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Left-behind kids loom as up-front dilemma
By Yi Ling and Gui Juan |
November 23, 2009, Monday
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FANG Zhiqian loves the smell of firecrackers. The pungent, burning chemicals take the 16-year-old back to family scenes which he often missed during his childhood.
Fang was only three years and four months old when his mother Xie Kui'e left their home in a village in Luoshan County of central China's Henan Province to look for a job.
He was seven when his father left him to join his mother in Zhejiang Province as a pedicab driver.
Fang became one of the "left-behind children" in China whose parents, singly or together, work far away from home leaving the off-spring in the care of their grandparents or other relatives. "My parents aren't in my most pleasant memories," says Fang. The quiet 12th-grader is reluctant to talk about his childhood because it was a time that he felt lonely.
As China sped its way from poverty to prosperity, the world's most-populated country has confronted an old problem -- the poor-rich disparity.
China's vast rural population has begun to enjoy the country's development, though later than their urban peers, as more and more farmers have moved to cities to seek their fortune. However, it's a bittersweet process for most of the wage hunters. While they earn more than they did back home, they pay the price of split families. Children are the prime victims.
A report released by the All-China Women's Federation in May reveals that China now has more than 58 million rural, left-behind children, almost triple the figure in 2006. And over 69 percent of them are under 14. These children are disadvantaged compared to peers who enjoy full family care. The left-behind are also bereft in physical and psychological health and learning, and more vulnerable in security.
Fang's hometown of Luoshan has a population of 730,000, about 90 percent of whom live in rural areas. Since the mid 1980s, more than 220,000 people from Luoshan have moved to work in cities, mainly to Beijing and eastern coastal provinces.
"They seek jobs in the construction and catering industry", says Xiong Xingming, head of the county's labor and social security bureau. "Almost every family has at least one member working in the cities."
Faced with the fact that the family's yearly income was less than 2,000 yuan (US$293) in cash, Fang's mother Xie Kui'e made the difficult, practical, but heart-breaking choice between attending to her sons and earning more money for the family.
Although she insists that she has never regretted her decision, her eyes turn red when she recalls the scene the day she left home for the first time in 1997.
"Zhiqian cried and went to lay on the ground, holding my legs and yelling ?don't go.' I managed to release myself from his arms. I ran out of the house, starting to cry," Xie recalls.
"Of course I worried that the boys would not behave well when we were not around. But if we didn't leave, they might not have enough food, let alone the money for going to school."
Independent researcher Ruan Mei has spent four years interviewing more than 3,000 left-behind children in the six major migrant worker-exporting provinces of Sichuan, Shaanxi, Hunan, Hubei, Anhui and Henan. She just published a book entitled "Pains Of The Century: Investigation Into China's Left-behind Children."
"The reality is astonishingly painful. What concerns me is how ignorant we are of the pains of the children. They grow up on their own," says the former Huarong Newspaper reporter in Huarong County of Hunan Province.
The 44-year-old woman says two suicide cases of left-behind children inspired her to look into the issue four years ago. "One boy committed suicide for not studying well and a girl drowned herself for being pregnant. Many such cases, including rape and murder, also appeared in my investigation," she says.
"Their pains are like the moon during the day; invisible but it's still present."
Some local governments have provided left-behind children allowance for their living and medical care.
However, Ruan insisted that family and school, the main care-givers for the children, are the key to tackling the problem. "The educational level of adults supervising these children is generally not that high. Often they can only care for the children's safety and daily living, but not their educational, behavioral and spiritual needs," says Ruan.
"Regular letters from their parents and chats with teachers are the best remedy," she says.
(The authors are Xinhua writers.)
Fang was only three years and four months old when his mother Xie Kui'e left their home in a village in Luoshan County of central China's Henan Province to look for a job.
He was seven when his father left him to join his mother in Zhejiang Province as a pedicab driver.
Fang became one of the "left-behind children" in China whose parents, singly or together, work far away from home leaving the off-spring in the care of their grandparents or other relatives. "My parents aren't in my most pleasant memories," says Fang. The quiet 12th-grader is reluctant to talk about his childhood because it was a time that he felt lonely.
As China sped its way from poverty to prosperity, the world's most-populated country has confronted an old problem -- the poor-rich disparity.
China's vast rural population has begun to enjoy the country's development, though later than their urban peers, as more and more farmers have moved to cities to seek their fortune. However, it's a bittersweet process for most of the wage hunters. While they earn more than they did back home, they pay the price of split families. Children are the prime victims.
A report released by the All-China Women's Federation in May reveals that China now has more than 58 million rural, left-behind children, almost triple the figure in 2006. And over 69 percent of them are under 14. These children are disadvantaged compared to peers who enjoy full family care. The left-behind are also bereft in physical and psychological health and learning, and more vulnerable in security.
Fang's hometown of Luoshan has a population of 730,000, about 90 percent of whom live in rural areas. Since the mid 1980s, more than 220,000 people from Luoshan have moved to work in cities, mainly to Beijing and eastern coastal provinces.
"They seek jobs in the construction and catering industry", says Xiong Xingming, head of the county's labor and social security bureau. "Almost every family has at least one member working in the cities."
Faced with the fact that the family's yearly income was less than 2,000 yuan (US$293) in cash, Fang's mother Xie Kui'e made the difficult, practical, but heart-breaking choice between attending to her sons and earning more money for the family.
Although she insists that she has never regretted her decision, her eyes turn red when she recalls the scene the day she left home for the first time in 1997.
"Zhiqian cried and went to lay on the ground, holding my legs and yelling ?don't go.' I managed to release myself from his arms. I ran out of the house, starting to cry," Xie recalls.
"Of course I worried that the boys would not behave well when we were not around. But if we didn't leave, they might not have enough food, let alone the money for going to school."
Independent researcher Ruan Mei has spent four years interviewing more than 3,000 left-behind children in the six major migrant worker-exporting provinces of Sichuan, Shaanxi, Hunan, Hubei, Anhui and Henan. She just published a book entitled "Pains Of The Century: Investigation Into China's Left-behind Children."
"The reality is astonishingly painful. What concerns me is how ignorant we are of the pains of the children. They grow up on their own," says the former Huarong Newspaper reporter in Huarong County of Hunan Province.
The 44-year-old woman says two suicide cases of left-behind children inspired her to look into the issue four years ago. "One boy committed suicide for not studying well and a girl drowned herself for being pregnant. Many such cases, including rape and murder, also appeared in my investigation," she says.
"Their pains are like the moon during the day; invisible but it's still present."
Some local governments have provided left-behind children allowance for their living and medical care.
However, Ruan insisted that family and school, the main care-givers for the children, are the key to tackling the problem. "The educational level of adults supervising these children is generally not that high. Often they can only care for the children's safety and daily living, but not their educational, behavioral and spiritual needs," says Ruan.
"Regular letters from their parents and chats with teachers are the best remedy," she says.
(The authors are Xinhua writers.)
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