LINYI, China — Outside, rain falls. Inside, a middle-school student completes his homework. His mother watches him approvingly.
She is especially protective of him. He's the youngest of three children this mother had under China's one-child policy.
Giving birth to him was a huge risk — and she took no chances. She carried her son to term while hiding in a relative's house. She wanted to avoid the "family planning officials" in her home village, just outside Linyi, a city of 11 million in China's northern Shandong province, where the policy's enforcement was especially violent.
What was she hiding from? What could the family planning officials have done to her? She demurs, her voice growing quiet. "All we can do is go on living," she says. "There is no use in trying to make sense of society."
