Narrated by: Wang Taomei Written by: Jin Yang Translated and edited by: Clyde Xi November 7, 2024 Abstract This is the account of an ordinary mother navigating extraordinary constraints. Set against the realities of rural life, family obligation, and state policy, the narrative traces how private choices are shaped—and sometimes broken—by forces beyond one’s control. Written in a mother’s own voice, the story does not seek judgment or absolution, but bears witness to what end

Original Author: Jin Yang Editor: Clyde Xi Source: Nanchang Project 4/15/2023 Birth Parents Two days ago, I met a mother in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu Province, who has spent many years searching online for her daughter. In phone calls and WeChat messages, she told me that she has not gone a single day without thinking of her child since the moment the baby was taken from her. Her daughter was born on September 30, 1995, her second child. The birth took place in secret in Xin

Narrated by: Zhang Guifang  Compiled by: J Yang  Edited by: Clyde Xi February 6, 2026 Abstract In this heartfelt memoir, Zhang Guifang describes the extreme hardship her family endured in late-1990s China. After years of costly infertility treatments and crushing debt from family illnesses, their long-awaited daughter was born in 1999, only to be diagnosed with a rare, severe congenital heart defect. Unable to afford or access life-saving surgery in China—where the risks incl

Narrated by: Lily Zeng Chinese Writer: Jin Yang English Editor: Clyde Xi Date: November 20, 2025 Abstract This memoir is a firsthand testimony of a mother separated from her child under China’s one-child policy and her thirty-year journey through fear, loss, endurance, and eventual reunion. Through lived experience rather than retrospection alone, the narrative documents how state policy intruded into the most intimate realms of life, turning pregnancy into risk, motherhood i

Narrator: Yang KX Chinese Draft: Jin Yang English Translation: Fengxue Zhang, Peter Zhe Editor: Clyde Xi Introduction China’s one-child policy, enforced for more than three decades, left behind countless untold tragedies. Much has been written about the children who were separated from their families, yet one group of victims is too often overlooked—the birth mothers. Behind every abandoned or relinquished child was a mother forced into impossible choices: to hide, to flee, t

Guo Rui in Guangzhou, South China Morning Post Published Aug 08, 2021 08:06 AM PHT Like many women in China at the time, Song Chunxia got an abortion in the 1990s when an ultrasound revealed she was having a girl. The strict one-child policy imposed in 1979 meant that for some couples like Song and her husband there was a decision to be made - and their preference was to have a boy. Song, who is now 46 and works as a cleaner in Guangzhou, has been thinking about the daughter

（from Weixin Account 诗意恩典， 9/13/2023） Oil painting Breastfeeding Shen Hanwu I Always Thought a Mother's Embrace Was the Safest Place in the World. Until I heard Brother Zhuo recount something he had personally experienced — a story that overturned everything I believed. Sometimes, a mother’s embrace is not a sanctuary. Sometimes, not even a baby’s right to feed at her breast can be protected. Brother Zhuo is from Shenzhen. A few years ago, he flew thousands of miles to vis

New Yorker (5/23/2025) https://www.newyorker.com/news/american-chronicles/the-chinese-adoptees-who-were-stolen?fbclid=IwQ0xDSwKfQ4xleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHnTM7M8mn_Tw6d1uqvR42zTm23pWYdh1RurkSBB6tU22To8uhzMNHe4-_8Bq_aem_9tofVQhkqDFbtO8szwv-BQ Unexpected DNA Result Photograph by Akilah Townsend for The New Yorker In September of 2022, at the start of her senior year at Indiana’s Purdue University, Mia Griffin was working in her bedroom, laptop propped up on her knees, when an e-mail

Original video story by Shaojian Kang Translated by Cathy He Revised by Clyde Xi and Weiming Zhao If I tell you I was found in a trash can, would you believe me? It's true. 43 years ago today, on March 1st, 1981 according to the lunar calendar, my mom picked me up from a trash can. That moment shaped who I am today. My mom found me in a trash can at our local hospital during a cold night, with temperatures around 6 or 7 degrees Celsius. Up to that point, my mom had carried me