In 1999, the minimum age for adoptive parents was lowered from 35 to 30, and families were allowed to adopt more than one child from state orphanages. Adoption advocates hailed the reforms. Even then, the child is sometimes malnourished and well past the infant stage when children bond most quickly with adoptive parents. The secluded highlands near China's border with Vietnam are home to one of the country's largest underground adoption networks. In the past five years, one gang has smuggled out of Yunnan province at least 2,000 babies, who are taken in by wealthy peasants in eastern China looking for extra farmhands or by childless couples unwilling to wait for a legal adoption.
Middlemen trawl the countryside looking for pregnant women.
It is best, one woman says, when they take the babies quickly. Otherwise mothers get too attached to their children. I wanted to give her something of me before she went away forever. The babies spend a few weeks in makeshift foster homes as the smugglers scour the mountains for enough children to take to market. Sometimes the caretakers are barely old enough to look after themselves.