This story is part of Sixth Tone’s 10-year anniversary series, Ten Years in Transition.
In her first decade as an obstetrician, Zhang Xuan bounced between surgeries, overnight shifts, and deliveries that could come at any hour. Once, she went 72 hours without proper sleep, snatching brief naps on a stool when she could.
By her second, China’s births were falling fast enough to alarm policymakers. Zhang’s pay had stalled, her prospects were narrowing, and on some days, she says, there were more medical staff than pregnant women — enough to convince her it was time to leave.
Today, at 43, Zhang sells insurance.
“It’s hard to say it was an impulsive choice,” Zhang, hailing from a small city in central China’s Hubei province, said of leaving obstetrics in 2016. “It was more like countless regrets piling up.”
