Sent away and left behind

by Xiajuan Wang

I was born in the early 1990s in a small mountainous village in Gansu, northwestern China, which remains one of China’s least developed provinces. I remember people going to sleep, and getting up very early because electricity was not available, let alone modern luxuries such as TV to kill time in the evenings. The road that connected to the town was like a long, but skinny snake zigzagging, only wide enough to take two feet. Every spare inch of soil was used for terraced fields to grow wheat, potatoes, and corn. The only available water source was halfway up the mountain and would run dry on hot days. People were extremely hard working, you could call it a virtue, but it is also because they had no other option if they were to survive.

With the reform and opening up policy in place, structural adjustments were gradually made to improve livelihoods in rural areas. First, the contract responsibility system was adopted to replace collective farming, which made households responsible for the production of land, though it remained publicly owned. Later, the agricultural tax was abolished, which improved family income in general. Still, people only managed to feed themselves, and education, although highly valued in tradition, was a luxury. Only 66% of Chinese adults were literate in 1982 and the majority of the older generations, including my family members, did not go to school at all. By the time I was of school age, the nine-year compulsory education policy was being rolled out nationwide. But school was still costly. However, my parents were able to work and provide for the family as more job opportunities were created in cities during rapid urbanization. Naturally, I was sent to the only school in the village and “left behind” with my grandparents and siblings.

The primary school, a sagging building with nothing but a roof, four walls, and three teachers, was ten minutes’ walk away from home. It had worse material, human, and cultural resources than many other poor village schools. I remember sitting at a desk with crumbled edges and the only equipment for after class activities, a ping-pong table, handmade by villagers with cement, stood outside the classroom. The playground had no equipment so we played with whatever tools we could make for ourselves: balls made with old clothes, elastic bands from the sewing kit, and small stones found on the road. In winter, we kept warm by making a fire at the centre of the classroom with logs we’d brought from home. The Chinese teacher taught us music and the maths teacher was also our PE coach. It sounds hard and it was.

Hold and stay

Yet, I liked being there every day. I loved studying and excelled in all the subjects. I was also passionate about sports and music. I enjoyed every page of the textbooks, which were passed on to me from older schoolmates and were the only books we had. I would always go to school, review the whole book before the term started, and finish all homework after class. I remember reading in the dim light provided by a kerosene lamp and playing ping-pong with a bat that had lost its rubber. I got into high school with the highest grades in my class, which included those from much better backgrounds, and maintained these grade all the way to college. Entry to college was tested through three big entrance exams in which you compete with increasing numbers of students: the junior high school entrance exam with the children in the town, the senior high school entrance exam with students in the whole county and the college entrance exam with young people nationwide.

When I came back from school, my grandma would always wait for me at the crossroad located on the other side of the village, light or dark, warm or cold. At nighttime, I would lie on her legs, while she told me the stories about monsters, goddesses, and ordinary people, with moonlight splashing over us. Her stories became my dreams, shaped my values in life, and expanded my imagination for the future. When I was not studying, I would help with cooking, house chores, and farm work. I learned how to make noodles and dumplings. I managed to do stitches and embroidery. I talked with the birds and butterflies. I counted flower petals and picked berries from the grass. This love for nature, respect for people, and care for animals remain significant parts of who I am today.

The other side

I am not saying that the situation was all good. I suffered from problems such as insufficient nutrition, care, and received a low-quality education. I spent less time with my parents. My hobbies were not properly developed. However, as an individual who was good at school and could not enrol where my parents worked due to limited income and structural restrictions such as the ‘hukou’ or household registration system, parental migration and being left behind was essential and the only way for me to develop my capabilities and discover who I could be through education.

People may say that I was an exception as the first child in the whole county who went to college and adapted to a different life. As I was moving to different schools, my path diverged from that of my peers who were also left behind. Those who did not finish primary school stayed at home to help with farm work. Others who dropped out from middle school followed their parents to work in factories and construction in the cities, suffering from social immobility. Later, many got married and started a new generation who would face a similar situation.

Tied hands

However, would my struggles have been lessened and my peers’ life trajectories changed if our parents had stayed home? It is not easy to answer this question because there are complex decisions with diverse contributors, such as contextual understandings about family responsibilities and the importance of education. I did not know that I was a disadvantaged child, because everyone was trying their best to support my education and I enjoyed living with my grandparents, which was not unusual in Chinese culture. On the other hand, the impact of local social-economic factors cannot be dismissed. Neither children nor parents could have improved the quality and availability of school facilities, learning materials, and teachers, which are the responsibility of policy and social administration. Most importantly, some individuals like me really benefited from parental migration, compared with the worse options we had.

Will and way

I often wonder, what would have happened if my parents had not migrated for work. Considering the lack of financial and social support for education from other sources in that region and even China as a whole, I am certain that I would not have been able to enrol or finish school. Also, knowing that they worked hard in a horrible situation, I wanted a change and education was the only way possible, even if I could not tell this at that time. Through the hardships, I learned how to cope with and solve problems. The resilience and aspiration, along with the poems, equations, and stories, which I gained from the experience of being left behind, got me to where I am today.

Compared with other children from that area, I acquired more freedom and opportunities through education, which is in line with global and neo-liberal standards. After college, I became a highly skilled worker, travelled to different places, and adopted modern values, whereas my peers stayed and held the fort. I am losing connection with my culture and the communication between us is breaking off. When they say that people should be self-reliant, I believe that welfare is mandatory in a society. When they say getting married and having children are the priorities of life, I would argue that living up to my potential is more important. We have different expectations, and we are taking on totally different lifestyles. I am sure I am better off materially and economically, but I cannot say that they have a worse life. One can argue that part of it is due to adaptive preference and the actual freedom to achieve better well-being is reduced for them, yet no one knows. Could they have had their life changed if they’d had expanded opportunities? Are their opinions correct or mine? Am I happier than my fellow villagers? I do not know.