Cows for rent, wet nurses for 18,000 yuan a month

Shenzhen’s first wet nurse A Xia (center) in 2006

In the wake of the melamine milk scandal, the ancient profession of wet nursing is seeing a revival.

Global Times website reports that a Wenzhou company is offering wet nurses with the top performers pulling in a salary of 18,000 yuan a month. The same website also reports on a women in Chengdu who has been promoting wet nursing services on the Internet at a rate of 300 yuan a day.

Netease has published a report on the phenomenon titled ‘Foreign milk powder is not as good as a wet nurse – salaries up to 8,000 yuan’. According to the report, high end wet nurses in Guangdong are asking for 20,000 yuan a month, while in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, the salary has gone up to 8,000.

Meanwhile, in the capital, The Beijing News reports:

Wet nurses seek work online

Yesterday Beijing Beiqijia Household Management Service Company advertised for a service for wet nurses on Baidu’s Tieba Internet forum. A Mr Lin, who posted the announcement, said that there were many people who called the company to ask about the wet nurse service…

… Relevant staff at the Beijing Industry and Commerce Bureau said that regulations have not forbidden household management companies from developing the wet nurse industry. But the service of feeding other people’s babies does not belong to the household management service area, and there exists a big health risk.

The phenomenon predates the current milk crisis. In 2006, China.com published an article about the rise of wet nursing, featuring the above photo of A Xia, apparently the first wet nurse in Shenzhen. The 2006 article reports that wet nurse salaries in Beijing were 2,600 yuan a month and 5,000 a month in Guangdong.

Finally, Global Times reports that a man in Guiyang, Guizhou Province, has rented a cow to produce milk for his five month old baby.