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The alleyways off Xiang Ya Road in Hunan's capital, Changsha, are lined with rows of houses that have common kitchens and bathrooms but separate rooms. Couples from different parts of the province and elsewhere on the Chinese mainland arrive here daily in the hope of becoming parents.
Inside the so-called small hotels, numbering in their hundreds, the wallpapers come more in blue than pink - representing the clich colors for boys and girls worldwide.
The couples rent the rooms at an average cost of 1,200 yuan (S$268) a month and visit a bunch of hospitals in the area, including banks that preserve sperms and embryos in liquid nitrogen. The facilities have turned this city in Central China into a major destination for assisted reproduction outside of Beijing and Shanghai.
Recent interviews in Changsha and Beijing with many senior doctors, people opting for medical intervention to have children, practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine and a population expert suggest that assisted reproduction continues to be popular in China since the country's first baby through in vitro fertilization in 1988.
While some interviewees...