Growing up without parents: the ‘B’ side of Chinese migration

Every day when she opens her small dry cleaners in the center of Beijing, she asks herself why she and her husband are hundreds of kilometers away from their two young children. Eleven years ago they had to migrate to move their family forward and now, hopefully, they see them twice a year.

While more than 244 million Chinese people migrated to other cities in 2017 in search of new opportunities in the world's second economic power, almost seven million children grew up the following year alone with their grandparents in rural areas, according to official figures.

In his humble laundry and dry cleaning business in the capital, Zou Xinxin shows the photos of his two children, aged 9 and 5, with nostalgia but without preventing a smile from seeing their faces through the screen.

“Every night we make a video call,” he tells Efe. The two little ones now live with their grandparents in Zhejiang Province, in the east, almost 1,500 kilometers away from Beijing.

While sewing a client's pants, he explains that they periodically send money to their in-laws so that the children do not lack anything.

“It's very difficult. When we say goodbye my children always cry. But I had to come because in my province the salary is very low and the cost of living, the prices, are the same as in Beijing. With our salary there we could not get ahead to the family, “he says.

Although it was a complicated decision, when the two children turned one year old they separated from them because in Beijing the couple was alone, they worked many hours and could not take care of them or devote enough time.

On the recent holiday for the Chinese New Year, Zou was able to go to Zhejiang with her husband and enjoy them for ten days. “Then in summer I go a month, although my husband has to stay here with the business,” she laments.

Now he counts the days to be able to return definitively to his town and return to live all together, without mobiles of half to be able to speak with his children.

“When we find someone to transfer the business to, we will return because the children are growing up and the grandparents can no longer control them and it is more difficult to educate them,” he explains.

Stories like yours are the other side of China's economic growth, which has left its agrarian past behind at the cost of labor mobilization in large cities in precarious conditions.

Far from trying to solve this social problem, the authorities continue to hinder, for example, the schooling of the children of migrants in the cities where they work.

The case of Wanli and Hui

Another example is that of Song Wanli and Liu Hui, who left Henan (center) 20 years ago to move to Beijing, where they now run a fruit and vegetable shop.

His two daughters, aged 16 and 14, are with their grandparents in Henan – during the week they live in the school – while in their home in Beijing they can only have the youngest, 13 years old.

“They are very mature,” says Liu about his daughters, whom he only sees a couple of times a year. However, he plans to regroup the family when they both study at a university in the capital.

Although he confesses that it is hard to have his daughters away, because “they lack the love of a mother and a father”, he tries to look for the positive part of this situation.

“It can be a kind of motivation for them … Their father and I work for many hours and they may think: 'Like them, we also have to work hard,'” he adds.

Every six months, the marriage usually sends 3,000 yuan (337 euros) to the grandparents for food and leisure for the girls. “His school is another 2,000 yuan (224 euros) for half a year,” he says.

The majority of Chinese migrant workers come from Henan and other provinces such as Sichuan, Anhui or Hunan, where in rural areas about 44% of children live without their mother or father, according to figures reported by local media.

The same sources estimate that there are up to 61 million children in this situation throughout the country.

Despite China's achievements in its fight against poverty, about 30 million people are still suffering from it, which causes displacements from the countryside to the big cities, which have registered strong population growth in recent years.