the form of a fixed model or dogma even?’
‘OK . . . that’s a good point,’ Moon said, deep in thought. However, a glimmer of fear still shone in her eyes. ‘But . . . my mother and father always say that as their only child I’m their face in the world. I can’t lose face for them no matter what!’
When I heard these words, I wished I could yell at the whole of China, ‘Don’t pile more of these antiquated pressures onto our children. How can face be more important than our children ending up with fearful and empty hearts?’
I could not bring myself to say this to Moon directly, so said, ‘As soon as you step onto the platform they’ll know from your Chinese face and the colour of your skin that your English is unlikely to be as good as theirs. You needn’t worry about your language. They’ll also make allowances for how young you are, right? Remember, for all the flashy power of the Western world, not one of them can speak Chinese. So they won’t expect a young woman like you to be perfect in every way. They’re all coming to hear you talk, to listen to your wisdom, and hear what Chinese people think about these issues. They’re not coming to test your English, or judge you by your appearance or way of speaking.’
After our conversation, Moon spent almost four days practising her speech in front of a mirror. I invited several friends with an interest in advertising and computers for afternoon tea, and asked them to listen and ask questions. I even invited two media friends over for a meal, and got them to ask questions about Moon’s presentation. After this repeated ‘education by the masses’, Moon’s evident talent and intelligence no longer seemed locked away in the deep recesses of her heart, and no longer confined to her computer. Even her psychological block about speaking English was no longer the tiger barring the way that it once was.
Upon her return from the conference she told me that she was a little nervous walking onto the stage, but repeated my words over and over to herself: Hardly anyone in the West can speak Chinese, so why should I be perfect in every way? After this she soon started to enjoy the feeling of standing on stage answering questions. She felt like a beautiful swan beating its powerful wings. She was no longer a nervous, frightened ugly duckling!
Moon’s father was a senior government official in broadcasting, while her mother was one of the first dealers in Western art after China’s economic reforms. However, their personal success and the rigorous education they put Moon through often left her feeling caught between two competing ideals, desperately trying to find herself. She frequently racked her brains over how to make her parents proud and happy, and how to manifest the family intelligence in her life. As their precious one-and-only, she felt she should have both her father’s ability in the public sphere as well as her mother’s artistic talent. However, she grew up in the rarefied atmosphere of a one-child family, with no exposure to ‘the masses’. She followed the trends of the Chinese job market into the artistic desert of the high-tech age, and felt that she had no opportunity to show the intelligence passed down to her from her parents. At the same time, she herself yearned for the rustic, idealised life described in literature, where men till the fields and women weave cloth. It was not hard to see the twists and turns of Moon’s life that led her to her choice of profession.
I remember one time seeing Moon sitting at her desk staring into space. I asked her, ‘Just what is it about choosing a career that makes you so afraid?’
She replied with eyes reddened from unshed tears, ‘My worst fear is that my mother will be left bed-ridden by some disease, never to rise again, and I won’t be able to get there in time. I won’t be able to stroke her hand, and tell her that I’ll be there to protect her.’
I suspected that Moon’s ideal job (creating a digital platform for cultural exchange) was very far removed from that envisaged by her father and mother for her, otherwise she would not be feeling so sad. I asked her, ‘If your mother knew that you had given up your ambitions and happiness for her sake, do you think this would be a comfort to her? You should think about the fact that you are all they have, their one child.’
In the end, Moon chose to go back to China to be by her parents’ side. She told me that she would never let her parents know her true dream, because the first duty of a Chinese child is to pay back the debt of gratitude to one’s parents. Her words moved me deeply. In today’s only-child society, where everyone is frantically chasing self-fulfilment, how many daughters would approach their role with such unselfishness as Moon?
The day before Moon’s return to China, we were cooking supper together when she suddenly asked me, ‘Xinran, tell me truthfully, what should a good daughter be like? It’s plain that you see things very differently from a lot of Chinese mothers.’
‘Really?’ I said. ‘I think all women and mothers have basically the same feelings. The heavy burden carried by Chinese women is one that we all bear, in spite of being blamed for all the problems with today’s youth. Do I think differently? I think it’s just because I’ve had different experiences, nothing more than that. In reality, most people from the same generation are all marked by the same brush of their time.’ I replied in an off-hand manner as I cut up the vegetables.
‘You’re wrong about that,’ Moon said lightly but very definitively. ‘So many Chinese mothers live in a cage, and then later on stuff their own child into it too!’
I was startled by her comment, almost bringing the chopper down on my fingertip. ‘What makes you think that?’ I said.
Moon said coolly, but far from calmly, ‘Originally I was going to ask you for help, but you ended up helping me anyway by teaching me how to make my life take flight. After that, I started to have self-belief and courage. I began to unload the heaviness in my heart, and truly live in freedom. Even if my parents never forgive me, I’ll have no regrets. As you said, honesty and straightforwardness are the skies in which freedom flies. It’s just that I have this friend (Ping) who is shut up in her mother’s cage. She sighs as she looks out at my sky, and sends me emails from time to time, asking me how she can escape her parents’ cage.’
I asked her, ‘Just what has happened to give this friend of yours such a terrible burden, to think that she’s been imprisoned by her own family? Perhaps she’s at a crossroads in her life, or struggling between her parents’ choices for her and her own longings?’ My brain was whirring at a rate of knots, as I self-righteously sifted through all the possible causes of such anguish in a young person.
Moon levelled me with a frank gaze, both pain and helplessness shining from her bright, expressive eyes. ‘How about I show you her email right now? It’s already late at night in China, but she’ll still be up waiting for my reply. I really want to help her unravel the knot in her heart, or at least let her know that she is not a wicked girl. I’ve tried several times, but never managed to talk her round. Do you think you could help?’
I could tell from Moon’s expectant glance that tonight’s first dish was going to be emailing her friend.
The email had a pink background, on which floated line after line of elegant Chinese characters. Chinese girls often personalise their emails in this way, filling them with longings beyond the realm of their parents and studies. But many of the words they tap out on their keyboards are soaked through with tears, just like the letter I read on Moon’s computer.
Hi Moon,
To me, life sometimes just feels too dangerous. I used to think that as long as I studied hard, I would be able to be on my guard against it, but I never realised how cruel loneliness can be. Do you remember that I once came to you in London for help with feeling lonely? Well, last term I made friends with another Chinese student at university. He was in his forties, studying on his own in the UK, and never mentioned anything about having a family. The first time we met he told me that the life I was leading was too solitary, that there was no spice to it. I was really lonely, and felt like I didn’t have friends, family or good enough language. All I wanted was to study well so that I could be worthy of my parents paying all this money for me to be here. Every morning as soon as I opened my eyes, it was like I was waking up in a cage. He was always giving me and a few other Chinese girls advice, saying that being too lonely is bad for women’s physical and mental health. He told us about how Western women live and what they want out of life. ‘Don’t be afraid of the opposite sex,’ he said, ‘you should enjoy your physicality, it’s one of the best feelings. As long as you don’t let yourself or anyone else down you shouldn’t worry about it.’ To tell you the truth, nothing he said was actually bad. We’re meant to be a new generation of women now, aren’t we? I know we’re not as open as Western society, but we’re way different from the generations above us. We all know that sex isn’t bad and that what men and women do together is perfectly natural, but most of our parents’ generation are still steaming along under the momentum of their traditions. More to the point, they place these restrictions and expectations on our shoulders. They still believe that it’s somehow honourable to be a virgin, and that to lose your virginity is shameful.
Apart from at parties with classmates, I’d never actually been alone with a man, and didn’t know anything about how dangerous it can be not to have any experience at all! One time after this weekend party with some classmates, a few of us walked back to the dorm under the full moon. In the end there was only me and this guy left. When we were saying goodnight he took me in his arms and kissed my forehead saying, ‘Let me make you happy, let me teach you about the pleasures of being a woman!’ Can you believe it?! I won’t lie to you, at that moment my body seemed to fly apart. I’d never felt anything like it. It was like I was under a spell, unable to resist his caresses. That night I became a real woman!
That guy really knew how to make love! It was like I was crazy drunk or something, I could barely keep away from him for a day. He replaced everything in my life, even my family. But when our course was over, he told me that he had a family back in China. That he loved his wife and daughter very much, so he had to go back to be with them, and he hoped I wouldn’t bother him any more. The day he left he said to me, ‘I made you a woman, gave you a great time and satisfied you like you’d never been satisfied in your whole life.’ And then he left! Just like that he sent me packing, thrusting me back into my desert of loneliness! Back in that loneliness, all my parents’ teachings and expectations suddenly flooded back into my life. It was only then that I realised that in their eyes I was the guilty one. I was no longer their cherished little girl. I was unworthy of them. However much they loved me, they would never forgive me for having sex before marriage, and with a married man no less, oh my god!
Moon, tell me the truth, am I really bad? My parents are so going to be big-time disappointed, aren’t they? What if my future husband will hate me for this? What if I’ve destroyed all my self-respect and right to have a voice just because of a few months of passion and romance? If you were me, would you still be flying high? Would there even be skies left for you to fly in? Would you still be able to look your parents in the eye? Our generation is tied down by chains that are both ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign, some dragging us forward, some binding our hands and feet, and some flogging us on in a particular direction . . .
Moon, who all the while had been looking straight at me, took a deep breath then slowly let it out. ‘She says she doesn’t dare imagine how her mother will react, let alone how much her father will hang his head in shame. I’ve tried to tell her to trust her parents, to tell them the truth. She won’t be able to bring herself to hurt them by lying to them. Besides, you can’t be free while surrounded by your own lies.’
I interrupted her, ‘But in this day and age? Her parents work in China’s most cosmopolitan city. How can they reproach her with all those outdated notions of chastity?’ I was very surprised to hear how this Chinese girl, who had been though a modern scientific education, could be so conservative. I suspected that her own psychological make-up was the real cause of her grief.
Moon did not understand my surprise at all. ‘Oh, but they would reproach her. Actually, parents of only children in cities are a lot more conservative than countryside parents. As far as my parents are concerned, if I’m ever to be worthy of their goodness in raising me, I must not only be an unblemished piece of jade, but also their face in society, which cannot be tainted by a single speck of dust. They would never approve of this kind of face-shaming behaviour.’
What Moon said was the reality of the situation, but this reality was also like a sandcastle, vulnerable to being spoiled or even swept away by the huge tide of China’s opening up. Moon’s generation was living in an age where heavy breakers were crashing through the sands. Standards of behaviour were like sand and stones on a beach, some swept to the bottom of the sea, while others were washed up on the beach.
We did not enjoy the feast we had planned for supper that day. Even after Moon had replied, she and I remained preoccupied by the heaviness in her friend’s heart, tasting the bitterness in her life.
‘Why does your friend think she has lost face?’ I asked Moon. ‘Every culture and age has different definitions and standards for sexual experience. How does she know that when her parents got married they were as pure as the driven snow? You say her mother works in the arts, but are not artists more able than most to understand the pleasures of men and women in modern society? Maybe your friend is just projecting her own worries onto her parents? If that’s the case, then it’s unfair. We shouldn’t live with the anxieties of the past, nor should we go rushing out to meet trouble halfway.’
‘That’s easy to say, but difficult to do.’ Moon’s usual happiness and brightness seemed dimmed by clouds of worry in her eyes.
Moon became a university teacher after returning to Guangzhou. We hardly had any chance to meet, but spoke often on the phone. I went to Guangzhou in 2009 for a meeting, and finally managed to have a meal with her and her parents. Moon brought along her friend Ping and Ping’s fiancé, who, according to Moon, had been selected by her mother. During the meal we discussed the decline in Chinese morality. Moon’s mother said, ‘Many Chinese men are absolutely shameless these days, polluting girls who have no immunity against them with their selfish desires, even proclaiming that they’re giving them happiness! I pity those poor girls, who become sacrificial objects to those rakes without even knowing it. They often even remain sentimentally attached to all that filthy biological behaviour!’ Her elegant, refined art dealer eyes burned with disgust and hate. I instinctively glanced at Moon’s friend. She was picking up morsels of food with her chopsticks, head lowered. I noticed that her cheeks were already bulging, but she continued stuffing more food in . . .
From a series of phone calls with Moon, I learned that her friend had got married, become pregnant and given birth to a daughter, who before long was toddling around. She said to me, ‘But her friends have never heard her say anything about the joys of setting up home, about being a proud mother or a happy wife.’
Could it be that this swan had finally taken wing, only to be turned into a sacrificial object for chastity? I dared not think about it any further.
I had been discussing with Moon the joys and sorrows of only-child parents since starting the outline for this book. Moon told me that among the group of white-collar only-child parents around her, the majority were mother and father in name only, and felt none of the responsibilities or emotions of being parents. Many women thought that getting pregnant marked the end of their womanly charms, and that parenthood was a ‘life sentence’. Some only-child parents dumped their child in the care of their own parents straight after birth, like pushing away their chopsticks and bowls at the end of a meal, and then went home to surf the net. Some projected resentment at their loss of position as the focus of their family’s attention, and believed that they had been usurped by this new ‘precious treasure’. It was common for only-child parents regularly to beat or viciously tell off their children. As for the government allowing only-child parents to have two children, many young mothers and fathers cried out at this. ‘One has nearly driven us crazy with exhaustion, another would kill us!’ Many thought of their own child as a force robbing them of happiness, even as an enemy.
Moon’s words reminded me of similar scenes I had witnessed at airports all across America. Crowds of Chinese grandmothers and grandfathers carrying in their arms a child barely a month old. Some were Chinese nannies specially hired to courier babies under one hundred days old. Time and again I asked the airport staff for confirmation: ‘This is just a seasonal thing, isn’t it? At holiday time?’ But no, no matter who I asked the answer was the same: ‘In the last few years we see at least ten babies sent back to China every day.’
I asked Moon, ‘Is it that the older generation are helping the baby’s parents roam the world and fight for their freedom? Is this why they send their children back to China to be brought up?’
‘No, those only-child parents are just fleeing parenthood. Many believe that while parting from their child will be painful, raising it will be more painful still!’ Moon said decisively. ‘In September last year [2010] the Jinghua Times published an article on an only-child couple who were divorcing, and neither wanted custody of their six-year-old child.’
Moon also told me about what the experts had to say on the matter. ‘Marriages between only children tend to have high levels of interference from the family, mainly because of the exceptional influence that family and society have already had on the couple’s personalities. Marriages between this first generation of only children are already showing a trend of “marry in haste, divorce in haste”. Some marriages only last a year or two, some even less. Many young people believe that intense emotions are synonymous with love, and once passion disappears the marriage is at an end.’
Moon also said that research from the Tianjin Family Education Research Association showed that 32 per cent of only children quarrel frequently after marriage, and that they are relatively ill-equipped to deal with family relationships. Restraints and pressures on China’s first generation of only children have declined, along with parental interference in marriage, and more matches are chosen freely by the young people themselves. However, very many only children, after years of pampering from doting parents, have become accustomed to a life where they can reach out a hand and find clothes, and open their mouths and be fed. They have become stubborn, afraid of hard work, and are constantly comparing themselves to others. These and other psychological problems are all relatively pronounced in only-child parents, who find it harder than the previous generation to cope with life. When they bring their reliance on their parents and money into the marriage, any minor conflict results in an emotional crisis. Their ability when married to deal with problems and resolve conflicts is also weak, with clashes often escalating into divorce.
Moon passed on a lot of information to me over the phone, often including her wise and ingenious opinions, but she seldom mentioned her personal life. Did she really plan to spend the rest of her life with her mother, being no more than a filial daughter?
‘Tell me something, Moon, has anyone claimed you for their own yet?’ I asked her once before I could stop myself. As soon as the words were out of my mouth I regretted them. I was afraid that I would not like the reply.
Finally, one day, a trill of cheerful laughter came down the line. ‘I’ve got a boyfriend, Xinran. We’re still getting to know each other, which is no easy thing with men, especially because of the generation gap. It’s quite impossible to find common ground with men from the older generation!’
They married a year later, and from then on most of her phone time with me was taken over by her little family. When we did catch up a few months later she could speak, but was obviously exhausted; she had become a mother! Feeding the baby by night and working by day left her with no energy to get worked up over society or other people. It was not until her son was a year old that Moon’s conversations gradually returned to life in China, which was when I asked her: ‘Are you happy being a mother? I’d like to know if only-child mothers enjoy the simple pleasures and take pride in being mothers more than we did?’
There was a long silence on the end of the telephone. I wondered if Moon was searching for her answer. How long would I have to wait? Several years? Until her baby could sleep through the night? When her little son went off happily to school? Until her child had grown up enough to think of rubbing her back and massaging her shoulders? When he was bathing happily in the river of love? Or when she grew bored of waiting, and realised that it was already too late? I prayed for Moon: ‘Whatever you do, don’t do that, for that was the fate of several generations of Chinese women before us.’
Moon never replied to my question, and we continued to discuss other people.
‘Actually, my generation is a bit different from the post-80s and-90s,’ Moon said to me. ‘Our parents did not have enough time or experience to adapt to the one-child society. My generation were the guinea pigs for the whole country. By the time we reached puberty, we were overlooked in the clash of tradition and modernity, East and West. When the time came for us to marry, we were unable to let go, relax from work and enjoy family life because so many things had been lacking in our own families. But there’s another important factor that can’t be overlooked. Compared to parents of later generations, ours experienced much more political terror and disasters. The train that brought fear and change had already applied the brakes and come to a stop, but our parents still felt carried along by its momentum. We grew up affected by that momentum. Xinran, tell me, is it still affecting us? Or have we finally come to rest?’
Moon had asked a good question. And, by extension, was the momentum of thirty years of China’s Reform and Opening-up still moving or had it stopped? Could the past be replaced? Can the future take us where we want to go? Will our only children have the chance to experience the normal pleasures of life, having normal relationships with their parents, and healthy ones with their own children?
How do you view the Yao Jiaxin incident? Why is Chinese society debating him (a post-80s man) so fiercely?
To tell you the truth, when I first heard about the Yao Jiaxin incident, my hair stood on end with fright. I just couldn’t understand it. It was very hard for me to imagine that this was the behaviour of a normal person. The first reaction a normal person should have when they’ve caused harm is to think about how to make amends and make up for the pain they have caused. But this guy was actually capable of stabbing someone to death with eight blows from a fruit knife! Did the victim trying to note down Yao’s number plate make him feel under threat, even violated, so that the idea of killing her took root in his mind? This seems like a very forced kind of logic to me. What is still more frightening is that he was a music student at university, grade 10 piano as well, and all this happened while he was on the way to pick up his girlfriend! This was a person who had love, learning and art, so why was his heart so cruel, unfeeling and bloodthirsty? His actions were more like those of a twisted homicidal maniac. Was it a deficiency in human nature, or a lack of morality? What caused all this to happen? Or was it just a random incident?
However, if you delve into all the extraordinary things that go on in our society, you soon find out that incidents such as this are not unique at all, it’s just the degree of ghastliness that varies. Recently there’s been a sickening rabbit cruelty video from a Chengdu University student doing the rounds on the internet. A young girl presses down a sheet of glass onto a little white rabbit, then sits on it, crushing the rabbit alive. Incredibly, two other girls are looking on as if nothing is the matter.
Next there’s those ‘bumping into porcelain’ incidents. My parents have experienced these first hand. A pregnant woman will deliberately squat down behind your car and wait. As soon as you start the car she pretends she’s been hit and collapses on the ground. Afterwards she demands money for not going to the police and through the courts. Can you imagine? There are actually mothers like that in this world who are willing to use that pure, sacred unborn life just to get hold of money?
I believe that rats do not start to steal as soon as they are born, but if they are immersed in it and their eyes and ears are full of it of course they will learn it. The Yao Jiaxin incident is most certainly not a one-off, it is a creation of our modern society. Of course it is an extreme manifestation, but it is one that should sound a warning bell for us all.
1 Lu Xun was the pen name of Zhao Shuren (1881–1936), the most famous Chinese writer of the twentieth century. Born in Shaoxing city in Zhejiang province, he was the leader of the New Culture Movement and a keen supporter of the left-wing movement.
2 Yangjingbin 
was a district outside Shanghai’s pre-1949 foreign concessions, where Chinese and foreigners lived side by side. Their languages mixed together, with some Chinese using English vocabulary with Chinese sentence structure when talking to British and Americans. This English was satirically known as ‘Yangjingbin’ English. The term was also more generally used to indicate non-standard foreign languages.