After the 2008 Sichuan earthquake razed a Chinese city to the ground, thousands of families lost their only child, and were permitted to try and have another, in an effort to fill the void created by this tragedy. Born to be Second follows two of these families. Mei and her husband Sheng had a biological son, Chuan, while their friends, Ying and her husband Ping, opted to adopt a daughter, Ran-Ran. Chuan, now 6, approaches the age of his late sister. He is starting to make sense of the unusual burdens his parents place on him, and of the wound that time has never healed. Ran-Ran, now 12, had always been told that Ying and Ping were her birth-parents. She can recall having lived somewhere else as a very young child, but has chosen to accept her parents’ white lie. Soon, fragments of the truth will emerge and the family will find it hard to face each other. Both families are arriving at critical junctures in their lives, challenging how they have been living for the past ten years.