Jiangyou: Dreams of a normal life

"Breastfeeding Policewoman" wants a quiet life now. [Photo by Li Xiaoguo/Xinhua]

"Breastfeeding Policewoman" just wants to be left alone.

Jiang Xiaojuan, who became an icon when photos of her nursing nine children after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake zapped across the Web, hopes to be an ordinary citizen again, rather than an Internet sensation.

"I haven't met any reporters for a very, very long time," she tells China Daily by phone. "I just want a normal life. I don't want to be disturbed. Few people recognize me on the street now. It's better."

The original publicity, which saw her hailed as "the prettiest police mother" and a symbol of the milk of human kindness, helped her win the attention of the Ministry of Public Security, which honored her as a "national police model" on May 22, 2008.

A month later she was promoted to vice-commissar of Jiangyou county's public security bureau in Sichuan province. The position would be virtually unattainable to an ordinary officer.

Jiang's son, Dou Dou, was 6 months old when the quake hit and was sent to live with his grandparents. Jiang did not breastfeed him until 10 days after the disaster.

She says the decision to nurse the babies of mothers who died in the quake or were too traumatized to produce milk was due to "maternal instinct".

Mu Yaoyao was one of those infants. She was born in January 2008 to Fan Xiaoyan, now 38, who was hospitalized with a broken pelvis after being hit by debris from a falling balcony. The child ended up at a resettlement site, where Jiang nursed her.

Fan and her husband, Mu Zixue, have two children, which is legal because they belong to the Qiang ethnic group. They lived in a 30-sq-m, three-bed hovel fused with a tent for a year after the quake.

"The family and 600 other villagers are in permanent houses now," Jiang says, adding that Mu Yaoyao is in kindergarten.

Jiang still keeps in touch with the families who made her famous but is determined to shun the spotlight.