Relationship reassessed

In August 2020, Xu Yinmin went to a library in Qianlinzi village in Linyi city, Shandong province, to provide primary school students with two-week sex education courses. The experience made him reassess his relationship with his own parents.

Xu's class discussed how babies are conceived, including how the sperm fuses with the egg to begin the fertilization process. Using cartoons, he explained the whole process of pregnancy by covering the condition of the expectant mother at three months, six months and just before birth.

"Our volunteers invited the students to wear rucksacks full of books on their fronts to simulate the feeling of being pregnant, enabling the children to feel how strenuous it is to carry a child (in the womb)," said Xu, who is now 24 and a math undergraduate at the University of Waterloo in Canada.

"In the game, the children often said the backpack was too heavy and that their waists were compressed. They said they were exhausted and that pregnancy is painful," he said.

"After, many started considering the mother's position more and asked what fathers can do to help during pregnancy."

Given the potential risk of sexual assault that left-behind children may face, the volunteers thought of a way to draw a body and allow the children to paint the private parts on the figure.

"We wanted to guide them to know that some parts are private, and if someone touches them, he or she is a bad person. Who might that person be? It may not be a stranger, but possibly even someone close to them," Xu said.