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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

Rural Exodus for Work Fractures Chinese Family
By JIM YARDLEY

Published: December 21, 2004

SHUANGHU, China - Yang Shan is in fourth grade and spends a few hours every 
day practicing her Chinese characters. Her script is neat and precise, and 
one day, instead of drills, she wrote letters to her parents and put them 
in the mail.

"How is your health?" she asked.

Shan, who is 10, then added a more pointed question: "What is happening 
with our family?"
        
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Her parents had left in March. Their absence was not new in Shan's short 
life. Her father, Yang Heqing, has left four times for work. He is now in 
Beijing on a construction site. Her mother, Ran Heping, has left three 
times. She is in a different city as a factory worker.

Over the years, Shan's parents have returned to this remote village to 
bring money and reunite the family. They leave when the money runs out, as 
it did in March. Her father had medical debts and needed cash to see 
another doctor. Shan's school fees were due, and her grandparents also 
needed help.

"I think they are suffering in order to make my life better," Shan said of 
her parents. She added a familiar Chinese expression: "They are eating 
bitterness."

For the Yang family and millions of others in the Chinese countryside, the 
only way to survive as a family is to not live as one. Migrant workers like 
Shan's parents are the mules driving the country's stunning economic 
growth. And the money they send home has become essential for jobless rural 
China.

Yet even that money is no longer enough. Migrant wages have stagnated, 
education and health costs are rising, and the rural social safety net has 
collapsed - a crushing combination that is a major reason the income divide 
is widening so rapidly in China at the expense of the rural poor.

Migration also has meant that urban and rural children in China are growing 
up in starkly different worlds. In cities, upwardly mobile couples call 
their precious only child xiao taiyang, or "little sun," as in center of 
the universe. Children are indulged with clothes, toys and snacks: 
childhood obesity is a new urban ill.

In the countryside, the new vernacular phrase is liu shou, or "left behind" 
child. Millions of children like Shan are growing up without one or both 
parents. Villages often seem to be missing a generation. Grandparents work 
the fields and care for the children.

"We are a triangle, three people in three different places," said Mr. Yang, 
36, the father. "The pain of missing one another is very difficult. All 
parents are the same in this world. All parents care about their children."

But Shan's parents, strapped with debt and obligation, are among the untold 
millions of people in rural China caught in a brutal cycle. Studies show 
that medical costs are the leading reason that people fall into poverty in 
China. Many city residents still have some health benefits, but peasants 
now fall under a pay-for-service system. Sickness can mean bankruptcy.

Mr. Yang went to Beijing in part to earn enough money for medical 
treatment. He was warned four years ago that he needed treatment for 
prostate problems, but he could not afford it. Now, his health has worsened 
on his construction job. He has missed days and is jeopardizing the pay he 
needs to see a doctor.

His wife, Ms. Ran, 33, wants to visit her daughter in February for the 
Lunar New Year, when migrant workers traditionally go home. But she said 
her factory in the city of Baoding will fine her $72 - roughly six weeks' 
pay - if she does not work straight through to July. Shan's school fees are 
due soon, and the family needs more money.

Shan has never left this village in mountainous central China, a few hours' 
drive from the Three Gorges along the Yangtze River. She is still a child, 
but she understands the pressures on her family and how her own future 
depends on getting an education. She grew worried when the school began 
asking for next semester's tuition.

"I love school," she said.

A Desperate Village

The students in Shan's fourth grade class rose in unison as the teacher, Du 
Nengwei, tapped his pointer against his desk to start the lesson.

[large deletion here]

The Yangs were together in the village for a year. But medical and school 
bills forced them apart again. When Mr. Yang left for Beijing last March, 
his wife left for a plastics factory. She later quit and tried to join her 
husband in Beijing.

"We are a family," her husband told her. "When we can, we should be together."

They were together for less than 10 days. Ms. Ran worked at a pastry 
factory but quit because the pay was so bad. She also said the cost of 
renting a room and living together in expensive Beijing would have erased 
the couple's savings.

She returned to Baoding and the metal ball factory in September. She is an 
inspector, an easier job that pays up to $40 a month. She is not lonely 
because several cousins work at the factory. They talk about their children 
or visit a local park together. There are days when she says being away in 
a big city can be exciting.

"There are no department stores where we are from," she said.

In November, she bought a bottle of shampoo for her long black hair. It was 
first time in her life she had ever bought shampoo. It cost $1.50.

These lighter moments are leavened by the dark. On the telephone, she 
pleads with her husband to see a doctor. "I said, 'When you get paid, spend 
all your wages to get better.' I said I would send my money home to take 
care of the family."

"But he doesn't really want treatment because it will cost so much," she said.

The grandparents called in December to ask for another $25 for Shan's 
tuition next year. Mrs. Ran wants to visit her daughter in February at New 
Year's. But her bosses insist she must work until July or again lose pay. 
She is angry but has decided she must stay. Her daughter does not know yet.

"I just hope that Heqing will recover and we can work together to put Yang 
Shan at least through high school," Ms. Ran said, when asked what she 
wanted for her future. "If his health doesn't improve, I'm worried we'll 
only be able to send her to middle school."

"It's a hard life," she added, "but we have no other choice."

An Unknown Future

Shan's grandparents say she almost never cries. She is happy playing with 
her friends and her cousins. Her parents both called on her birthday in 
July. She said it had made her happy.

In early December, she sat outside and practiced writing. The letters she 
had sent her parents months earlier never reached them; she did not have a 
reliable addresses.

Now, she started writing in a notebook.

"I want a ticket, a boat ticket and a bus ticket," she scribbled for a 
visiting photographer.

Where does she want to go?

"To see my parents," she answered. "I want to see my mom and dad. I think 
about them all the time."

For the moment, her earlier, darker image of their life had lifted. She 
wanted to join them. She wanted to be a migrant worker.

"I think their life is very good," the little girl answered.

"Their life is smooth."