Li abandoned the game and looked at him in dismay. “She’s not going to have it, is she?” He was horrified by the thought. His sister, Xiao Ling, was even more stubborn than himself. Once she had set her mind to something there was no dissuading her. And she already had a child. A wonderful four-year-old little girl, with a smile that was destined to break hearts. An impudent smile that dimpled her cheeks and lit up her eyes. Li could see her now, grinning at him, challenging him, hair gathered in ribbons on either side of her head swinging free as she cocked it to one side or the other. Xiao Ling was married to a rice farmer near the town of Zigong in Sichuan province. They lived with his parents and made a good living from the land. But they wanted a son—everyone wanted a son, for a son was much more valuable than a daughter, and under the One-Child Policy they could only have one or the other. And if Xiao Ling was pregnant and insisted on having the child, the months ahead would be intolerable. First her village committee would send representatives to try to dissuade her from proceeding with the pregnancy. Then she would be visited by cadres who would exert powerful and increasing pressure on her to have an abortion. She would be subjected to hours of psychological persuasion. It had been known, in cases of particularly intransigent mothers-to-be, for enforced abortion to be applied, usually with the connivance of the family. For if a second child was born, there would be hefty fines to pay, fines that most people could not afford. The families could also be penalised in other ways, with loss of free education, access to medicine, housing, pension. The pressures could be made unbearable.

Old Yifu nodded sadly. “She’s a difficult girl, your sister. She’s determined to go ahead.”

“Has my father talked to her?”

“Oh, yes. But, of course, she will not listen.”

“What does her husband say?” Li had never liked him. He thought, like many brothers, that no man was good enough for his sister.

“I think,” Old Yifu said, “that he would like the chance of a son, so he is sitting on the fence. He will neither support her, nor dissuade her.”

“Bastard!” Li said. He scratched his head. “She won’t listen to me.” He glanced at his uncle. “The only person she might listen to is you.”

Old Yifu nodded. “Your father thinks so, too.”

“What will you do?”

“I will go and speak to her. But I will not tell her what to do. The One-Child Policy is a necessary evil. But a woman has a right to bear children. She must make her own decision, based on what is right. Not only for her, not only for China, but for both. And sometimes that is not an easy thing to do.”