Mrs. Xie smiled but said nothing. Mr. Xie chuckled and said, "Sons and daughters are all the same."
"That's wonderful of you. That's exactly how you should think. As long as they're your own children, it doesn't matter if they're a boy or a girl." The neighborhood committee director gave the couple a thumbs-up, then turned to the onlooking neighbors. "They are your role models! You should all learn from them. The Great Leader himself said that women hold up half the sky. How can you still cling to such backward, feudal ideas of favoring boys over girls? This is a terrible habit. This kind of attitude will erode your better nature and disrupt family harmony. You have to change."
"Yes, yes, yes. We'll change, we'll change," the crowd chimed in, humoring the director with half-hearted agreement.
Qin Mei watched the scene, speechless. 'They were so obviously just placating her,' she thought, 'yet the neighborhood committee director looked so pleased with herself.'
