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Born a boy, raised as a girl, then expected to be a man – the harsh impact of China’s one-child policy dramatised in short film
- Bo Hanxiong’s film explores the struggles of Yan, a man with gender identity issues whose family raised him as female because of China’s one-child policy
- Rather than focusing only on the negative aspects of the situation, Bo also wanted to send a positive message about the importance of family
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Beijing born, Los Angeles-based filmmaker Bo Hanxiong has ventured into sensitive territory with his new short film, Drifting.
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Shot in Beijing, it focuses on Yan, a second child born illegally during the time of China’s one-child policy, a programme introduced in 1979 to curb the country’s explosive population growth. Parents who obeyed it were rewarded financially and with jobs; those who disobeyed faced harsh penalties – fines, forced contraception, abortion, and sterilisation.
With this in mind, Yan’s parents send their daughter into hiding in the countryside and keep Yan at their home in the city, disguising him as his sister by dressing him in girl’s clothing.
As a teenager, and with his true identity revealed, Yan struggles with his gender identity and must battle not just his own demons but intolerance and bullying from his parents and peers, all while bearing the burden of being an only son and under pressure to pass on the family name.
China abolished the one-child policy in 2015, but Bo wanted to use film to make sure the policy, and the damage it caused families, was not forgotten. “Growing up in Beijing, I didn’t understand the [one-child] policy, as we were so young,” Bo says. “My classmates and friends were all only children, so we just thought it was normal.”
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