In 2015, the 3-decade-long One Child Policy in China ended. Aimed to boost the population, the Chinese Government issued and nationally promoted the Second Child Policy. In 2021, families are officially encouraged to have three children.
Deeply rooted in Confucianism and East Asian patriarchal values, boys are the only gender that could continue and carry on the family heritage. Many families see the Second-Child-Policy as the long-hoped chance to finally create a complete family, regardless the consequence. Shocked by the magical realism, I was witnessing and living Garcia Marquez stories in my homeland.
One for Sorrow, Two for Joy is the voice of women under these policies. An only child, Yimeng is never good enough because she is a girl; Pregnant again at 45, Qin Ling is forced to believe this baby boy will finally makes her family whole and happy. They were put in permanent shackles of womanhood defined by patriarchy, they are uteruses, before they are themselves. I wish to explore deep into the lives of women affected by law policies, and I will always applaud for women and girls forgotten in history.
After the Second-Child Policy passed in China, a high school girl struggles to deal with life after her 48-year-old mother is pregnant again to have a boy to pass on the family line.
Yimeng, 16, is a quiet high school girl. With her father working in another city, Yimeng and her mother Qin Ling only have each other. After the second-child policy passes, pressured by her husband’s side of the family, Qin Ling gets pregnant again at her dangerously high age to have a son and pass on the family line. Angry, worried, and confounded, Yimeng is forced to accept this brutal fact, and is determined to fight against the battle of bias, stupidity, and absurdity.
