By Li Yuchen
On Feb. 9, 2026, a blogger known as “Wanbaolu” walked into a family home in Yulin, in southern China’s Guangxi region.
Two days later, the video of that visit was gone.
In the footage, five children sit on small stools outside the doorway. The youngest is barefoot. The slightly older ones wear plastic slippers, also without socks. February temperatures in Guangxi are in the mid-teens Celsius.
Their father is 68 years old. Their mother has an intellectual disability. Together, they have nine children.
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The youngest is 2 years old. By calculation, the man was 66 when his wife became pregnant again.
Asked why he had so many children at his age, the man answered: “The more children, the better.”
In the 1960s, such a sentiment aligned with official calls for population growth. In the 1980s, it would have been described as defying family planning limits. In 2026, China’s family planning authorities no longer restrict births and are encouraging higher fertility. The phrase now sits in a different political context.
A child’s account
The sixth child is a girl, who can be seen crying in front of the camera.
She says her mother does not understand how to care for children. After school, she feeds her younger brother and helps bathe him at night. When her father is displeased, she says, he beats them. There is no electric lighting in the house.
It is 2026. Outside Beijing’s Fifth Ring Road, housing prices are 60,000 yuan per square meter, about 8,300 U.S. dollars. In Shenzhen, young workers crowd into urban villages and compete late into the night. In Hangzhou, livestream hosts can sell several hundred million yuan worth of goods in a single evening. But in this household in Yulin, there is not even electricity.
The blogger asks the girl if there is anything he can do to help.
“Can you buy a pair of shoes for my younger brother and my mother?” she replies.
She does not ask for toys, a mobile phone, or pocket money. She asks for shoes. Her mother is barefoot. Her younger brother is barefoot. February temperatures remain low.
The children’s mother stands off to one side in the video.
She wears thin, visibly dirty clothing. Her body trembles. She says nothing. When the camera turns toward her, her eyes appear vacant.
Echoes of Feng County
Online reactions were marked not only by sadness but by unease.
Some asked where the woman came from and whether she possessed legal identification documents.
Others said the case recalled Feng County in 2022, when a woman was found chained by the neck in a dilapidated house and had given birth to eight children. Authorities issued five official statements, each contradicting the last. Bloggers who reported on the case were detained. Information was restricted. The woman’s current condition has not been independently verified.
Now, Yulin in Guangxi Province presents another shocking case.
There is no evidence presented that the wife is a victim of human trafficking. But many Chinese netizens have questioned how a woman with intellectual disabilities “voluntarily” give birth to nine children. Can she express consent? Does she understand what consent means?
At the end of the video, the blogger added a line of text:
“9 children, 2 at the grandmother’s home, 2 departed, now 5 young ones at home attending school.”
Two departed.
Three short words referring to two lives. How did they depart? Illness? Accident? Something else? The video offered no explanation. No further clarification is possible. The video has been deleted.
On Feb. 11, the original post disappeared from Douyin. Searches return nothing.
Only a few repost accounts and reports by overseas media remain.
Domestic platforms are largely silent.
Birth data and lived reality
In 2023, China’s birth rate fell to 6.39 per thousand, the lowest since 1949. In the same year, marriage registrations rose to 7.682 million couples, up 12.4 percent from the previous year and marking the first increase in nearly a decade. Even so, the broader trend of young people choosing not to have children has not reversed. Experts continue to call childbearing a civic responsibility.
In one corner of Yulin, a 68-year-old man and his intellectually impaired wife have had nine children. On average, that number equals the total births of three urban couples.
The sixth girl, after school, does not do homework or play. She feeds her younger brother, bathes him, and in a house without light supports the family in place of a mother with intellectual disabilities and a 68-year-old father.
A blogger who watched the video asked: “If a child had a choice, would he choose to be born in this kind of family?”
Starting lines
In recent years, the term “family of origin” has become common in public discussion. Psychologists speak of how upbringing shapes a person’s future. Urban middle-class parents worry about interest classes, educational methods, and whether their children will fall behind at the starting line.
But what is the starting line?
Some children are born in Beijing’s Haidian district. Their parents work in technology or finance. They attend international schools and travel abroad during holidays. Their concern is choosing between Tsinghua University and Peking University.
Some children are born in Yulin, Guangxi. Their father is 68. Their mother has an intellectual disability. There is no electric light in the home. There are no shoes on their feet. Their daily task is to feed a younger sibling, help bathe him, and hope they are not the next to “depart.”
This is not a difference in starting lines.
Some are born at the finish line. Some are born in the abyss.
The video is gone.
There is no trending topic. No public investigation. No follow-up report.
In a few days, attention will shift. New topics will dominate. Algorithms will move on. Five children will continue to grow up in that house without light. The girl will continue to feed her younger brother, bathe him, and endure her father’s beatings. The mother will remain barefoot, trembling, silent.
The 68-year-old man will continue to believe that the more children, the better.
“I do not know how to end this article,” the blogger said.
“Heaven-shattering beginning.”
Some lives, from the very first second, have already collapsed.
This article represents only the author’s personal position and views and does not necessarily reflect the views of Vision Times.
