本文发表在 rolia.net 枫下论坛“THE BABY WE CANN’T IGNORE”

I believe anybody who has read June edition of Marie Claire won’t fail to notice this article. Not expecting to see such a report from a glossy magazine, I was shocked, saddened, and ashamed. When I went to work the next day, as I feared, my colleagues raised the topic out of concern or curiosity? . I didn’t know what to reply. I don’t want to comment on “One Child Policy”, since we have all been educated that ends are enough to justify means under some circumstance. Only if you can take a look at the report! There is a full-page picture at the beginning of the report: a man with his hands clasped from the back walking leisurely by the pavement; a few steps behind his feet, a dead baby girl deserted there with dirt and garbage. This is how the picture looks like:

“ … Lying in the gutter of a bustling main road is the tiny, twisted body of a dead baby girl. She is naked, surrounded by only dirt pieces of hospital gauze. Busses and bicyclists speed past the corpse, spraying it with mud.”

There are three other pictures showing the baby girl beside a huge truck tire, a bicyclist, and two kids (a young boy and girl who is gazing at it while passing by). The last pictures recorded an old man, picking up a baby, wrapping it up in a carton box, and dumping it in a nearby garbage bin. These miserable pictures were taken in Hunan province. When the policemen came, they were not all surprised. Their only action was to take away one of the local woman’ camera for fear of its spreading out

This report devoted most of itself to the ruthlessness of the One Child Policy, which we don’t need foreign report to get better informed. What baffles me is the indifference displayed by people here from adults to children: either it means this is such a common scene that it has lost the capacity to surprise; or, this kind of deserted baby, is simply regarded as trash, not a life. By the way, according to the report, the baby just died, and blood is still coming out from her nose. This reminds me the incident not long ago, when thousands of ships and boats were sent out to search for our lost pilot. While his life deserved such an honor, how can others appear ever so light, ever so worthless? Never have I felt so strongly that the lives of us Chinese are treated so differently in accordance to our places in society. If one happens to occupy a disadvantageous position, like this one of being a female baby, or being poor, no power, working class, peasants, … he is doomed. It is disheartening to add examples to describe how doomed we might be. I bet if you dig 163.com or Sina.com for their old files within last two months, you can find a dozen vivid ones to illustrate my point.

My virtual friends here, I don’t know what you will think about this – so many of you with varied views, New Leftists, Nationalists, Liberalist, etc., etc, (I am only recently become acquainted with these catchphrases, not sure what they stand for). I myself have a very heavy heart at this moment. Since when have we become so indifferent to things that are not relevant to our own? Are we born so or educated so? On the one hand, I guess all of us at one time or another feels the brutality of the system in forms of policemen, corrupted court, and arrogant officials etc., which is capable of striping off human dignity, and reducing human life to mud or number. On the other hand, we, often times sufferers and often times the weak ones, turn blind eyes to those who are even weaker than us … What infatuated ignorance and cruelty in this kind of indifference. Enough. A writer’s sad pondering may best summarize my feeling at this moment, “ … Life felt so grubby and mean, as if we were all of us soiled and disgraced.”更多精彩文章及讨论，请光临枫下论坛 rolia.net