Boys bellycrawl during an activity to mark Children’s Day at a kindergarten in Xiaxian, Shanxi. Photo: IC

 
There have been no new episodes in China’s first documentary themed on Chinese women’s fertility problems, Impressive Egg’s Birth, since mid May, and netizens suspect it might be connected to the implementation of the third-child policy. 

In the series, female director Chen Lu presents Chinese women’s stories about giving birth through actual visits, records and interviews and she also invites some well-known Chinese actresses and models including Zhao Wei and Xi Mengyao to offer their views. 

Some of the women said they gave up on having a baby due to work and the high living pressure in big cities, and one woman talked about how her husband asked for a divorce because she couldn’t get pregnant.

The documentary has had six episodes in total so far, starting on April 29 and running until May 13. Some netizens said in an online discussion on Douban that the suspension might be because of the implementation of the third-child policy that was announced on May 31. 

“This is so strange that the documentary has stopped being updated. Any problem about the work?” one Chinese netizen asked. 

“It seems that the last three episodes will no longer be released,” another netizen commented. 

The production team of the documentary has not made any announcements as of press time. 

So far, Impressive Egg’s Birth has earned a high score of 8.6/10 on Douban, and the hashtag of “Impressive Egg’s Birth” has currently earned 150 million views on China’s Twitter-like Sina Weibo. The documentary has spurred discussion about women’s fertility problems as well as China’s population.

“After watching it, I feel sad for those women in the documentary who suffered discrimination and sarcasm from society and I am a bit pessimistic about having a baby as I need to spend so much money and energy to adopt such a new life,” Li An, a 29-year-old woman living in Beijing, told the Global Times on Monday. 

“I don’t want to have a baby as it is so stressful and would lower my current consumption level and quality of life. Although my parents often try to persuade me, I still insist that not having children is okay,” Wu Yu, a 28-year-old white collar worker based in Beijing, told the Global Times on Monday.