THOMPSON, Roger R. (1990) Mao Zedong. Report from Xunwu. Stanford, California. Stanford University Press. Pàg. 177-181

Selling Children

A loan in default for ten years, as mentioned above, is rare. In fact, a lender will seldom allow a borrower to extend his loan for ten years. The lender always forces the borrower to repay the loan as soon as possible and makes a new loan only after the old loan has been cleared up because he is worried about the peasant's ability to repay. Frequently a lender permits the borrower not to pay the interest on a loan for a couple of years, say no longer than three to five years, provided that the borrower repays the principal of the loan on time. By that time the interest has doubled.
How does a lender force a borrower to repay a loan? During the harvest season the lender goes straight to the borrower's cropland with a pair of big baskets and says: "You must give me your crops as repayment for your loan." The only thing that the borrower can do is watch the lender take away his crops. During the harvest season, after paying the rent and loans, "from the top of the plants to the bottom of the roots, there's nothing to eat." In these cases, many peasants wipe their tears with their sleeves.
There is a saying in Xunwu County: "You must repay your loan even if you marry off your daughter or sell your son." Lenders usually shout this out when pressing "terribly stubborn borrowers" for repayment. Their anger builds up because the borrower is unable to repay the loan.
Reader, I am not exaggerating in order to expose the evil of the exploiting class in Xunwu. All my survey reports are made carefully without any overstatement. I always doubted that the description of "selling his wife or son" appearing in articles was true. So I carefully questioned peasants in Xunwu to see whether this really happens. The result was careful interviews of three peasants who participated in an investigation meeting. The following happened in their three villages.
Liu Liangfan, from Fufushan in Xunwu City District (about18 li from the city) said that his village consists of 37 households divided into five surnames: the Liu, the Cao, the Chen, the Lin, and the Huang. Five households had sold sons [naizi]. (The Hakka call their sons naizi.) Three of the five households were from the Liu surname group and are related to Liu Liangfan, the chairman of the Xunwu City suburban township soviet. These were the households of Liu Changyu, Liu Changlun, and Liu Changchun. The other two households were those of Lin Fangting and Chen Liangyou. Liu Changyu (Liu Liangfan's uncle) is a carpenter, the other four are tenants. Liu Changyu sold three of his four sons, Liu Changlun sold one of his three sons, Liu Changchun sold one of his two sons, Lin Fangting sold two of his three sons, and Liu Liangyou sold half of his one son. All five households had become bankrupt with nothing left; consequently, they had to sell their sons to repay their debts and buy food.
The buyer was either a nearby member of the gentry of the same surname as the seller or a rich peasant. There are more gentry buyers than rich-peasant buyers. The price of a boy ranges from a minimum of 100 yuan to a maximum of Zoo yuan. When making this transaction neither the buyer nor the seller call this business "selling"; rather they call it an "adoption." But the world in general calls it "selling a child." An "adoption contract" is also commonly called a "body deed." An "adoption contract" might read:

X writes this adoption contract. Because he is too poor to feed his children, who have a crying need for food, and because he cannot borrow money, on the advice of his relatives and friends, he would rather give his (first, second, etc.) son to his brother, X, as a son. The biological father will get ... yuan in payment for his son. After adoption, the adoptive father has all rights to teach and to control the marriage of the adopted son; he can even beat him. But the biological father has no right to interfere. Both parties voluntarily agree, without coercion, with the contents of this contract, and no party will change his mind in the future. Because words are unreliable, we have written this contract as evidence.

Only the seller writes up a contract; the buyer writes nothing. The so-called matchmakers are go-betweens. At most there are four or five of them [per transaction], who share a fee for services rendered amounting to 5 percent of the selling price. More than ten relatives and friends might be present and are paid a "signature fee" by the buyer. When a close relative or influential person (most are members of the gentry) signs his name to the adoption contract, the signature fee is high, from more than :to to 20 yuan. But the fee paid to ordinary relatives and friends is less than 1 yuan.
The ages of the boys sold range from three or four sui to seven and eight sui to thirteen or fourteen sui. After the deal is made, the matchmakers carry the boy on their backs to the buyer's house. At this moment the biological parents of the boy always weep and cry. Sometimes couples even fight with each other. The wife scolds the husband for his uselessness and his inability to feed his family, which have forced them to sell a son. Most of the spectators weep too. When Liu Changyu sold his son, for example, his nephew Liu Liangfan was one of those who wept for Liu Changyu.
Now let us talk of Li Dashun's story. He was the second of our peasant friends to attend the investigation meeting. He comes from the large village of Huangsha, in Shuangqiao District, with 400 households. He personally witnessed five cases of households in his village selling a son. Each of the five households sold one boy. When one boy was sold to someone in the Bachi area in Pingyuan County, Guangdong, Li Dashun came across the father, carrying his baby on his back, going in the direction of Bachi. The father had tears on his face and was ashamed when he realized an acquaintance could see he was selling his son. Why did he sell his son to someone in the Bachi area in Guangdong? Because the price was higher. A boy could be sold for 20o or 300 yuan there. A child of four or five sui brings the highest price because such a child can easily "develop a close relationship." In contrast, the price of an older child, eight or nine sui or over ten sui is lower, because it is difficult to develop such a relationship and the boy can easily escape from his adoptive parents.
Mei Zhiping, the third of our peasant friends who attended the investigation meeting, is a peasant in Lantian Village in Shuangqiao District. The selling of children happened in his village also. His uncle, Mei Hongpo, is an extremely poor peasant. He has three sons: one went abroad to Southeast Asia, one is living with him, and the other was sold to someone in Pingyuan County. In the neighboring village of Anjing, the poor peasant Mei Chuanhua sold five of his seven sons.
Here were only three people-Liu, Li, and Mei-at the investigation meeting, but in their own villages so many people had sold their children. One of the three people, Liu, comes from the northern half of this county; the other two come from the southern half of the county. Therefore, we can easily imagine the situation in the county as a whole. Based on their knowledge of the places they are familiar with, they estimate that lo percent of the households in the county have sold their sons. Liu Liangfan told us that he had seen of, or heard about, more than a hundred boys being sold in the vicinity of his village.
It is common to sell a boy, but no one has heard of wives or daughters being sold.
On hearing that a borrower has sold a son, lenders will hurry to the borrower's house and force the borrower to repay his loan. The lender will cruelly shout to the borrower: "You have sold your son. Why don't you repay me?" Why does the lender act like this? Because it is a critical point for his loan. If the borrower does not repay his loan after selling his son, the lender knows that he will never have another chance to get his loan back once the money is used up. Therefore, he considers only how to force the borrower to repay the loan without regard for anything else.
The relationship between people in the old days was one of man eat man!