“The room in Dujiangyan People’s Hospital was full of women with this same problem,” Ren said as she wept.
The central government began sending fertility specialists to the earthquake region last year. The Sichuan Daily, an official newspaper, reported on Feb. 29 that nearly 1,000 women in the quake region had become pregnant, citing the Sichuan Province Family Planning Commission. Family planning officials in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, declined requests for an interview.
One of the expectant mothers is Liu Li, whose brown corduroy overalls stretch across her swollen belly. She said “there were complicated feelings involved” in finding out she was pregnant this past winter.
“There was nervousness, happiness and also some guilt, because it was so soon after the death of our first child,” said Liu, 35, as she filled a plastic wash basin in the Dujiangyan camp.
Like many parents whose children died, Liu took a payment of about US$8,800 from the local government and a guarantee of a pension in exchange for silence.
Many parents, even those expecting another child, have refused to be quiet.
Here in Mianzhu, women in more than half of the 126 households that lost children in Fuxin No. 2 Primary School are pregnant or gave birth recently, according to several parents. One father, Bi Kaiwei, praised the free health care the government had provided for his wife, now more than four months pregnant. But the pregnancy is no substitute for justice, he said.
Every day, the two visit the grave of their dead daughter. They have kept all her belongings, including a stuffed white puppy and a light blanket now on the parents’ bed. Framed photographs of the girl are displayed throughout their prefabricated home just a few hundred meters from the site of the Fuxin school.
“I feel this is the return of our daughter,” said Bi’s wife, Liu Xiaoying, as she patted her belly. “But even though I’m comforting myself, telling myself this is her, I still don’t feel cheerful. I’m very depressed.”
Liu was among a group of parents from Mianzhu who secretly traveled to Beijing in January to file a petition with the central government. Officials there told them to file with the Sichuan government.
But officials in Sichuan are trying to break the will of the parents. Sang, the father with the 45-day-old son, said the police had threatened him with further imprisonment.
A man answering the telephone at the Mianzhu police headquarters declined to comment.
On the edge of a wheat field, Sang has built a new home to replace the one that crumbled during the earthquake. In one corner is a bedroom for his dead son, Xingpeng. Neatly stored inside are a framed photograph of the boy and his most treasured possessions — a fishing rod, white dancing shoes, a glass fish tank.
The new son will not sleep here.
“We’re going to keep this forever,” Sang said.
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