If you ever want to find out how it is to feel utterly helpless, I recommend you spend some time in China.
A woman sitting on the sidewalk, banging her forehead on the pavement, clutching a half-naked baby to herself brought this home to me for the first time. I saw her nearly every day on the way to the school, where I was teaching English. - A beggar woman, obviously.
One day a more seasoned colleague, walking with me, began to give me some background: "She must have dodged the baby police." -
"What?" -
"Every three months approximately, a special police squad combes through all residential buildings collecting urine samples from all women in the child bearing age to find out any undocumented pregnancies." -
"What??" -
"Yes, unmarried women and women who have already one child, - unless they belong to an ethnic minority - are then forced to have an abortion." -
Ugh, yes, of course, the one child policy.
I remember the young Chinese woman whom I had met in New Zealand two years prior, on a cold day, we were both soaking in some heavenly hot pools, not many people about and after some silent time we began to talk. She was very softly spoken, matching her delicate appearance. She spoke of her studies of economics, a new field for her and then I learnt that she had been a doctor before in China and she didn't want to go back to it. I noticed a taut steel wire undertone. I must have looked at her showing surprise and again silence spread out. Hot pools are great for that, especially on a cold day. We were in Ngawha Springs and whoever has been to the place will never forget it. It feels like not of this earth.. - I might have mentioned, that I also am a trained doctor. - She was very deep in thought and had an unbelievably pure feeling about her, like not of this earth, an angel or an alien or something. - In China she had been ordered to perform abortions, sixty, seventy, eighty every day, for two years.- And no, you couldn't refuse.
My teacher friend continued: "But the abortion costs them 300 Yuan and so some poor girls dodge it. - They are silly, they don't think!"
I was intrigued to hear some passion in his otherwise perpetually mocking tone of voice.
"They will not receive any free health care for the child and no schooling unless they pay for it privately which they can't." -
"But that is inhuman. How can the government abandon the women like that. And it cannot be desirable to have lots of poor and and uneducated children?" -
"If the authorities would care for them, nobody would adhere to the one-child policy." -
"Then why won't they make the abortions free?" -
"Because then they would rely on abortion as birth control and pregnancies would sky-rocket." -
I could feel he was right. I had already been struck by the look on too many faces in China bearing a lack of hope, a lack of conscience or idealism, especially old people having no wisdom or clarity shining through them, just numbness, baseness and at times a brazen insolence that took my breath away. -
About 80 years ago Bertold Brecht wrote those lines: "..what kind of chill must have descended on the people. Who has so beaten them down, that they now have through and through grown cold. -
We were walking through a small provincial town in the South of China, inhabitants: 1.5 million. -
A woman sitting on the sidewalk, banging her forehead on the pavement, clutching a half-naked baby to herself brought this home to me for the first time. I saw her nearly every day on the way to the school, where I was teaching English. - A beggar woman, obviously.
One day a more seasoned colleague, walking with me, began to give me some background: "She must have dodged the baby police." -
"What?" -
"Every three months approximately, a special police squad combes through all residential buildings collecting urine samples from all women in the child bearing age to find out any undocumented pregnancies." -
"What??" -
"Yes, unmarried women and women who have already one child, - unless they belong to an ethnic minority - are then forced to have an abortion." -
Ugh, yes, of course, the one child policy.
I remember the young Chinese woman whom I had met in New Zealand two years prior, on a cold day, we were both soaking in some heavenly hot pools, not many people about and after some silent time we began to talk. She was very softly spoken, matching her delicate appearance. She spoke of her studies of economics, a new field for her and then I learnt that she had been a doctor before in China and she didn't want to go back to it. I noticed a taut steel wire undertone. I must have looked at her showing surprise and again silence spread out. Hot pools are great for that, especially on a cold day. We were in Ngawha Springs and whoever has been to the place will never forget it. It feels like not of this earth.. - I might have mentioned, that I also am a trained doctor. - She was very deep in thought and had an unbelievably pure feeling about her, like not of this earth, an angel or an alien or something. - In China she had been ordered to perform abortions, sixty, seventy, eighty every day, for two years.- And no, you couldn't refuse.
My teacher friend continued: "But the abortion costs them 300 Yuan and so some poor girls dodge it. - They are silly, they don't think!"
I was intrigued to hear some passion in his otherwise perpetually mocking tone of voice.
"They will not receive any free health care for the child and no schooling unless they pay for it privately which they can't." -
"But that is inhuman. How can the government abandon the women like that. And it cannot be desirable to have lots of poor and and uneducated children?" -
"If the authorities would care for them, nobody would adhere to the one-child policy." -
"Then why won't they make the abortions free?" -
"Because then they would rely on abortion as birth control and pregnancies would sky-rocket." -
I could feel he was right. I had already been struck by the look on too many faces in China bearing a lack of hope, a lack of conscience or idealism, especially old people having no wisdom or clarity shining through them, just numbness, baseness and at times a brazen insolence that took my breath away. -
About 80 years ago Bertold Brecht wrote those lines: "..what kind of chill must have descended on the people. Who has so beaten them down, that they now have through and through grown cold. -
We were walking through a small provincial town in the South of China, inhabitants: 1.5 million. -
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