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When Qu Di left for the United States in 2007 for a PhD program, her mother was certain that she would return. Qu, a 25-year-old math major, dreamed of being a university professor in her home province of Liaoning, in northeastern China, and obtaining a degree overseas was the last step in earning the teaching qualification. She never made it home. Qu's mother, who only gave her last name, Jiang, said she and her daughter used to chat everyday on QQ, a Chinese instant messaging service, when Qu studied at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Then one day in May of 2008, Jiang was unable to get ahold of her daughter. She scrambled to reach out to Qu's friends, who, despite having already seen the report of Qu's death at the school's office, were reluctant to tell her mother. This task was left to the local police, who attempted to reach Jiang with the assistance of a Chinese interpreter. But Jiang refused to answer the phone. Instead, she asked a relative to confirm the news that she couldn't bear to hear herself: her only child was killed in a car accident, along with two others, on a road trip back from the Grand Canyon. "It was over," Jiang said, sobbing uncontrollably. "I was never afraid of any difficulties because we had a child and she was our hope. Now everything has lost meaning to us." Jiang, 59, gave birth to Qu in 1983, making her part of the first generation of parents subject to China's one-child policy, which came into effect in 1980. Jiang was then an office worker at a state-owned steel factory in Benxi, a city 650 miles east of Beijing, and a place where the policy implementation was so strict, she was not even allowed to return to work after maternity leave without a certificate proving that she had been inserted with an intrauterine device for effective birth control. | 
