Synopsis

In 2016, China officially abolished the one-child policy that had existed since 1980. With this film, I will tell the true story of my birth. I will try to reconstruct this reality while proposing a broader story than mine … 1984. The one-child policy is at its peak in China. Yet Ya is pregnant with a second child. Ya is a teacher and Zhou is a country doctor. She and her husband find a pretext to go to Shanghai (400 km from their home), in order to escape gynecological control. Under this national policy, city inhabitants can only have one child, while peasants are allowed to have a second child if their first is a girl. This is the case of Zhou and Ya. But their district imposes an extremist policy: city or countryside, only one child. He, the village chief does everything to know where Ya is and will denounce her if she is pregnant. Ya hides in different locations, while Zhou tells everyone that she stayed in Shanghai. The child-policy controllers are quickly threatening Zhou and Ya to arrest them and their family members and they conduct extensive searches throughout the region. Ya must go through several hiding places. When Ya reappears, the controllers come to her house immediately with He. They force her to go to the city to have an abortion. She and Zhou are cooperative in going to the hospital. With the help of doctors and friends, Ya escapes abortion in extremis. In front of fifty controllers, Zhou is doing everything to delay Ya’s presentation to the committee, the latter being in her eighth month of pregnancy. In their house, Zhou provokes the birth of Ya, who gives birth to a boy. As a result, they will be fired from their jobs and will work as peasants for three years, until, after several petitions, Beijing will allow Ya and Zhou to resume their posts.