One Child (29 page)

By 2025, India will overtake China as the world’s most populous nation, a crown China is only too happy to relinquish. Somewhere in the decade between 2020 and 2030 China’s absolute population will hit its peak and start to decline. By 2100, China’s population could have declined back to 1950 levels of about 500 million, according to academic Chen Youhua’s projections.

Perhaps the Communist Party can turn the tide. It did, after all, launch the most successful campaign against childbearing in modern history. But I suspect it will be hard, if not impossible. The idea of approaching childbearing with a mindset that is three parts calculation has become ingrained in China’s psyche. In the end, perhaps the greatest damage inflicted by the one-child policy is how it forced people to think rationally—perhaps
too
rationally—about parenthood, a great leap into the unknown with an infinite capacity to stretch our understanding of what it means to live and love.

The IVF treatment in China didn’t work. I didn’t get pregnant.

In essence, IVF boils down to putting the best egg and the best sperm together in a lab. Theoretically, this makes conception a bit of a slam dunk, like giving a footrace competitor a bicycle. However, the next stage, implanting the embryo and waiting to see if a healthy pregnancy results, is something science still cannot control.

Sometimes it takes, sometimes it doesn’t. I wasn’t “taking,” or catching fire, or sparking, and the reason why I couldn’t was as much a mystery to my doctors as it was to me.

So I made the radical decision to leave my job and leave China. I had hoped I could continue my work and still be a mother, but it wasn’t happening. Deep down, I had half-acknowledged fears that a deadline-driven lifestyle and life in polluted Beijing were to blame. I had to stop, learn how to stand still.

In late 2009, we traded China’s landlocked capital for Venice Beach. There couldn’t be a more stark contrast. Instead of Beijing smog, we had fog rolling off the Pacific coast. Instead of a sea of commuting brunets, I saw blonds and Rastafarians ambling in the California sunshine, smelling of weed.

I missed Beijing, which, for all its inconveniences, was enormously exciting, with surprising pockets of tranquillity. I yearned
to ride my bike around the moat surrounding the Forbidden City, watching open-air barbers plying their trade under the shadow of weeping willows. Living in Beijing, you could never take things for granted. Every blue-sky day was a benediction. It tightened the sinews but also sharpened the senses. Now I was cocooned in cotton wool.

Echoes from my old life lingered. I would freeze at crosswalks, surprised that cars actually stopped for pedestrians. At a checkup, my doctor detected a rattle in my lungs and told me to stop smoking. (I don’t, never have.) I could drink tap water again, and the fluoride helped my teeth shed the yellow sheen they had acquired after years of drinking bottled water.

I started prenatal yoga classes with women who wanted at-home water births and didn’t believe in the measles vaccine. When I told my Mommy N’ Me group that my birth plan involved drugs, “and lots of them,” the women looked at me pityingly as they composed themselves in graceful asanas.

I stopped reflexively checking the news and tried to will myself into a state of Buddha-like calm. I started IVF again.

I like to think I nobly refrained from making the sort of cool, calculated choices that made me so uneasy: prescreening for genetic diseases, choosing for gender, choosing multiples. Truth is, it didn’t occur to me. I had such a hard time getting pregnant, it never entered my mind to pick at the salad bar of reproductive choices. So I didn’t go in saying I wanted twins, or boys, but that’s what I ended up with.

In 2010, my twin boys were born. First came little Eternal Virtue, followed one minute later by Steadfast Virtue.

Ever dramatic, Steadfast lifted his little arms high, a graceful pirouette as the surgeon lifted him out of me. It was a perfect photo op. They looked like plucked chickens, and they were beautiful.

I observed the confinement month, with baths and outdoor
walks, reveling in an orgy of baby worship. I watched Steadfast and Eternal plump up, developing chunky thighs I loved to squeeze. Those long summer afternoons under the ceiling fan, two drowsy babies at my side, will live on in my mind as one of the most peaceful periods of my life.

When I look at the turn my life has taken, I hardly recognize who I’ve become. There are no more sudden jaunts to trouble spots, no quickening of the pulse for a fast-breaking story. I must stay rooted, I must give of myself, I must lose myself.

As the youngest in my family, I had nieces and nephews long before I had children of my own. To my family, I was the exciting aunt, the one who went to exotic places and brought them unusual souvenirs, the one who scuba-dived in oil spills and talked her way into places she wasn’t supposed to go. A nephew once told me, “Don’t have children, Auntie Mei. Then you’ll be
bor
ing.” Well, I have children now, and I
am
boring. What was it that P. J. O’Rourke said? “Don’t try and come on like Jean-Paul Belmondo/Aspire instead to two kids and a condo.”

At bedtime, I tell my children stories. Some are Chinese folktales, like the tale of the archer who shoots nine suns from the sky, or Chang-O, the lady on the moon. There are the old chestnuts from Grimm or Andersen. For Eternal and Steadfast, the most successful tales are frequently the most bloodthirsty. There is something that seizes their imagination when I say, “And then, he slew him,” even though they have yet to understand what this means. In this magic landscape, mothers exit, stepmothers appear, children are cast out, eternally hungry wolves prowl.

One day, I will tell them about a country once so poor, an emperor ruled that each family could have only one child. Of how a great sadness came over the land, and how people gave away their children, or stole other people’s, or sought the help of magicians to make their
single precious child the strongest and brightest they could. And how it came to pass that there were fewer and fewer babies born to the land, and it became a country of the old.

I don’t know the ending to this story.

And then I lie awake as they sleep, the steady rhythm of their breathing the most peaceful and frightening sound in the world.

This book is the culmination of two decades of reporting in Asia and a lifetime as a Chinese daughter.

When I started off as a reporter in tiny Singapore, I found to my dismay that people were invariably afraid to be quoted. In an island with a population of 5 million and tough libel laws, there was justifiable fear of giving offense. So first and foremost I give thanks to the many who shared their stories with me. This book could not have been written without their candor and generosity.

In writing this book I had to learn about topics as diverse as dem-ographics and hospice care, and I am extremely grateful to the folks who shared their expertise: Wang Feng, Cao Yu, Dan Goodkind, Nicholas Eberstadt, Bill Lavely, Wu Youshui, Liang Zhongtang, Zhang Erli, Joshua Kurtzig, Zhao Yaohui, Lena Edlund, Lisa Cameron, Vanessa Fong, Arthur Kroeber, Joan Kaufman, Matthew Connelly, Chen Hong, Jennifer Lee, Changfu Chang, Jamie Metzl, Tex Cox, Harry Wu, Steve Mosher, and Clayton Dube. I am also much indebted to the works of Susan Greenhalgh and Thomas Scharping in researching the history of China’s population policies.

I owe much gratitude as well to friends and fellow writers and reporters who offered valuable critiques of early drafts: Evelyn Iritani, Andrew Batson, Matt Richards, Sebastian Tong, Peter Herford, Liu
Shuang, Ron Orol, Kathleen McLaughlin, Lucy Hornby, Kathy Chen, Geoff Fowler, Kevin Voigt, Doug Young, Amanda Whitfort, Alison DeSouza, Carla Sapsford, Ian Johnson, Scott Tong, Rob Schmitz, Eva Woo, Joy Chen, Isaac Stone Fish, Gary Okihiro, Marina Henriquez, Carol Quinn, Hessie Nguyen, and Barry Newman. Many thanks as well to various friends for their warm hospitality on reporting trips, including Marsha Cooke, Gu Qiao, Robin and Jasmine Lewis, and Sue Ward.

Thank you as well to Will Schwalbe, Matthew Pang, Peter Ford, Evan Osnos, Martin Roessingh, Tiff Roberts, Deb and Jim Fallows, Jes Randrup Nielsen, Mara Hvistandahl, Ching-Ching Ni, Leta Hong Fincher, Anthony Kuhn, Peh Shing Huei, Li Yuan, Jonathan Kaufman, Hao Wu, Emily Rauhala, Duncan Clark, Richard Burger, Jerome Cohen, Patrick Radden Keefe, Peter Cohn, Sara Dorow, Patty Meier, Patti Smith, Jena Martinberg, Didi Kirsten Tatlow, Mitchell Zuckoff, and FB groups APA Media Mavens and Asian/Pacific Islander Women Writers for valuable advice, contacts, and insight.

To my former boss, Rebecca Blumenstein, heartfelt thanks for guiding a Malaysian to an unhoped-for prize, the Pulitzer; huzzahs to all my Hong Kong and China bureau colleagues, a dream team so fantastic they basically ruined me for any other journalism gig. And to the foreign press corps in China, my fervent hope that Beijing will loosen visa restrictions so you can continue your valuable work.

This book could not have been written without the company of and valuable input from researchers: Kersten Zhang, Ellen Zhu, Sue Feng, Gao Sen, Helena Yu, Yan Shuang, Hu Pan, Violet Tian, Echo Xie, Brandon Yu, Janet Lundblad, Fu Tao, Shako Liu, and Cecilia Xie; special thanks to those of you who uncomplainingly accompanied me on travel that was frequently uncomfortable, and sometimes hazardous.

I would probably have languished as an indifferent piano instructor in Kuala Lumpur without crucial early encouragement from
teachers, editors, and mentors such as Constance Singam, Yeap Gaik Koon, Laura Abraham, Junie Simon, Lee Ching Pei, Charlie Letts, Gopal Baratham, Tan Wang Joo, 8 Days’ Michael Chiang, Rahul Pathak, NUS’s Robbie Goh and Susan Ang, and Bill Berkeley and Dave Fondiller at Columbia, as well as the aid of scholarships from Singapore Press Holdings and the Lee Foundation.

Students, too, are teachers, and I am very grateful to mine at USC’s Annenberg School and Shantou University for innumerable lessons. As well, thanks to the
Wall Street Journal
’s Cathy Panagoulias and Laurie Hays for giving me my first shot at the paper and having confidence in me when I didn’t.

Special thanks to my agents, John and Max Brockman, editor Ben Hyman, and copy editor Barbara Wood, who helped bring this book to reality in ways that I could not envision. As well, much gratitude to New America Foundation for providing support and stimulating intellectual companionship. Writing would be a lonelier business without such company.

Last, this book is ultimately about families, and I am grateful every day for mine. My mother and sisters taught me to value strength in womanhood; my in-laws, June and Marshall, read drafts, translated, and made sure my children were fed while I was in a writing vortex; my children, whose presence reminds me of what matters most; and—I know it’s almost grounds for divorce not to mention your spouse in a writer’s acknowledgments, but I really truly, do give thanks to my husband, Andrew, who has been my shield and support in a hundred million ways.

There are those who say too much family hinders, but it is only with such ballast that we can fly.

Author’s Note

[>]
GDP figures are “man-made”:
Tom Orlik, “Lies, Damned Lies, and Chinese Statistics,”
Foreign Policy
, September 20, 2013,
http://foreignpolicy.com/2013s/03/20/lies-damned-lies-and-chinese-statistics/
.

Prologue

[>]
Thus began the one-child policy:
There is some debate over the start of the policy, as some pilot projects were initiated in 1979; however September 25, 1980 is widely seen as the start of a nationwide plan.

[>]
“I would be surprised if more than 0.1% of this”:
Interview with the author, June 13, 2014.

[>]
one out of every four people in China will be over sixty-five:
Xin Dingding, “One in Four Chinese ‘Aged Above 65 by 2050,’”
China Daily
, May 20, 2010,
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-05/20/content_9870078.htm
.

[>]
China’s massive 800-million-person work force:
James Tulloch, “How China’s Demographics Affect Its Workforce,”
Open Knowledge
,
Allianz.com
, April 24, 2010,
http://knowledge.allianz.com/demography/population/?369/how-chinas-demographics-affect-its-workforce
.

[>]
started to contract in 2012:
According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, cited in numerous publications including “China’s One-Child Policy Backfires as Labor Pool Shrinks Again,”
Bloomberg Business
, January 20, 2015,
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-20/china-s-one-child-policy-backfire-deepens-as-labor-pool-shrinks
.

[>]
a tenth of eligible couples applied to have a second child:
“Only 1/10th Chinese Couples Had 2nd Child After Policy Relaxed,”
Press Trust of India
, March 10, 2015,
http://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/only-1-10th-chinese-couples-had-2nd-child-after-policy-relaxed-115031001049_1.html
.

[>]
By 2100, China’s population may have declined to 1950 levels:
Anthony Kuhn, “One County Provides Preview of China’s Looming Aging Crisis,” National Public Radio website, January 14, 2015,
http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2015/01/14/377190697/one-county-provides-preview-of-chinas-looming-aging-crisis
.

[>]
“Even an extra 50 to 100 million people wouldn’t have made a huge difference”:
E-mail correspondence with the author, June 29, 2015.

[>]
the real number of births averted was probably 100 to 200 million at most:
Wang Feng, Cai Yong, and Gu Baochang, “Population, Policy and Politics: How Will History Judge the One-Child Policy?,”
Population and Development Review
38, Issue Supplement s1 (February 2013): 115–29.

[>]
ranked the one-child policy as one of the most important stratagems:
“The Deepest Cuts,”
Economist
, September 20, 2014,
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21618680-our-guide-actions-have-done-most-slow-global-warming-deepest-cuts
.