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Home » Opinion » Chinese Views
Left-behind kids face bleak, dangerous life
By Ma Guihua and Jiang Guibin |
January 12, 2010, Tuesday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
AS more and more rural Chinese bid farewell to their impoverished home villages in pursuit of a better life in cities, it seems a small price to leave their young children to the care of relatives or aging parents.
But for some, that cost is simply too high. It was around 8am on November 12, 2009. Yang Chunfeng from Yanghui Village in Hezhou, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, was rocked awake by a huge "boom."
As he rushed out, he saw a big chunk of the three-story brick building next door had been blasted away, flames were raging high in the air. Villagers coming to the rescue soon carried out blackened children while others were running for their own lives. "All the children coming out of the building were burned bare, with no hair or clothes left," recalled Yang in his 50s.
The explosion was in an unlicensed firecracker workshop set up in the building when Xie Qingsui, an accomplice charged with organizing raw materials for the workshop, was kick-starting his motorcycle loaded with goods. Xie was arrested two days after his escape while Yang Wanwen, whose home is the site for the workshop, turned himself in on the day of the explosion. The two are accused with making dangerous goods without license and employing child labor.
Aside from an old lady aged 61, the other 13 victims were all children aged between 7 and 15 from Zhiyang Primary School. Two sisters died of serious burns from the blast - their parents were working far from home at the time.
Yanghui Village in the mountains is about two hours' drive from Hezhou City, to the east of the picturesque city of Guilin. The population is only 3,000, half of them children under 14.
The village has only 93 hectares of arable land for tobacco and rice paddies. Per capita annual income from farming is a pitiable 600 yuan (US$85), hardly enough for food alone.
Unable to make ends meet, villagers seek work in other cities in Guangxi including Guilin, Wuzhou and Liuzhou, or the neighboring Guangdong Province, where labor-intensive jobs from export-oriented factories had propped up the local economy.
According to Yang Youji, the village chief, over 1,000 villagers go out to work in the construction, textile or brick-making factories, making an average 18,000 yuan a year per person. The price they pay is parting with their children, some 1,050 in total.
Due to the sweeping economic downturn, many small factories catering exclusively to foreign markets have gone bankrupt.
Well-paid jobs are scarce and earnings from working away from home could only cover some basic family necessities. Some of the children left behind, therefore, try to earn pocket money for snacks and stationery.
And the firecracker workshop run by their villagers is just one way to cash in on their cheap labor. The children's job was to insert fuses to the 1,000-plus beehive-like little tubes coiled up to the size of a big plate after powder is pulled in.
Yang Xiaoli, a six-grader from Zhiyang Primary School, had worked in the firecracker workshop. "For every coil I finished, I got 3 jiao (about 4 US cents)," she said, adding that in the two to three hours before school in the morning, she could insert 3,000 fuses to the firecrackers, making around one yuan (14 US cents).
To her knowledge, many children in the neighborhood had done this before, using the money for spicy snacks or pencils. Seven of the child victims of the explosion were girls from age six.
Some 130 million farmers have left their home villages in 2007 to join the ranks of migrant workers in cities across China. Meanwhile, over 58 million children are left in their rural homes to the care of grandparents or relatives. Among them, those under 14 account for more than 40 million.
(The authors are Xinhua writers.)
But for some, that cost is simply too high. It was around 8am on November 12, 2009. Yang Chunfeng from Yanghui Village in Hezhou, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, was rocked awake by a huge "boom."
As he rushed out, he saw a big chunk of the three-story brick building next door had been blasted away, flames were raging high in the air. Villagers coming to the rescue soon carried out blackened children while others were running for their own lives. "All the children coming out of the building were burned bare, with no hair or clothes left," recalled Yang in his 50s.
The explosion was in an unlicensed firecracker workshop set up in the building when Xie Qingsui, an accomplice charged with organizing raw materials for the workshop, was kick-starting his motorcycle loaded with goods. Xie was arrested two days after his escape while Yang Wanwen, whose home is the site for the workshop, turned himself in on the day of the explosion. The two are accused with making dangerous goods without license and employing child labor.
Aside from an old lady aged 61, the other 13 victims were all children aged between 7 and 15 from Zhiyang Primary School. Two sisters died of serious burns from the blast - their parents were working far from home at the time.
Yanghui Village in the mountains is about two hours' drive from Hezhou City, to the east of the picturesque city of Guilin. The population is only 3,000, half of them children under 14.
The village has only 93 hectares of arable land for tobacco and rice paddies. Per capita annual income from farming is a pitiable 600 yuan (US$85), hardly enough for food alone.
Unable to make ends meet, villagers seek work in other cities in Guangxi including Guilin, Wuzhou and Liuzhou, or the neighboring Guangdong Province, where labor-intensive jobs from export-oriented factories had propped up the local economy.
According to Yang Youji, the village chief, over 1,000 villagers go out to work in the construction, textile or brick-making factories, making an average 18,000 yuan a year per person. The price they pay is parting with their children, some 1,050 in total.
Due to the sweeping economic downturn, many small factories catering exclusively to foreign markets have gone bankrupt.
Well-paid jobs are scarce and earnings from working away from home could only cover some basic family necessities. Some of the children left behind, therefore, try to earn pocket money for snacks and stationery.
And the firecracker workshop run by their villagers is just one way to cash in on their cheap labor. The children's job was to insert fuses to the 1,000-plus beehive-like little tubes coiled up to the size of a big plate after powder is pulled in.
Yang Xiaoli, a six-grader from Zhiyang Primary School, had worked in the firecracker workshop. "For every coil I finished, I got 3 jiao (about 4 US cents)," she said, adding that in the two to three hours before school in the morning, she could insert 3,000 fuses to the firecrackers, making around one yuan (14 US cents).
To her knowledge, many children in the neighborhood had done this before, using the money for spicy snacks or pencils. Seven of the child victims of the explosion were girls from age six.
Some 130 million farmers have left their home villages in 2007 to join the ranks of migrant workers in cities across China. Meanwhile, over 58 million children are left in their rural homes to the care of grandparents or relatives. Among them, those under 14 account for more than 40 million.
(The authors are Xinhua writers.)
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