LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: Chinese Women Head Overseas to Freeze Their Eggs.

Ms. Lu has a business degree from Stanford University and founded a company in Shanghai that connects Chinese cancer patients with American medical specialists. But like many other women, she has found it difficult to pursue both career and family.

“I knew at some point I might want to have children, but definitely not now,” said Ms. Lu, who is single.

So last year, at the age of 34, she decided to have her eggs frozen. China prohibits fertility treatments for unmarried women, so she underwent the procedure in California, joining the growing number of single Chinese women going abroad to have their eggs frozen as a way to preserve an option and control the pace of their lives.

That there even was such an option was unknown to much of the Chinese public until last year, when the actress Xu Jinglei posted on Weibo that she had gone to the United States to have her eggs frozen in 2013.

“It was the first time that many of us learned that this technology exists,” Ms. Lu said. “We thought, if she can do it, why can’t I?”

According to the National Health and Family Planning Commission of China, assisted reproductive technologies are denied to “single women and couples who are not in line with the nation’s population and family planning regulations.” Even married women must provide proof of marriage, a license to give birth and evidence either of infertility or of medical treatments that could impair fertility, such as chemotherapy.

The restrictions have been driven in part by population controls that have been in place since 1979.

How’s that working for you?