If you haven't been keeping up with the Ken, Ellen & Bei blog, you might want to check out the latest entry.

Set-up: Ken & Ellen are both English teachers who are spending a year living and working in China with their adopted daughter Bei. Usually, the breathtaking stuff on the blog comes from their photographs, but they've just posted a few student essays pertinent to the whole One-Child Policy. The assigment was to write a memoir.

Here's a snippet of one:

But one day, a couple went to our family. I didn’t know who they were. I just played with my brother. But my parents were wiping tears. A moment later, that couple when out with my brother. I saw my brother and my parents were crying. I didn’t know what has happened. So I cried loudly with them.

I forgot my older brother day by day for my young. But I know my parents often sobbing at night. Until he came to my home again, my parents told me this story. I asked my parents why did thy gave my brother to other people. They said sadly: “We have no condition to bring up two children, the couple couldn’t breeding, so...We are sorry to him, but we love you!” They burst into tears. Now my brother went to abroad with his parents. I think they must having a happy life.

There's more at the link. Go and read.

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In other news, China has announced they'll be on the moon by 2024:

A top official in China's space program has set 2024 for the country's first moonwalk, a Hong Kong newspaper reported Monday.

The mission would kick off in earnest next year, the Beijing-backed Wen Wei Po paper said, when China launches an unmanned lunar satellite in March or April to orbit and survey the lunar surface.

And, says USA Today, the country is now offering a handy door-to-door execution service with the "death van":

Twenty-five years later, in 2004, Zhang met retribution once more, after his conviction for double murder and rape. He was one of the first people put to death in China's new fleet of mobile execution chambers.

The country that executed more than four times as many convicts as the rest of the world combined last year is slowly phasing out public executions by firing squad in favor of lethal injections. Unlike the United States and Singapore, the only two other countries where death is administered by injection, China metes out capital punishment from specially equipped "death vans" that shuttle from town to town.

Makers of the death vans say the vehicles and injections are a civilized alternative to the firing squad, ending the life of the condemned more quickly, clinically and safely. The switch from gunshots to injections is a sign that China "promotes human rights now," says Kang Zhongwen, who designed the Jinguan Automobile death van in which "Devil" Zhang took his final ride.

We'll skip the part about selling the executed convicts' organs.