Grieving Sichuan Parents Celebrate New Life

Hope has been reborn for a southwest China couple who lost their only daughter in the May 12 earthquake.On Saturday, Yang Xia and her husband, Xian Ziwen, became the first bereaved parents in the quake zone to have a second child, nine months after the death of 19-year-old Xian Juan."It's all like a dream for me," said Yang, whose is still coming to terms with the loss of her first daughter.The healthy 3.6-kg baby is considered a double blessing as Yang, at 40, was considered to be "high risk" in pregnancy.Xian Juan, a 12th grader, was the only quake victim at Shucheng Middle School, in Chongzhou city, in west Sichuan.The family was one of the more than 8,000 Sichuan families who lost their only child in the earthquake, which left more than 80,000 dead.Yang was informed by a school teacher on the afternoon of May 12 that her daughter was injured and in hospital. Yang found her lying silently on a hospital bed, covered by a piece of white cloth.If she had lived, she might have been studying anthropology, a subject her farmer parents had never heard of, at university.Yang Xia spent a month in grief."We quarreled everyday over almost everything," recalled Xian Ziwen, 46. "I understand that she needed to express her emotions."Sichuan legislators in July exempted families who lost their children in the earthquake from the country's one-child laws.The rule, adopted by the standing committee of the provincial legislature, allowed a family who lost an only child, or in which the child was disabled, or a family with two children who were both disabled in the disaster, to have another child.Since the quake, about 5,000 Sichuan couples had received free fertility treatment, said Wang Zaiyin, director of the provincial Population and Family Planning Commission, on Monday.In devastated Deyang City, 74 percent of parents of child-bearing age who lost their children considered having a child, according to the city's family planning authorities.Yang became pregnant in July and the couple grew closer, said Xian Ziwen, a flour mill worker in Baima village, Jinjiang county.He bought soy milk every day for his wife to boost her strength."My only wish is that the child will avoid misery and suffering," he said.