In China, The Wealthy Drink Breast Milk

SHENZEN, China—There are plenty of breast milk suppliers serving newborns in the U.S., but apparently none offering the services that Xinxinyu Household Service Company until recently did for China's wealthiest adults. Sure, they provided "wet nurses" for newborns and those who needed the nutrition due to sickness—but until they were recently shut down for "missing three years of annual checks" (bribes? taxes?), they provided those same services for pretty much anyone who was rich enough to pay for it, including plenty of politicians. "Clients can choose to consume breast milk directly through breastfeeding... but they can always drink it from a breast pump if they feel uncomfortable," said Xinxinyu manager Lin Jun. "Quite a few of our clients hire in-house wet nurses to ensure a supply of fresh breast milk on a daily basis." Others at the company denied supplying the "wet nurses," but their ads contradict that, offering, among other services, to find breast-milk providers for adults in poor health—and according to Jun, "wet nurses rarely raise objections [to servicing adults] as long as the price is right." And breast milk doesn't come cheap in China. Jun told the Shanghai Daily that women can make as much as $20,000 (¥120,000) over eight months of milk "donations," and rich Chinese with high-pressure jobs are reportedly paying over $3,300 per month to drink the stuff either from a bottle or "straight from the source." But wait; it gets better! According to Zhou Fang, a reporter for China's official news agency Xinhua, wealthy businessmen bribe high-ranking government officials by holding sex parties—admission restricted to "officials of a certain rank or above," with an admission fee of $815—where not only can the pols sate their sexual desires with cute babes, but can also "drink breast milk from young nursing mothers." Seems that since the wealthy were already paying for personal breast-milk services, the parties were a logical extension. But bribery aside, there seems to be some question regarding the legality of hiring someone to breastfeed a healthy adult, since it may qualify as a sex act because it "largely exceeds the necessity of diet," said Guangdong lawyer Mei Chunlai. Meanwhile, on Weibo (China's equivalent of Twitter), there had been over 140,000 posts on the subject by July 4, with most saying the practice "violated ethical values," and one guy opining that, "People become perverts when they are too rich and tired of other forms of entertainment. This is disguised pornography." Our only question is, will this mean the birth of a new adult movie genre?