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C U L T U R A L L AY E R S O F T H E O N E C H I L D P O L I C Y

CULTURAL LAYERS OF THE ONE CHILD POLICY LEARNING FROM ‘A MOTHERS ORDEAL’

HARI KALSI

On an economic and political level, China’s One Child Policy was wildly successful, too successful in some sense. However, on a personal level, to many women in China it was not all about statistics and how the country benefited from the brutal measures taken to reduce population growth. The book, ‘A Mothers Ordeal’ by Steven W. Mosher, fixates on one mother the lived experience of the One Child Policy. By pulling back the first layer of Chi An’s life we learn about her story. She grew up through a time of famine in China in the 1950s with her father, mother and her two brothers. Throughout her life her father coddled her and cherished her. When she was of the age of nine, her father passed away, from such a young age Chi An would distance herself from any healthy relationships. Chi An had her an abortion at sixteen where the baby was killed with an injection of a lethal poison to the head. However, shortly after, she was forced into marriage with Xing Wei and had a son together. Xing Wei, the child’s father and Chi An’s husband, left for a brilliant office job in the USA. Unbelievably, she found herself in a job ostensibly that maintained the health of the female workers, but sadly it really consisted of talking women into abortions and then performing these abortions. The irony of this is the same terrible experience that she went through as a young girl, she was inflicting on other young girls against their will. Her company also had a birth quota where anything above required ‘remedial measures’ which had no mercy, as Chi An had learnt the hard way. After going through the official visa process, Chi An’s family were once again reunited in the USA. Chi An became pregnant and, even though they were not in China, was ordered to abort the child. Knowing the process of the abortion clinics, she knew the lengths the policy would go to persecute her, so she refused and fled. As the family sought asylum, they met an attorney that helped them escape from China’s policy. In conclusion, despite the success of the One Child Policy, through understanding Chi An’s story, the reader can understand the lived experience of many Chinese women and a light is shone on the physical, medical, emotional, and cultural layers of the implementation of the One Child Policy. “I couldn’t lose another one of my children”

38 | Geographical Magazine • Merchant Taylors’ School

2021/22 Edition | 39