Listener Letter: "Condemned to Wander With My Son"

Letter sent by a Guangxi woman Image: RFA See the larger image

WASHINGTON--This letter was received recently by RFA's Cantonese editorial team. RFA has no way to verify the information it contains and makes no statement concerning its accuracy.

To the Cantonese department of Radio Free Asia:

My husband had a child with his previous wife, before divorcing her and marrying me. But I am not allowed to have a child with him.

Natural maternal instinct drove me to want a child, both to be a mother, and to have someone to care for me in old age.

How can we escape this sea of bitterness, and begin to live life as normal, upright human beings?

This left me with no choice but to leave home and live a nomadic life, in order to have my son, who is now three years old, an illicit person with no fixed abode.

My husband won't let me bring the child home, for fear of losing his job [as a punishment for the unauthorized birth]. We are in great pain as an illegitimate child and his illegitimate mother.

How can we escape this sea of bitterness, and begin to live life as normal, upright human beings?

--A Woman From Guangxi

Mid-November, 2004