The spring afternoon in 1997 started like any other as seven-year-old Shi Naseer played with a classmate in their Shanghai neighborhood park. But the secret her friend shared that day would alter Shi’s understanding of her world and her very existence. “I’m allowed to have a little brother or sister,” the girl confided, waving a bony hand weakened by a congenital disorder. In that moment, Shi realized the tragic truth behind China’s notorious one-child policy.
For Shi and her generation born under the strict family planning measures, siblings were a foreign concept – something shameful from a bygone era. The words “sister” and “brother” referred only to cousins. Shi’s own parents proudly displayed their “One Child Honorary Certificate” alongside her birth certificate. They were model citizens in the eyes of the state.
A Sudden Awareness of Loss
But there in the park, with the spring blossoms overhead, the meaning behind her classmate’s revelation crashed over Shi. This frail girl was at risk of dying young, and that was why her family had been granted the rare permission to have a second child. Suddenly forced to confront the fragility of life and the pain of lost possibility, Shi felt her childhood innocence shatter.
She reflected on her own family’s unspoken wounds – a brother lost to miscarriage years before her birth. Her mother recounted the story with a smile, but only now did Shi begin to grasp the depths of grief and yearning hidden behind that brave face. Her father’s insistence on calling Shi his “son” took on new shades of loss and compromise.
Tragedy Compounded by Policy
In the ensuing months, Shi watched as her family faced the cruel calculus of the one-child mandate again. Her cousin, 15-year-old “Brother Lulu,” was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The doctor immediately presented his parents with a terrible choice: permission to conceive another child now that their son faced a likely death. Shi recalls:
For my aunt and uncle, in their mid-40s, to direct their efforts into conceiving a second child when their son was gravely ill was nothing short of telling him to his face that they expected him to die.
They poured everything into their remaining time with Lulu, never mentioning this “option” to their dying child. Across China, countless families faced similar situations as the policy intersected with personal tragedy. Shi’s relatives chose to focus on hope and love in the face of grief – a quiet resistance to the state’s intrusion into their most intimate losses.
Lasting Trauma, Slow Healing
The one-child policy lasted until 2015 – more than three decades of loss and heartache pressed upon Chinese families. Women endured forced abortions and sterilizations. Baby girls fell victim to infanticide or abandonment as traditional preference for sons combined with the strict birth limits. The collective pain and skewed demographics continue to impact Chinese society even today.
For Shi, now a mother herself, the freedom to choose a different path is bittersweet. After one miscarriage, she hopes to give her son a sibling – an easy decision in her new home of Australia. But the shadows of the past still haunt her and many others.
It took me decades to recognize that my father’s attempt to hide his desire for a son already made him more forward-thinking than many Chinese men of his time. It also took me decades to forgive my mother for lashing out at me – she had little control over her life and had to swallow unfairness and heartbreak when she simply wanted more children.
Shi Naseer, author of “The Cry of the Silkworm”
Through sharing her story, Shi hopes to honor the unspoken pain of so many families and help process a national trauma still not fully acknowledged. As a new generation of Chinese parents tastes an unfamiliar freedom, Shi’s words offer a poignant reminder of the resilience and love that endured against political and personal odds.
