WHAT CRIME DID SHE COMMIT TO DESERVE A FATE MOST FOUL?

I read this news item the other day from a local Chinese newspaper. It tells a story of a 15-year-old girl in China. She was abandoned by her birth parents in a grassy lot when she was just a newly born baby. She was later found by a villager, an old lady who in turn gave baby to her son and daughter – in – law to take care of whilst they try to find the young girl’s parents. 15 years has since passed and the baby girl is now a teenage girl. The hopeless search for her parents became a distant murmur and what was once a temporary arrangement of care by her foster family became a permanent bond of family. The foster parents treated her as if it was their own. So much so that even without a formal adoption, the young girl was given the adoptive parents’ surname. Then one day, the little girl discovered her true biological parents and began secretly meeting with them and then she ran away from her foster home and stayed at her true parents’ home. Her foster parents frantically searched for her but when they found out that she had returned to her biological parents, they gave her up and let her go albeit grudgingly. Perhaps hoping that she now finally found her peace. That is until 28 days later, the foster mother learned through a neighbor’s daughter that her “adopted” daughter looked pale and ill at school. Concerned, she went to see her “daughter” only to discover that she wasn’t really ill but was actually starving. The teenager’s biological parents never gave her enough money for sustenance during the day when she was in school. Pitying her, the foster mother took back the “daughter” and at same time, the foster parents sue the biological parents for child support claiming that they abandoned their daughter in the first place and that they didn’t really adopted the young girl but was forced to feed her. Furthermore, the foster parents claimed that the biological parents weren’t really financially incapable to feed the girl since the biological parents have an orchard and 2 fish pens to boot. The biological parents refused claiming that it was the foster parents’ “freewill” to feed their daughter and the latter are not constrained to do so especially if the foster family’s financial strait doesn’t warrant it. As the lawsuit got ever so heated, things took a nasty turn. The act of “betrayal” by the girl in leaving her foster home in favor of her biological parents has left a deep scar in her relationship with her foster family. She wasn’t “accepted” anymore like before. Things got to a head when she decided to go back again to her biological parents, which proved to be the last straw for the foster parents. As a result, the foster family formally disowns her. This time legally. The biological parents on the other hand didn’t take in the young girl either claiming that she was in cahoots with her foster parents to extort them. The biological father even used the analogy of “the dog doesn’t bite the hand that fed her but does it’s master’s bidding” to bolster his claim. And so with this, the young girl is now an orphan not because her parents are dead but because nobody wanted her at all. Poor girl. What did she do to be punished with such a terrible fate? I couldn’t help but felt incensed at it. Incensed at the injustice of it, incensed at the fact that parents could forsake a defenseless and helpless child! I felt even more outrage that a parent would compare their daughter to a dog! Is a person of one’s own flesh and blood be no better than that of a dog? How could people be some cruel to such an innocent child? How could this thing happen in the first place? As my anger simmers down and my logical self returned to the fore, I began to try to figure out how things like this come about. And my logical deduction has led me to the conclusion that they are all guilty of crimes and that they are mere victims of the system as well, all of them are. China is world’s most populous country with more than a billion people and sometime in the early part of it’s communist history, the government has tried to curb the country’s population growth rate through it’s one child policy. So drastic was it’s policies and so ruthless was it’s implementation that China has manage to successfully “tame” their population growth. The population control was not only an outgrowth of practical necessity to curb population size but also as a result of the dire economic necessity prevailing at that time and the geopolitical scenario as well (China was surrounded by the USSR and US allied states at that time and that a simple trade embargo of food supply by the two blocks would trigger widespread famine and chaos if population growth was left unchecked and eventually allowed to outstrip it’s food supply). However, to many Chinese families, having a direct male descendant is of paramount importance more important than one’s life. For without a male descendant, the family line becomes extinct and this is considered a very grave and highly unforgivable offense against the ancestors. Limiting the offspring to only one child increases the risk of extinction of the family line (should something bad happen to the male offspring) and that fate of extinction became sealed once that only child was born a girl. Abortion and infanticide particularly of baby girls became widespread as a result of this policy (in fact, China’s sex ratio is out of balance with more men than women whilst the global sex ratio is slightly in favor of women) and the young girl of this story could had become one of the statistics if not for that kind old lady who found her and gave her to her foster parents. Having said this, the “crime” of the true biological parents is that they made a choice, a terrible choice; a choice that is forced upon them both by the law and by tradition and made with no other viable alternatives. Still, the biological parents could have made amends to their daughter who was thought to be lost but was again found but they didn’t. Years of separation prevented the healthy establishment of a true parent – child bond. They could have worked for it but they chose not to and for that, they are doubly guilty. The foster parents although laudable in their acts of kindness are also guilty of crimes. They are guilty of being poor and hence, the unnecessary incident of asking for child support from the biological parents. They felt that they are being cheated and they wanted compensation for all their trouble, a trouble that they unquestionably assume 15 years ago or was it? They are also guilty of being human, easily hurt by the betrayal of someone so close and dear to them but couldn’t come to terms to forgive the ones who hurt them. To err is human, to forgive divine. They are humans, not saints. They are the young girl’s foster parents not her true parents. They could choose to feed her, shelter her, heal her but aren’t really obliged to do so. And this they lately realized rather coldly. And how about the young girl? What crime does she commits as to deserve such dastard fate? Her crime was that she was born a girl and a human being at that. If she were born a boy, nothing like this would ever have happened but as fate would have it, she was the poor baby girl. She was only human to long for the truth, to long for her true parents, to long for her true parents’ love. With that, she made the grave decision of hurting the persons who truly cared for her. I could only lament for her and at the same time felt little and helpless as well. Oh fate! How cruel is thy joke!