Sole Survivors.docVIP

Sole Survivors 　　At 9 PM on December 1， 2015， Han Shengxue landed at Beijing Capital International Airport， his flight delayed by half a day due to the citys serious air pollution. Prior to his arrival， more than 700 parents who had lost their only children had gathered？in front of the Beijing headquarters of the？National Health and Family Planning Commission （NHFPC） for a whole day， demanding compensation from the government for having restricted them to a single child. 　　Director of a regional family planning office in the city of Huaihua， Hunan Province， Han heard after he arrived in Beijing that four people from his city had joined the petitioners， and that they wanted to see him. They sent a message to Han to reassure him that they had not come to Beijing “to criticize the local government.” 　　Han replied that nor was he in the capital to “persuade them to come back.” Han was in fact in Beijing at the invitation of Peking University， which was to convene an academic seminar on December 3 to discuss the recent adjustment of Chinas Population and Family Planning Law that would allow all married Chinese couples to have two children. 　　Han was invited in his capacity both as a local family planning official and for his activism on behalf of Chinas so-called shidu parents ?C those who have lost their only child. China is home to over a million such families， with an estimated 76，000 couples nationwide experiencing the death of their only child every year， according to Chinese Academy of Social Sciences （CASS） data published in 2013. CASS has also predicted that the total number of shidu families in China will reach 2.7 million by 2030， and 11 million by 2050. 　　 Plight 　　The day before the seminar， Han met with several bereaved parents in his hotel to accumulate material for his ongoing investigation into the problems faced by shidu families， an issue he has been observing for more than 10 years. Over the years， he has formed a habit of interviewing shidu famil