This and that

I find this article extremely interesting because for our book club selection last month we read this book "CHINA DOLL". I was a little overwhelmed with the visuals the author's words provided in visualizing the babies in what she called the dieing rooms. I can only hope that our daughter will not be subjected to too much time in an institution before we go to get her.
Today was referral day for May. China referred 6 days worth of dossiers up to November 1 2005......Now I am hearing reports of waiting 3 years... I certainly hope not. The babies that I have seen so far for this month have been very young 6 -9 months...Hmmm I wonder if that means that there really arent that many babies left to adopt in China.. but then again, there are millions of people that live in that very large country... I don't know what to believe anymore......





Exploring 'Gendercide'
Novelist explores the tragic killing of girls in China
By Nadia Ghattas and Yvonne Marcotte
Epoch Times New York Staff May 01, 2007


(courtesy www.taliacarner.com)
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The world is just beginning to understand the terrible reality of China's one child policy. The U.S. State Department's 2006 Report on Human Rights Practices in China shed light on the width and depth of the problem: "The male-female birth ratio for first births was 118.58 to 100 (compared with norms of between 103 and 107 to 100), and in some parts of the country, the ratio was even more skewed."

In his article "573,000 Orphans in China," Joshua Zhong reported on the miserable situation of abandoned children, despite the efforts of the Chinese Communist leadership's call to "create a more harmonious society."

Novelist Talia Carner recently responded to an Epoch Times email interview about researching her novel, China Doll and the tragedy of female infanticide in China. On her website, the writer states, "What I discovered was that in China there is gendercide defined by singling out baby girls for death vs infanticide which is gender neutral."

Epoch Times: How were you able to do research for your novel in a country controlled by a totalitarian regime?

Talia Carner: There were two parts to my research: during the writing of the novel and after its publication this past fall. My initial learning of China involved the landscape of the country and its people. My protagonist is a visitor to China, a celebrity on a concert tour who is first shown only what her handlers want her to see until she uncovers some ugly truths beneath the haunting beauty of this vast land.

I traveled in China and spoke with women—university professors, industry directors, aging peasants and budding entrepreneurs—about their customs and apprehensions, and I learned how, generation after generation, due to either lingering starvation, the social experiment of the cultural revolution, or the current sacrifice under the one-child policy, women have been losing their baby girls through coercion, prejudice, neglect—and outright murder.

This information was supplemented by videos of orphanages and credible reports from international bodies such as World Health Organization. Then, as my protagonist ends up on a collision course with both governments determined to silence her, I explored U.S.-Sino relationship by interviewing in the USA officers of the National Security Administration, State Department, CIA and Foreign Service.

I consulted maps and studied the fauna and flora and even watched Chinese films for the physical details I might have missed in my travels. I US-based Chinese writers introduced me to the Chinese syntax when speaking English and answered some of my questions.

The plot of China Doll is set in the year 2000. A novel does not presume to shed light on more than one slice of life at one point in time. As much as it attempts to give the real-world feeling, it is not an academic research documenting that world. However, once the novel was published, in my many speaking engagements I faced audiences eager to learn more.

I found myself searching for current, specific data regarding infanticide and child abandonment. Previously, in the process of creating material for my website, I had already posted original articles and photographs which had not been digitalized until then.

Now I searched for hard data from credible sources. Interestingly, while the Chinese government blocks access to information about its orphanages, population figures and sporadic budgets are nevertheless available, and some projections can be extrapolated from data published in China and elsewhere, such as Unicef and universities.

I hired Chinese-language researchers to read internet sources and news, and together we patched a grim picture according to which 1.7 million girls are "missing" in China each year. That is the information I presented recently at the U.N. Conference on the Status of Women. Some missing data left white space in which the questions are louder than the answers.

ET: When you spoke with ordinary Chinese citizens, what was their attitude toward raising female children?

TC: Very old women—mostly uneducated and not given to sophisticated tiptoeing around the truth—reported how the only form of birth control in their time had been killing the babies once they were born. They spoke of the worthlessness of females; often, they regarded killing their baby girls as acts of kindness by preventing the life of misery they knew was sure to come. The educated women I met at the 1995 women's conference in Beijing mostly parroted propaganda material.

However, Chinese who live in the West were eager to speak freely. Some discussed the changes in attitude toward females in urban areas. Others pointed out that the minority of women breaking the traditional mold were still the exception in a society that is mostly rural. Almost all acknowledged the singling out of baby girls for death was a known routine rarely discussed.

ET: This is obviously a terrible situation. Are there any good stories?

TC: The Chinese government is attempting to educate people about the value of raising girls. I've seen city-block posters promoting such sentiments. In recent years, some domestic adoption programs have been successful in encouraging parents of a growing boy to adopt an abandoned baby girl.


Author Talia Carner (courtesy www.taliacarner.com)But overall, the low value of females is not only generations-old, but is also deeply rooted in economic reality: boys, not girls, support their parents at an old age. To balance this real financial dependency on boys, the government must offer old-age benefits to parents of girls.

ET: You are probably aware of the value the present government places on stability. With the shortage of marriageable females, what do you see as the future for stability of China under the present communist regime?

TC: The vacuum created by the shortage of marriageable women attracts criminal activities. Rape, kidnapping, trafficking, sexual slavery and forced marriages are on the rise, and the long, porous borders with other countries increases the foreign trafficking into China. The captured trafficking from Vietnam alone doubled last year.

It is known that the criminal elements involved in such activities are often engaged in other criminal schemes, from drugs to illegal arms. It is for any government's best interest—communist or other—to curtail such danger to its order and security.

ET: What were some of your experiences while in China researching your book?

TC: The strangeness, the sense that nothing was as I had known anywhere else, followed me around like a bubble. The sights, sounds, smells and tastes made the minutes of life in China, and beneath them lay an assemblage of customs and mores entirely different from our Judeo-Christian values. Trying to take a non-judgmental approach to things that were different was a challenge, and one I did not manage to uphold when it came to infanticide.

ET: Why did you choose the fictional route to tell the very real story of female infanticide?

TC: I am a novelist, interested in the internal experience and the emotional landscape that parallel the physical settings. I set out to celebrate the bond between an adoptive parent and a child. On the surface, it seemed that I just stumbled into the tragic issue of infanticide, but in fact, I always latch onto the larger issues underpinning the story because I am fascinated by the forces that shape our lives—political upheavals, big governments, the legal system, or culture. They intrigue me with the infinite possibilities with which the human spirit can either be broken or rise above them.

ET: Was there any interference from the Chinese Communist Party?

TC: My website is banned in China, probably because of the many red-flag words that get filtered. Otherwise I have not experienced any direct threat. In fact, last October, my publisher exhibited "CHINA DOLL" at the book expo in Beijing without any adversity.

However, Western charity organizations operating in China or working for Chinese orphanages have, in most part, disassociated themselves from me for fear of being tagged by the Chinese Communist Party.

ET: Where else is this happening?

TC: India is the only other nation among all developing and industrial nations that show a clear skewed male-female ratio. However, there is a marked difference between the phenomenon of missing girls because India is a free country, and sex-selection abortions and gendercide mostly appear in the upper echelons of society.

In China, infanticide is mostly attributed to the government's policies and their executions, resulting in systematic gender-selected killing.

ET: What can individuals do about this situation?

TC: The upcoming 2008 Olympics in Beijing is a milestone opportunity to raise our collective indignation and to speak out about human rights in China. Many people and organizations are doing just that, but not when it comes to gendercide and infant abandonment.

Readers can educate themselves—there are many good links on my website for sources of information—and write letters to the editors requesting that local media cover these topics. In the coming year, as journalists will be traveling in China, they can poke around to penetrate the shield the CCP has erected around its orphanages.

Talia Carner's website, TaliaCarner.com, has further information about the plight of female children in Communist China. Her novel, China Doll, was published in October 2006 by Windsprint Press.