An online influencer and chief executive officer of a cosmetics brand in China has intrigued her 9 million followers on Douyin by her decision to have four children using sperm she bought from the United States.
Ye Haiyang, 36, was born to a working-class family in northeastern China’s Jilin province. At the age of 22, she founded her Shenzhen-based makeup company, DC Expert.
After she built her company factory in 2015, the single, successful entrepreneur asked herself the question: “What’s the point of working hard and making money?”
Her answer was to have a child. But instead of going down the usual route of marrying and getting pregnant, Ye decided to buy “high-quality” sperm from a US bank.
She chose what she considered to be the best, because it belongs to a man with a mixed heritage who is healthy and physically strong as well as having a degree from an Ivy League college.
Ye said she spent 500,000 yuan (US$69,000) to give birth to her first daughter, Doris, in the US in 2017.
In 2021, she went to Russia for another IVF procedure using the same man’s sperm, and gave birth to her second daughter, Hatti, in 2022.
On June 20, Ye announced on her Douyin account that she had recently given birth to twin sons, Owen and Olsen, again with the same man’s sperm.
She said she is so happy she has sons and daughters, and that they are everything she dreamed about when she was a teenager wondering what her future held.
Ye faced many questions and doubts when she had Doris, but more supportive voices emerged as she became a mother of four.
Many said she has “set an example” for them, and one person said: “You have daughters and sons, money, and no husband or annoying mother-in-law. So happy.”
China has been relaxing its birth registration policy since last year.
Southwestern Sichuan province officially published new regulations in February last year, which allows children born out of wedlock to be registered in one parent’s hukou.
In China, hukou, or permanent residence permit, means access to basic social benefits including education and medical care.
Some single people from other provinces also posted online saying they have registered their babies.
Chinese law does not grant single women access to sperm banks in China, so some women choose to buy from abroad.
In one of her videos, Ye said she did not want to get married only because society believes children need a father. She said she can be both their mother and father: “I can be their hero,” she said.
Of her choice to have four children, Ye said: “People say your love for each kid will reduce when you have more, but my love for them only multiplied.”
She said her mother gave her full support when she decided to raise children on her own.
