Great expectations

Dan Dan (not her real name) is six months pregnant. She lives alone in a rented apartment and a domestic helper takes care of her. She is keeping her pregnancy a secret from friends and relatives, including her 7-year-old son, who is staying with her parents. Only her mother knows of her pregnancy.

The reason is that Dan Dan does not plan to raise the child after she gives birth. The 29-year-old Guangzhou resident is bearing the child for an infertile couple, under a contract negotiated by a "surrogacy agency".

In January, Dan Dan had an operation at a public hospital: Using the couple's sperm and egg, an embryo was formed and placed in her womb. The surrogacy agency then helped her to move into a residential area. Other residents included about a dozen other surrogate mothers contracted by the same agency.

"We meet and talk a lot. We have become good friends," she says.

The couple will pay Dan Dan a monthly living allowance of 2,000 yuan ($285), until the first month after she gives birth. In addition, the couple paid associated medical costs, a fee to the surrogacy agency, and an additional payment of 100,000 yuan to the surrogate mother.

"They are in their 40s and wealthy," Dan Dan says of the couple, whom she has met on several occasions. "Before they came to the surrogacy agency, they had tried every possible method to conceive but all failed," she says.