It's a busy day in the Dongguan suburb of Wanjiang. Three- wheeled motorcycle taxis jostle for space with market barrows along a narrow road packed with eateries selling cold noodles and steamed dumplings. Next to a counter stacked with wicker steaming cages a narrow stairway leads up to the 10-square-metre room that is home to Xu Jiancheng and his wife.
Xu is dressed in shorts and a cap-sleeved T-shirt. He and his pale, slight wife are sitting on a thin, metal-framed bed surrounded by their possessions; a cheap wardrobe of clothes, a blue plastic chair, an electric fan and a bookcase that was part of a shop display and now houses a dozen-odd volumes of popular fiction. An old laptop rests on a scuffed chipboard desk. Above it there is a photograph of Xu and his wife in their wedding costumes, taken in September last year.
Those were happier days for the Xu family. A month later, the Xus' four-year-old daughter, Xu Qian, went out to buy breakfast and didn't came back. The chances are she was abducted; seized and carried away by someone who then sold her on in the mainland's underground market for babies and young children.
The Xu family's story is far from unusual in Dongguan. Located where Guangzhou sprawls into Shenzhen, on the east bank of the Pearl River estuary, the city is famous for its shoe industry, karaoke bars and sex trade. Official police figures published in state media show there have been 243 cases of child abduction in Dongguan since 2000.
The Xus and most other affected families believe the real number is much higher. The anguish over their lost children is accompanied by another emotion: anger, aimed at the local police. At best, says Xu, police officers were unco-operative when he first asked them for help. Other families say they have been obstructed when going after the people who took their children.
The abduction and selling of infants has a long history in the mainland. The words for the trade - guaimai and its practitioners ren fanzi (people peddlers) - are well established.
The ultimate buyers are mostly couples who are desperate for a child and plan to raise the stolen infant as their own. Chinese culture places a great deal of importance on a male heir to provide for his parents in their old age and continue the family line. This is why most abducted infants are male.
