Abstract
How could an specific issue in China grow to an overt and nationwide collective protest phenomenon? This article uses participant observation and field interviews to record the recollections, pain, helplessness, and memories of bereaved parents/ families under China's One-child policy Known in Mandarin Chinese as 失獨家庭 ”shidu jiating” —roughly translatable as “bereaved families”, “bereaved couples,” or “bereaved parents”—most had suffered the loss of their offspring after the age of 50, by which time they could no longer give birth to new children and were no longer eligible to adopt. Frustrated in a series of labels, stereotypes, stigma, and defined as an infectious misfortune by the cultural factors, the bereaved parents gradually pull away from their extended families, neighbors, friends, and other social responsibilities, stigmatized, marginalized, and socially detached from public life. However, as the years have gone by, mobilized by mutual sympathy for shared deep grief, highlighting moral appeals of their patriotic sacrifice for the state, these bereaved parents formed collective actions demanding the government public recognition, and compensation for their losses. To sum up, this article is to take bereaved parents’ suffering and resistance to exemplify how socially and politically marginalized Chinese are organizing into collective resistance, and demanding redress from the state.