Excerpts:
In China, “left-behind children” (simplified Chinese: 留守儿童; traditional Chinese: 留守兒童; pinyin: liúshǒu’értóng), also called “stay-at-home children”, are children who remain in rural regions of the country while their parents leave to work in urban areas. In many cases, these children are taken care of by their extended families, usually by grandparents or family friends, who remain in the rural regions.
According to the UNICEF 2018 Annual Report, there are approximately 69 million children left behind by one or both of their parents due to migration, which is equivalent to thirty percent of the children in rural areas. The number of left behind children is unevenly distributed across age groups, regions, and gender. The majority of the left-behind children population is located in south and central regions of China. Six south and central provinces, including Sichuan, Anhui, Henan, Guangdong, Hunan, and Jiangxi, take up 52% of the left-behind child population.
Many factors contribute to the increase of left-behind children in China. Internal migration, which mainly involves massive economically driven population shifts from the rural areas to the cities in China, produces a large population of left-behind children and migrant children. China’s Hukou system (Chinese Household Registration System) hampers left-behind children’s chances of public school enrollment in cities. In some cities where a school enrollment point system are implemented, educational resources in urban areas are not readily accessible to migrants and left-behind children. As a result of the lack of educational resources, many migrant parents left their children at home.
The physical and mental wellbeing of the left-behind children has become one increasing concern for researchers and Chinese government. Some researchers found that the remittance from migrant parents has a positive impact on children’s education and human capital. Many of these children face developmental and emotional challenges as a result of the limited interaction with their biological parents. The lack of infrastructure and parental support have led to additional challenges for left-behind children including quality education, physical well-being, and healthy social relationships. Left-behind children are the victims of the longstanding intergenerational reproduction of social inequality.
I was just a bit obsessed about my past and started digging… This really hits close to home. I was a kid with Rural Hukou (Taishan), my older brother and I weren’t allowed in Guangzhou City’s Public Schools, but my parents tried to keep us closeby by enrolling us in privately-run schools, which are, according to my mother, sub-par compared than the Public Schools. If we had stayed in China, we had to return back to Taishan before Highschool because of the Gaokao stuff that you have to take in where your Hukou is. And since my parents likely would have to continue working their jobs in the city, I would’ve eventually became one of these kids.
So depressing to think about. Imagine not seeing your parents for a year.
The funny thing is, when I’m at home in the US, I have tiger parents, when I’m at school, its language barrier, when I was at the after school program, since it was a Chinese-American non-profit, it was run by what I call “tiger teachers” Chinese-Americans who are like I think either 1st gen, 1.5 gen, or 2nd gen immigrants, they are so fucking mean and strict. And these ABC college-age kids want to buff up their resume or for class credits or something so they were volunteering as like teachers assistants or something, and these college kids are also mean as fuck, just like my older brother.
But even with a majority of my peers in these programs being ethnic Chinese, they were ABCs so we had this weird cultural/language barrier, and the closest acquintances I ever had were all just cantonese speakers (some were ABC, some were 1.5 gen immigrant), I don’t think I ever got close to Mandarin speakers eithers.
I remember some of my bullies from the afterschool program were English-only ABCs. I basically just became quiet the entire time. You think racism hurts, try being bullied by those of your own ethnicity for being the “weird socially awkward kid that doesn’t speak english” (they didn’t say that, but I knew that was likely the reason), it hurts way more.
4 of my first years in the US was being “alone in a crowd”. 😭
(And right before the US, I was basically already alone, so its basically my entire life, I got so used to it.)
It’s always weird to me how the FOB Chinese community is so stigmatized by the ABC community. I guess the American way is taking every opportunity to punch downward to make people feel better about themselves.
It’s less american way and more current chinese government doesn’t value human (or otherwise) life interacting badly with capitalism. Same thing in South Korea, too much labor means they can be unreasonably picky for no reason, which leads to the binary outcome of perfection or failure.
If you find chinese people old enough (90+), you can see what precommunist values look like. Those are almost gone now.
Which leads to the dark joke,
What’s the only thing (new) chinese people hate more than each other?
Everyone else.