What if a tiny red government certificate shaped your entire childhood—granting your family a small subsidy, but also locking you into a life as the sole focus of your parents’ hopes (and pressures)? Welcome to the chaotic, bittersweet world of growing up as a one-child policy kid in China. Host Christopher Li pulls back the curtain on the double-edged sword of being an only child, the wild stories of families who hid extra kids to have a son (and the comedy skits that turned it into laughs), and the ken lao zu—adult kids who still mooch off their parents because they were spoiled rotten. He also gets real about the loneliness of his generation: how cousins became stand-in siblings at family reunions, how he now wishes he had a brother or sister to share the burden of caring for aging parents, and why the government went from banning siblings to begging couples to have more kids. Equal parts funny, nostalgic, and eye-opening—this episode is for anyone who’s ever wondered what it’s like to grow up as a “relic” of a game-changing policy.
