中国经济发展奇迹下的那些孤儿

In the spring of 2015, 13-year-old Huang Kailong had just skipped a grade, from fifth to seventh, and her future sparkled with promise. Then she ran away from home. In a letter to her parents, Kailong explained the reason for leaving: She felt unloved.

2015年春，13岁的黄凯珑（音）刚刚跳了一级，她从五年级升到了七年级，前途一片光明。然后，她离家出走了。在写给父母的一封信中，凯珑解释了她离开的原因：她感觉自己无人疼爱。

Kailong grew up in Jidao, a picturesque village in Guizhou Province, one of the least developed in China. In her letter, she reminded her parents that they had left her with an aunt when she was just a year old. During the bulk of her childhood, her parents would go away for about four months every year to chop sugar cane in Guangdong Province, and they’d leave her with different relatives, an arrangement she had resented.

凯珑在贵州省风景如画的季刀村长大，这里是中国最不发达的省份之一。在信中，她向父母提起，他们在她刚满一岁时就把她留给了一个阿姨。在童年的大部分时间里，她的父母每年都有四个月外出在广东省砍甘蔗，他们会把她留给不同的亲戚，她十分憎恶这样的安排。

“I felt like a stray dog,” she said to me in the coastal city of Wenzhou, where she now lives with her boyfriend and several dogs they took in from the street.

“我感觉就像一只流浪狗，”她在沿海城市温州告诉我说，她现在和男朋友还有几只他们从街上收养的流浪狗一起在这个城市生活。

In January, social media across the world lit up with the wind-burned face of Wang Fuman, an 8-year-old living with his grandparents in a remote village in Yunnan Province who treks almost three miles to school every day. He showed up in his classroom one morning with frost-covered hair, a teacher took his photo, posted it online and it went viral. The picture drew attention to the plight of the many Chinese children who grow up in the countryside without their parents nearby.

一月时，王福满那张被风刮得通红的脸点亮了全世界的社交媒体，这个在云南一座偏远村庄里和祖父母一起生活的八岁男孩，每天都要跋涉将近三英里上学。一天早上，他顶着结满了霜的头发出现在了教室里，一位老师拍下了他的照片放上了网，就这样传开了。这张照片，让人们开始关注许多没有父母陪伴、在农村长大的中国儿童的困境。

In the last three decades, 280 million Chinese people have left their villages for the booming cities in search of work, making up the greatest wave of migration in human history. But while seeking a better long-term future for their families through more lucrative employment, millions of these migrants left their children behind in the villages — sometimes to live with family members, sometimes to fend for themselves.

在过去的30年中，为了找工作，2.8亿中国人离开了自己的村庄来到繁华的城市，形成了人类历史上规模最大的移民潮。这数百万民工虽然能通过收入更丰厚的工作为家人找到一个更好的长远未来，但他们却把自己的孩子留在了农村——有的与家人住在一起，有的只能自力更生。

Reliable data are always hard to come by in China. According to a 2013 report from the All-China Women’s Federation, 30 million children — more than 10 percent all children in China — were living in the countryside without their parents, often in the care of relatives. A 2016 government report said that at least 360,000 of the children were left totally alone, with no family members to take care of them.

在中国很难找到可靠的数据。根据中华全国妇女联合会2013年的一份报告，没有父母陪伴、在农村生活的儿童有3000万人——占中国儿童总数的10%以上——他们往往由亲戚照看。2016年的一份政府报告称，这些儿童至少有36万人是彻底的独自留守，没有家人照料。

Parents have many good reasons for leaving their children behind: the high cost of living in cities, unstable employment so far from home and the restraints of China’s household registry system, known as hukou, which ties citizens’ welfare benefits and school privileges to their place of birth.

父母有很多充分的理由把孩子留在家中：城市高昂的生活成本、远离家乡没有稳定就业，还有被称为“户口”的户籍制度的限制，将公民的出生地与福利和就学权利捆绑在了一起。

In the countryside, children left with extended family — usually uneducated or even illiterate grandparents with onerous jobs — are at risk of not getting adequate care. Discipline is often lacking. Aging guardians may fail to send the young children to preschool or may be unable to help older children with their homework. The lack of parental care in the countryside has been correlated with emotional and developmental problems among children.

在农村，留给大家庭的成员——通常是从事繁重工作，没有受过教育甚至不识字的祖父母——照看的孩子面临得不到足够照顾的风险。往往也缺乏管教。上了年纪的监护人也许未能送年幼的孩子上幼儿园，或无法辅导年龄较大的孩子的家庭作业。农村儿童缺乏父母的照顾与儿童的情绪和发育问题存在关联。

And while urban children have thrived academically in recent decades, that has not been the case for their rural cousins, especially those who have been left behind. A study by Stanford University researchers, in collaboration with Chinese academics, found that children in the countryside were much less likely to complete high school. Those with both parents having left for the city perform markedly worse in school than those having one parent around, and boys are affected more than girls.

近几十年来，城市儿童在学业上发展迅速，但他们的农村同龄人却并非如此，尤其是留守儿童。斯坦福大学的研究人员与中国学者合作进行的一项研究发现，农村孩子上完高中的可能性要小得多。父母都进城务工的孩子的学习成绩明显比父母一方在身边的孩子差，并且男孩比女孩受的影响更大。

Other factors contribute to low academic achievement in rural China — notably, poor teaching standards and facilities at rural schools, and prohibitively high tuition costs (only nine years of school is free). But the crucial factor is the absence of parents.

中国农村地区学业成就低还有其他原因，尤其是农村学校落后的教学水平和设施，以及高得让人望而却步的学费（只有九年的学校教育是免费的）。但关键因素是父母的缺席。

Even children from the countryside who move to the cities with their parents are unlikely to get a good education. In recent years, restrictions on migrants to the cities have been easing. But in most cities, migrant parents still have great difficulty sending their children to good local schools because they need documents such as a resident permit, job and rental contracts, proof that taxes have been paid and so on.

即使农村的孩子和父母一起搬到城市，他们也不太可能获得良好的教育。近年来，对进城务工人员的限制一直在放宽。但在大部分城市，农民工父母依然很难把子女送进当地的好学校，因为它们需要居住证、劳动和租房合同、纳税证明等文件。

Several sensational stories in recent years have brought attention to the problem of left-behind children. Among them, in June 2015, four left-behind siblings committed suicide together by swallowing pesticide in Guizhou Province.

近年来，几个骇人听闻的故事引起了人们对留守儿童问题的关注。其中，2015年6月，贵州省四名留守兄妹吞服农药自杀。

In response, in 2016 the government called for better social services to protect such children. But on my recent visits to the countryside, in interviews with children and parents, it’s clear that a great deal more needs to be done. Rural education and village-level social services still lag. And migrants must be allowed to send their children to good local schools in urban areas where they work — and not substandard, makeshift schools for migrant kids.

对此，政府2016年呼吁改善社会服务，以保护这些儿童。但我最近几次去农村采访孩子和父母时，发现要做的明显还有很多。农村教育和村一级社会服务依然落后。必须允许民工把孩子送进他们所工作的城镇地区的好学校，而不是为农民工子女创办的不合格的临时学校。

Without effectively addressing the problems facing left-behind children and providing for the needs of rural youths, the vaunted “Chinese Dream” will remain unfulfilled for much of the country.

不有效解决留守儿童面临的问题，满足农村年轻人的需求，被大肆宣传的“中国梦”在中国很多地方都是无法实现的。