After finishing the call with Wu Dongyan, Lin Shuyue drove out of the underground parking lot, bought some pickled fruits, and went directly to Lin Shuxing's house.
Lin Shuxing was sitting in the store watching TV while Luo Zhengjun was busy running around. There were several kinds of fruits on the table where she was sitting. The TV show had just finished a segment and she looked very bored.
When Lin Shuyue came, her eyes lit up immediately. When Lin Shuyue took out the pickled fruits, she ate them with bamboo sticks while complaining to Lin Shuyue about Lou Fengqin and Luo Zhengjun.
"After I came out of the hospital this morning, I didn't do anything. I just ate, drank and slept. When I wanted to collect the bowl, your brother-in-law was afraid that I would hurt the fetus." Lin Shuxing's eyes were filled with happiness but also with some distress.
Lin Shuyue glanced at her belly and said, "It's new and scary at the beginning, but it will be fine in a few days."
Lin Shuyue didn't say much. Seeing that Luo Zhengjun was too busy, she got up to help pick up bowls, collect money and serve meals. After the peak hour was finally over, they finally had time to sit down and talk. Luo Zhengjun thanked Lin Shuyue profusely, and then told her that he had recruited someone today and that she could come to work tomorrow, so that he could be more relaxed.
Before Lin Shuyue left, Lou Fengqin and Bai Wenhua came. They stewed pork rib soup. Seeing Lin Shuyue there, Lou Fengqin was happy: "I was thinking that you would not come back from Xijiang today, so I planned to send soup to you after I sent it to your sister. Now it's just right, let's eat together."
Like all Guangdong mothers, Lou Fengqin believes that people should drink more soup, three or four times a week, and each soup is different and has different effects. Lin Shuyue didn't object, but Luo Zhengjun was very perceptive and immediately brought two bowls. Lou Fengqin was not happy at first sight.
"Zhengjun, you are also a child. You have been busy all day and need to make up for it. Bring another bowl and eat before you continue working."
Luo Zhengjun smiled and went to get another bowl. Bai Wenhua opened the casserole he brought, which contained a pot of spare ribs and Chinese yam. The spare ribs were stewed until they were boneless, and the Chinese yam was also very tender. Luo Zhengjun quickly prepared a dipping sauce of soy sauce, ginger, and chili peppers. Lou Fengqin filled three large bowls with meat and soup. The three of them finished eating with the dipping sauce in a short while. Lou Fengqin and Bai Wenhua took over from Luo Zhengjun and started working.
Luo Zhengjun ate and watched, and heard the sweet voices of his wife, mother-in-law and sister-in-law. When he thought that in a while there would be a little person in his family, he felt full of energy.
Lou Fengqin and the other person came to take Lin Shuxing back home. The store was busy with people coming and going, and there was a lot of noise and activity everywhere. Lou Fengqin was afraid that something might happen to Lin Shuxing. If she lost the child, it would be easy as she could get pregnant again. But if she was really hurt, her daughter would be the one to suffer.
Lin Shuxing followed her obediently. Luo Zhengjun also cleaned up the house, closed the door, and followed them. Lin Shuyue simply went home as well. After all, they had a car and the way home was not far.
After arriving home and washing up, Lin Shuyue sent a message to Ah Xi. When she heard that Lin Shuyue wanted to interview them, she asked Lin Shuyue to go to a nightclub called White Rose, where there was a girl named Ah Hong who had just given birth last month.
After thanking Ah Xi, Lin Shuyue sent a message to Hang Jiabai, from whom she learned that they had already arrested and interrogated Brother Hu's group of people who organized surrogacy and sold children. Seeing this, Lin Shuyue was very satisfied with the speed at which the police cracked down on criminals.
After a dreamless night, Lin Shuyue did not go to the newspaper office the next day. She stayed at home all day. In the evening, after having dinner, she drove to the White Rose Club.
The White Rose Club sounds quite high-end, but it is just a small KTV with two floors. In addition to the lobby, there are private rooms. The third and fourth floors above the second floor are hotels.
Hearing that Lin Shuyue was looking for Ah Hong, the waiter picked up the intercom and called someone. After a while, a thin woman with heavy smoky makeup and a leopard print tight skirt came out. She had a pretty smile on her face, but when she saw that the person looking for her was Lin Shuyue, the smile faded.
Lin Shuyue offered to interview her for two hundred yuan. Ah Hong smiled again. She took the money from Lin Shuyue's hand, looked at it carefully, and put it in her pocket decisively after seeing that it was real money. Then she turned around and looked at the people behind her: "Xiao Ming, tell the foreman that I'm going out with my friends and will be back soon."
The man named Xiao Ming was the receptionist of the club. He stretched out his hand and made an OK gesture to Ah Hong.
Ah Hong took Lin Shuyue to the back of the club, where there was a rental building. A man in a vest was sitting on a recliner at the bottom of the building, rocking in the recliner and enjoying the breeze. He held a palm-leaf fan in his hand and fanned himself from time to time. On the stool next to him was a cup of tea and a radio, which was playing a Cantonese opera that he could not understand.
Lin Shuyue and Ah Hong walked past him. He opened his eyes, looked at them, and then closed them again. A dog was lying next to him, sticking out its tongue from time to time.
Lin Shuyue followed Ah Hong to Room 202. The house was very small and there were no floor tiles on the floor, but there was a rectangular balcony. On one side of the balcony was the bathroom and on the other was the kitchen. There were two iron wires above the middle. This was where Ah Hong hung her clothes.
The room was very messy. The 1.5-meter-tall bed was filled with clothes. Lin Shuyue took a photo and Ah Hong watched without saying anything. She even sat beside the bed and let Lin Shuyue take the photo. Then she picked up the clothes on the bed and threw them inside the bed, clearing out a clean place.
She lit a long, thin lady's cigarette, blew out a smoke ring, and said to Lin Shuyue indifferently, "Ask whatever you want to ask."
Lin Shuyue looked at the cigarette in her hand and said, "I heard that you just gave birth less than a month ago. Will smoking be bad for your health?"
Ah Hong held a cigarette in her mouth, looked at Lin Shuyue, and smiled: "Pretty girl, you are really good at talking. For someone like me in this line of work, giving birth is just like laying an egg. Who would care about whether my body is healthy or not?"
But having said that, she still put out the cigarette in the glass ashtray beside the bed.
Seeing this, Lin Shuyue began to ask, "Ah Hong, why do you want to be a surrogate mother?"
Ah Hong was playing with a lighter in her hand. She smiled and said, "I used to have a boyfriend who was a socialite. I was 16 or 17 years old at that time. I felt very cool to have such a boyfriend. Especially when he came to pick me up at my workplace on a motorcycle. When I got on his motorcycle, I felt like I was the protagonist of this world."
Ah Hong thought of the past with a smile on her face: "But later, when he went to a fight with his group of brothers, he accidentally killed someone, and the other party wanted 50,000 yuan to sign a letter of forgiveness. I am a factory worker, where can I get 50,000 yuan? At this time, someone found me and asked if I was willing to be a surrogate mother. If I help him give birth to a child, he would give me 50,000 yuan."
"I agreed. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, but I haven't visited him for a long time. I don't care what happens to him. The child I gave birth to last month was my second child through surrogacy. I became addicted to gambling and owed a lot of money." Ah Hong looked frank when talking about whether she was a surrogate mother for her boyfriend or for money.
In Ah Hong's opinion, it is not shameful to sell her uterus for money. However, after giving birth twice, her body has been damaged a lot, with stretch marks crisscrossing her belly, scars left by caesarean sections, and loose flesh on her belly that can never be tightened again.
"After giving birth to the children, they have to be given to their biological parents. Do you feel bad?" Lin Shuyue's words made Ah Hong speechless for a long time.
Her eyes gradually turned red. "It was uncomfortable. They lived in my belly for ten months. During this period, I felt every movement they made. But what can I do? They are not my child. It is much better for those two children to stay with their biological parents than with me."
Ah Hong soon returned to normal.
Lin Shuyue asked a few more questions and the interview ended here. Before leaving, Lin Shuyue asked about the drug addicts in the surrogacy hospital.
Ah Hong has lived in the surrogacy hospital for a long time and knows much more than Ah Xi. She said: "They go there to earn money, that is, the money from pregnancy. At three months, the clinic will give them a detailed examination. They have used drugs and the children they give birth to will have many problems. Once the problem is found, the biological parents of the children will terminate the pregnancy, but in order to appease them, they will be given one thousand to three thousand yuan. If they are lucky enough to be pregnant for five or six months, they can get about five thousand yuan."
A surrogacy home is a good place to go. You won't have to worry about food and drink from the moment you become pregnant. This is much better than working outside. Many female drug addicts go to surrogacy homes when they can't find a job, where they can get free food and drink. The child won't be born anyway, so having one or two children is not a big deal for drug addicts.
"Will the management of the surrogacy center allow it?"
Lin Shuyue's innocent words made Ah Hong laugh: "You still don't understand businessmen. To be safe, those people will have at least two or three people when doing this kind of thing. They will wait for three or four months for a checkup. If the child is healthy and a boy, they will keep it. If it is not a boy and is not healthy, it will be aborted. Even if the child is eight months old, if the child is not healthy, it will still be aborted."
"Before I gave birth, there was also a woman who gave birth. In order to make the baby grow better, her boss sent her tonic food every few days and made sure she ate it. On the day of the birth, the baby was too big. Her employer heard that babies born by caesarean section were not as healthy as those born naturally, so she did not agree to a caesarean section. She had two incisions and the postpartum bleeding could not be stopped. She died immediately."
In the eyes of clinics and employers, surrogate mothers have no human rights. They are just tools and objects. The purpose of their existence is to serve those who do not want to have children or cannot have children.
"They didn't complained to the clinic?"
Ah Hong shook her head, took a cigarette, lit it, and held it in her hand. "What would be complaining help them? Everyone who goes for surrogacy has signed a document. During the pregnancy and delivery process, no matter what problems arise, it has nothing to do with the clinic, the doctor, or the biological parents of the child. The most the clinic can do is give some money to comfort the family."
"I know a woman who was five months pregnant. Because her boss and his wife got divorced, she had to abort the baby. Her health was not good, and being forced to get pregnant would have a great impact on her body. But there was no other way. She was forcibly dragged for abortion. Not long after the abortion, I met her. She was no longer human. Because of the abortion, her uterus fell off, and she need to have it removed. She will never have the chance to be a mother in her life."
"In fact, people like me who do surrogacy are a minority. Most of them can't make ends meet and are too poor to have a way out. Surrogacy is their only chance to make a lot of money in a short period of time. Maybe you don't understand that feeling, because when you were born, you are different from poor people like us. You can't imagine our poor days."
"Okay, pretty girl, I have to go to work, so I won't talk to you any more."
Lin Shuyue was ordered to leave. When she came out of Ah Hong's residence, it was already dark. The old man and the dog at the door were gone. When Lin Shuyue walked to the parking lot of the White Rose Club and drove out, Ah Hong had come back to work without knowing when. She put her arm around a man, and he followed her into the club with a sweet smile.
As if she felt Lin Shuyue was looking at her, she found where Lin Shuyue was. After seeing Lin Shuyue, she smiled at her and blew her a kiss.
Lin Shuyue sighed, withdrew her gaze, and drove away.
She returned to the newspaper office, turned on her computer, and typed the words "Surrogate Mother with No Human Rights". She used a pseudonym and talked about the surrogacy careers of Ah Hong, Ah Xi, and the unknown woman who died giving birth.
At the end of the article, she emphasized why surrogacy is illegal. Once surrogacy is legal, it will be an exploitation of the lower class by the upper class. The wombs of women at the lower class will no longer be their own. When they become pregnant, when they give birth, how they give birth, and in what way they give birth will all depend on their boss's wishes. They have no choice at all.
Moreover, after surrogacy is legalized, a series of social problems will arise. For example, human trafficking will become more rampant. Not only the trafficking of children, but also the trafficking of women will increase!