Birth policy changes family life of three generations and more

I will never forget the pain I felt 15 years ago when I read a father’s book in memory of one of my classmates, who died suddenly of respiratory failure at the age of 18.

The boy was my middle school classmate in Jinan, Shandong province. While my other classmates and I get older year by year, he stays forever 18 years old in our memories — and in the memories of his parents, who have kept their son’s room exactly the way it was when he was alive.

It is estimated millions of people in China have lost their only child early. They followed the government’s family planning policy when they were young, and most are too old to have another child even though they are allowed to. An immature adoption system and a poor compensation from the government pushes many of them to the brink of collapse.

One of my college room- mates went back to work in his hometown as a village committee clerk i n Linyi, Shandong province, after he graduated.

His father, a farmer, died when he and his younger brother were still young, and the family was pulled into dire poverty because the family was in debt because his parents had to pay a heavy fine for having a second child without a due permit.

The two boys and their illiterate mother were bul- lied by the other villagers as policy breakers. The woman worked as a street cleaner in the village, and took care of a small patch of farmland. Because of long-term malnutrition, the two boys were both weak and thin.

When I phoned him one morning during a National Day holiday three years after graduation, he told me he was busy dealing with some family planning policy violators. “They come home during holiday, so it is time for us to catch them and fine them,” he said with unquestioning authority in his voice, saying that the more fines he collects, the more income he will receive.

“I want to get back the fine my parents handed in,” he added.

I am a single child of my parents, as are most of my classmates born in the early 1980s. As the first single child generation after China’s market reform and opening-up, we were called “little emperors” when we were young, because there are so many adults in a family to take care of each of us.

Yet, many of the “little emperors”, especially the ones living i n cities, have become “house slaves”, because of the large mortgages they have to pay f or loans. Many also have to look after their parents and grandparents, as often their basic pensions are barely above the lowest life allowance.

And China has developed so fast that the dramatic changes in society witnessed by a Chi- nese family within the past 30 years are almost comparable to those experienced by a Western family in a century. The generational gaps in Chinese families are often very wide.

That the Chinese government nowadays pays special attention to improving people’s livelihoods and protecting the environment can actually be taken as partly repaying the accumulated historical debts resulting from the long overdue population policy adjustment.