Holiday Underlines Toll of Distant Jobs
By Maureen Fan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, February 18, 2007
GUIHUA, China -- For years now, nearly half the rice, wheat and vegetable farmers in this village in Henan province have been unable to make a living off their land. They have turned instead to more profitable migrant work in large, faraway cities.
So last week -- in a scene that will play out across the country as millions of Chinese return home for the Lunar New Year holiday, which began yesterday -- the modest concrete house that Chen Wenxiu, 56, shares with her husband and two grandchildren was bursting with eight more relatives. Most of them were back from jobs in carpentry, shoe factories, recycling or construction.
Chen cooked in a soot-covered kitchen while grandchildren played outside with a squirt gun. Women shooed chickens from the main room while the men ate first, sipping from glasses of grain alcohol and spitting bones onto the floor. One daughter was too busy running her business to come home.
"I'm so happy. They all just appeared in front of my eyes," Chen said of her children, as she served bowls of chicken, lotus root, steamed bread, and beans and pork. "I wish they would come home more frequently, but they need to go out and work to make money, and that's more important."
That money now takes precedence over family has long been an unspoken fact of life here, but it is a view often obscured by the popular notion that the Chinese are, above all, family-focused and family-centric. In Guihua, what looked like a cozy reunion was actually a glimpse of the tension and sacrifice of migrant work: Though it has helped lift millions out of poverty, it is tearing at the fabric of rural society.
"In the countryside, people pay more attention to economics than to emotions, feelings, family ties and all those sorts of things," said Zhang Shiqiang, 45, Chen's nephew and a member of Guihua's family planning committee.
"Farmers are realistic," he said. "If their kids are not high achievers at school, the parents just want them to finish school as soon as possible, get a job, build a house and get married."
It is typical in China for migrant workers to leave children at home in the care of grandparents. There are myriad reasons for them to do so: In cities, migrant workers face discrimination because of their rural backgrounds; it's hard for them to find affordable housing; and they are often forced to pay higher school fees than other residents because of an outdated system that grants preferential living conditions based on where one is born.
Here in Guihua, Xiao Qingtong, 34, said it seemed only natural to leave his daughter, 9, in the care of Grandma Chen when he and his wife took off for Kunshan, a city 300 miles to the east, to run a recycling business.
"I never thought of taking her with us because the education in Kunshan is not as good as here," he said.
Although he shows no sign of regretting that decision, he has had to relinquish connections to family life. A certificate on the wall in Chen's house showed that Xiao's daughter, Manman, had won recognition as a "student leader" last year. But not this year.
"How is she doing? I have no idea," Xiao said. "How can I possibly know that? I really can't take care of so many things. My priority now is to make money."
Xiao said he had thought about the ways in which his family was being split up, "but if she can get an education, that's her fate," he added, referring to his daughter. "If not. . . ." He shrugged.
For her part, Manman expressed little disappointment in the absence of her mother, who was too busy working to make it home.
"Mom is in Kunshan collecting trash," Manman said. "I do miss my mother, but I don't want to go to see her."
Asked whether she thought her parents loved her, she murmured quietly, "I don't know." Asked whether her grandparents loved her, she replied quickly, "Oh yes, they love me."
There are an estimated 200 million migrant workers in China. Officials have voiced concern about the separation of those workers from their children and how it might affect the children's development. They say grandparents are sometimes incapable of exercising proper supervision or providing education.
Gu Xiulian, vice chairwoman of the Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress, recently called for the passage of new laws and regulations to improve the health and education of the more than 20 million rural children whose absent parents are migrant workers.
Last year, Gu, who also heads the All-China Women's Federation, told the official New China News Agency that preliminary results of a federation survey of children in a dozen provinces and municipalities showed that the academic performance of 80 percent of children in Hebei province, for example, was poor or mediocre. About 20 percent of the children routinely told lies, fought or disobeyed school rules.
Two years ago, a survey of 1,180 students in six villages in Anhui province showed nearly 60 percent had psychological problems, the news service reported.
Officials say they are eager to tackle the problem -- by building more boarding schools, for example, or creating programs to educate grandparent caregivers, many of whom are illiterate.
Not far from Guihua, in the village of Yanyan, Zhi Jifang and her husband, Huang Peibing, were preparing for the holiday. Only one of their five children had made it home so far. Their youngest son said he would visit, but it was unclear when.
Until last month, the couple took care of four grandchildren. Now they look after only one. And yet relations with all their children are not smooth. One of their sons is well-off from working in a leather bag factory, but when he came home for last year's holiday, he fought with his parents so much that he moved his family into a nearby hotel.
"They lead a pretty good life. They even have a car. But they don't take care of the elderly, they don't respect the aged," said Huang, 61. Like other farmers, he does not make too much of the connection between migrant work and a deterioration of family ties.
"In order to have a better living condition, in order to have economic development, there is no other way. It's true migrant work makes families less cohesive, but we have to do that," Huang said. "Fifteen years ago, we didn't have enough food to eat, let alone profit."
His wife has noticed the changes in her grandchildren's affections. "Because they are apart from their parents for so long, they might be happy to see them at the Lunar New Year, but they're not sad when their parents leave again," said Zhi, also 61. "And they behave badly because of their parents' absence."
One grandson bullied a younger student at school. The boy also often stole from a small box of loose change.
"Every day, when we eat meat, I eat the fat while he eats the lean," Huang said. "I had a little money for phone calls, but later I found out it was gone. I told him, 'You can tell me how much you need, but you can't steal from me.' He just gave me a deaf ear. When his mom came home, I complained to her but she just ignored me."
Both Guihua and Yanyan are located in Gushi county, where migrant workers make up about a third of the population of 1.6 million. Every year, these workers bring back more than $500 million, according to state media accounts.
In many villages, where residents have specialized in making and selling fried doughnuts or other foods popular as New Year treats, many migrant workers won't come home at all. Instead they will capitalize on their ability to raise prices during the holiday.
"When I was young, no one left home to work. Everyone stayed home with their parents," Chen said. "Sometimes I ask myself, 'Wasn't it good that we all stayed together?' But there's no other way. They have to go out and make money. This is the price we have to pay."
Researcher Jin Ling contributed to this report.
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