Qiao Jie sinks her slim frame onto a large, black sofa in a small meeting room at Peking University Third Hospital's reproductive-health centre. It's late on a Friday afternoon and the director of the mainland's leading fertility clinic, still wearing her round, light-blue surgical hat, has had a busy week creating life.
Today, though, her usual peppy mood has deserted her. Qiao has just come from doing something she hates: reducing the number of foetuses in a woman's womb. Critics would say 'killing' is a better word. Whatever you call it - and in this case it involved two of triplets - it's a soul-destroying thing to do, says Qiao.
'These are lives and we hate to take life. I give life!' she says, clasping her hands in prayer. 'I prayed before I did it. How do you decide which one to keep? Plus, one of them was an identical twin and that made it much harder. But the mother knew that for her health, she had to do it.'
The mainland is in the grip of a craze for multiple births that is alarming doctors and health authorities, as families try to outwit the country's tough population policies by taking a cheap and widely available fertility drug. Designed for women with ovulation problems, the drug - clomifene citrate - is approved around the world for use by couples experiencing certain types of infertility.
Yet ingenious minds are putting it to use for different reasons in China, principally among those kicking against the mainland's 26-year-old one-child policy, which decrees urban couples can have one child, rural couples can sometimes have two and non-Han peoples also can have two. The government is tinkering with the policy - with the first generation born after 1980 now entering reproductive age, single children marrying each other may have two offspring - but essentially, it is holding firm.
Less likely than white or black people to conceive twins naturally, the Chinese have seen rates for multiple births soar over the past decade. In a sign of growing awareness of the phenomenon, China celebrated its first ever Twins Festival in Beijing in October 2004. About 500 pairs of twins aged from just a few months to nearly 70 sang, danced, made friends and took part in games. The festival was a huge success, with a repeat last year that drew about 600 pairs.
