📕 New Release!
Golden Childhood
Lively illustrated and joyfully narrated, this picture book for children narrates little Yangyang’s fondest childhood memories in the countryside of northern China, brought to life with exquisite hand-drawn Chinese “folk painting” artwork.
Celebrating simple pleasures, nature enjoyment, and bits of Chinese culture, this picture book is a treasure for both children and adults passionate about Chinese culture and traditional art.
More Than One Child
Translated by Nicky Harman
Recommended by The Guardian
In the late 1980s, Shen Yang came to this world during the fiercest years of China’s one-child policy. As the second daughter of the family, she was a massive liability – an excess child, a product of illegal birth to be sent away from her parents and raised in secrecy.
In a riveting memoir, Shen Yang provides a vivid account of the family planning era in China, while sharing the adventures and sorrows of her childhood. From being raised by her doting grandparents in a remote village as soon as she was born, to being whisked away by her hot-tempered aunt to a faraway city at the age of five, Shen Yang shares her uplifting journey towards overcoming the limits of her upbringing and forging her own identity.
More than One Child is not only Shen Yang's story; it is the untold story of the enormous, yet invisible community of excess-birth children. And this book is Shen Yang’s way of saying goodbye to her childhood, and goodbye to an era.
“I broke a law simply by being born”
— Shen Yang
"This is the voice of China’s Invisible Generation - vividly written, well balanced, brilliant, humorous and very sharp - it elicits a rollercoaster of emotions that breaks through the silence shrouding the lives of excess children born during the One-Child Policy."
— Xinran Xue, Author of The Good Women of China, The Promise: Tales of Love and Loss in Modern China and more.
"Now that the one-child policy has been relaxed, the stories of these illegal children will soon be a part of China’s national collective memory. But to those who grew up tainted with this humiliation, the scars are permanent. One is Chinese writer Shen Yang, who wrote her story in part to extinguish the nightmares that still haunt her."
— Vincent Ni, The Guardian
"More Than One Child would be important and interesting as an historical record regardless of its literary merits, but these are considerable. It is vividly-written and thoughtfully-structured. Though as a child Shen Yang was often weeping, her recollections of doing so never descend into self-pity. She can write about the bleakest circumstances with humor."
— Rosie Milne, Asian Review of Books
My parents with their first daughter Moon.
Right after birth, I was taken care by my grandparents in a distant village in Sunzha.
We four sisters with our grandparents and cousins (the children of my favorite aunt).
Me and my sisters on a rare day out together, half year before being taken away to Nanyang. From the left: Star, Moon, me, Serene.
The little toy gun Aunt Wenjie used to "bribe" me to go with her.
From the left: aunt Wenjie, my cousins Mingmei, Mingze, Ruomei and my Uncle Yige in Nanyang.
Aunt Wenjie at her salon with Uncle Yige.
With cousin Mingze in a park near home in Nanyang.
With my classmates, who all had uniforms.
My mum and my sisters living together in Jining.
Shen Yang
Shen Yang came to the world as an "excess child" (xiaoheihaizi) and does not legally exist to this day.
Born in Shandong China in 1986, she belongs to the millions of “invisible children” who violated the One-Child Policy and were forced to live in the shadows of the Chinese society.
Amidst a troubled childhood, Shen Yang found solace in literature: with More Than One Child serving as a farewell to both her childhood and an era, her debut illustration book, Golden Childhood, is a vibrant celebration of her fondest memories in the idyllic countryside.
Graduated in English, Shen Yang studied script writing at Beijing Film Academy, and has also written opinion pieces for The Telegraph and South China Morning Post.
For Chinese culture enthusiasts,
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