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Contributor

Shen Yang

Contributor

Shen Yang

Shen Yang came into this world in the late 1980s, during the fiercest years of China’s one-child policy. As the second daughter of her family, she was a massive liability—an "illegal" or "excess-birth" child who was sent away from her parents and raised in secrecy. In More Than One Child, she provides a vivid account of the family planning era in China while sharing the adventures and sorrows of her own childhood. She was raised from birth to age five by loving grandparents in a remote village but was then summarily removed and adopted by an abusive aunt and uncle. Finally, in her teens, she rejoined her other sisters at home, although family life was anything but happy. But More Than One Child is not only Shen Yang's story; it is the untold story of China’s enormous yet invisible community of excess-birth children.

Articles by Shen Yang

Telling the Stories of China’s “Illegal Children”: Shen Yang and Roseann Lake in Conversation
By Shen Yang & Roseann Lake
“Excess-birth” or “illegal” children (usually girls) were those born to a family who already had a child during the years when China’s one-child policy, in force from the…
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