China Meiguo

I read a China Daily article recently called A Homeland Away From Home which is about Shirley Wood, an 86 year old American woman has lived in China for 65 years. Wood married a Chinese man and moved from Arkansas to China when she was 20 years old (although I imagine Arkansas to China is quite a culture shock at any age). Wood lives in the city of Kaifeng 开封in Henan Province (abd near Zhengzhou 郑州 where I lived last year).
Wood's story is quite unique in several ways. First of all, she moved to China when there were almost no foreigners living in China. Accordingly, she was one of the few foreigners to be present in China in 1949, the founding of the People's Republic of China. Finally, due to the lack of foreign companions until relatively recently in China, she had to become assimilated and live as a Chinese person. Nowadays, there are more foreigners living in China, but they almost always tend to live somewhat isolated (not necessarily physically) from their Chinese neighbors (due largely to language differences and the resulting inability to communicate well). This may be slowly starting to change, but Mrs. Wood has obviously been a China pioneer, well ahead of the times.

Last year I lived in the city of Zhengzhou (郑州) in Henan Province (河南省), the most populous province in China with a total of over 100 million people. Recently, Henan enacted a law that modifies China's one-child policy to allow couples to have a second child if the husband and wife are both from one-child families. A number of other provinces in China had previously done this and it seems that the cumulative effect may be that China now has more of a two-child than a one-child policy.

Kindergarten kids that might not be from one-child families since the photo was taken in a rural area

An old poster promoting the one-child policy

Most people in the West tend to believe that the one-child policy is a rule that's strictly enforced. However, there are significant exceptions to the rule as well as ways of getting around it. First of all, the policy provides quite a few important exemptions, including couples living in rural areas (still the majority of China's population), ethnic minorities, and parents without any siblings. Additionally, some parts of China such as Hong Kong and Macau (which are mostly self-governed) are not subject to the policy at all. Finally, some provincial governments in mainland China (such as Henan mentioned above and quite a few others) have adopted less restrictive regulations. In fact, its estimated that only about 36% of China's population is subject to the one-child policy.