The Dying Rooms

These little children, who were about one year old, or even younger, were tied to beds at night. Once, an kid's fingers and hand were eaten by rats.

About the documentary:

Over 1 billion people live in China and, in 1979, the government decided to limit its growth by whatever means necessary. This was the beginning of the one-child-per-family policy. The policy led to vast numbers of baby girls being abandoned in markets, at state orphanages or even killed. In 1996, a group of daring filmmakers brought to light the devastation of China's "one child" policy and the desire for families to only have boys. They traveled to China posing undercover as American orphanage workers. What they discovered was horrific.

Through this documentary you get to see the systematic neglect of abandoned babies in Chinese state-run orphanages. The filmmakers found "dark rooms" where the weakest and least-liked children were deliberately left to die. These are known as "The Dying Rooms".  China’s one-child policy has created a race where most families desire boys, and therefore parents are forced to abandon their babies. Their unfortunate and tragic lives are left at the mercy of these orphanages where their sad fate is ultimately decided by the staff and ignored by the government. This is a film that nobody can ever forget or not find to be deeply touching. It has won numerous awards, including an American Emmy and Peabody Award, and has led to the creation of a charity, COCOA - Care of China's Orphaned And Abandoned - which is still striving today to improve conditions for China's orphaned and abandoned babies.

Today in China, baby girls are still being either aborted or abandoned by the thousands and boys outnumber girls by 17 million. Although the one child per family policy still stands, Lisa says families do have sons and daughters. In the countryside, you can have more than one child. If your first child is a girl you can try to then have a boy. The problem is that no matter how you try, you can't force yourself to have a boy. So if you continue to have girls, a lot of these families, they continue to give away or kill baby girls until they have a boy, and some may never have a baby boy.

THE DYING ROOMS - PART 1