On Having Children

I hope each of us can freely decide whether to have children, without having them just so someone will look after us in old age or going without because we can't afford to raise them.

There's still so much room to make things better here. I want people who want to change the way things are to see that. But plenty of people think even saying so is dangerous, or just plain unreasonable.

I can understand where they're coming from. Our country isn't even a hundred years old. It's only been a few generations. Being able to eat enough and keep warm already feels like a lot. So maybe we can put up with a few lines being crossed by the people's servants, or the powerful, or whatever we're calling them today. After all, at least we're full.

I could eat cornmeal buns all my life. But once I've had a white-flour steamed bun, it's hard to go back to eating cornmeal buns happily. They start to scrape my throat.

Other families' children are eating white-flour steamed buns, wheat bread, beef. You can't decide you want to save up for a bigger house, poke your own kid's eyes out so they can't see what the others are eating, and expect them to settle down with a cornmeal bun.

Kids are small. They aren't stupid. Family business should be discussed openly with the family.

We can understand saving up to build a bigger house, one that will keep out the wind, rain, and snow. Even if there's no storm today, we can understand putting money aside for it. We can even understand the whole family eating cornmeal buns while we save. But then the parents stand in front of us reeking of liquor, grease on their lips and shreds of meat between their teeth, saying they won't eat their cornmeal buns so we kids can have more.

The kids get fifty yuan a month to live on. The parents hand the neighbors thousands of yuan in cash gifts.

When another sun-tanned kid beats one of us in our own house, our parents beat us first.

When other people's children visit, you bring out every good thing in the house for them. Your own kids stand off to the side, drooling.

Everything this family has was earned by us kids. You, the parents, only have to sit back and take your cut. You decide everything in the house, and we aren't even allowed to complain, all to protect your authority.

Then why, in the richest family, can the children call their parents by their first names and talk to them as equals?

People say that only when one parent has the final say can the whole family pull together. We believe that will let us do big things, do everything well.

But parents get drunk. They wake up groggy. They aren't right every hour of the day.

I used to think it didn't matter if the parents spent half the family's daily earnings on food, drink, and fun, as long as we kept earning more. Half of a hundred is still more than half of fifty, right? But now there are fewer people earning, more parents to support, and more money going out. There isn't enough anymore.

Some of the parents in the rooms up north spend more on themselves than their entire room earns. Kids in a few of the southeastern rooms already have to support them.

Even that wouldn't matter much if the kids could keep earning. There'd still be hope, still be a future. But the parents keep pulling one stunt after another. Some kids who've seen children in other families eating meat can no longer stomach their cornmeal buns.

Some of those kids think: maybe if we earn a little less, the parents will finally pay attention and spend some of the money they would have pocketed on something decent for us.

I'm one of them. I don't have children because I'm afraid that when the parents poke out my eyes and clamp a hand over my mouth, I'll bite back.

Children and a family are the kind of happiness I dream of. But I want more of us to be able to see children in other families eating meat without drooling.

Instead, the door gets shut so we can't see anyone else eating meat, and we're told the best thing in the world is a cornmeal bun.