留守兒童 中國奇蹟的遺留難題

They are left behind in grim villages all over China by parents who have joined the biggest voluntary worker migration in human history. Some are left at home with one parent, others stay back with an illiterate grandmother or exhausted grandfather. An estimated 2m are left to fend for themselves.

他們的父母加入了人類歷史上最大規模的自發的勞動力遷徙大潮，而他們卻被留在中國各地荒涼的村莊中。他們中有的跟着一方父母留守家中，有的跟着目不識丁的奶奶或者年老體弱的爺爺一起生活。估計有200萬兒童需要自己照顧自己。

China has 61m so-called “left behind children”, all but orphaned by the mainland economic miracle. Interviews with social workers, non-governmental organisations, economists and parents say migrants do it for the sake of the very children they leave behind: to pay for their education, to build them a house to give them a future living among skyscrapers and not pig pens. Economists say this is the price of China’s modernisation, just as surely as the poisoned water and choking smog that is the legacy of its industrial development.

中國有6100萬“留守兒童”(left behind children)，中國大陸經濟奇蹟把他們變得幾乎和孤兒一樣。從對社會工作者、非政府組織、經濟學家以及留守兒童父母的採訪中可以瞭解到，父母之所以外出打工，正是爲了自己留在老家的孩子：爲了供他們上學，爲了給他們蓋房子，爲了給他們一個生活在摩天大樓之間、而非豬圈之間的未來。經濟學家們稱，這是中國現代化的代價，正如水污染和霧霾是中國工業發展的後遺症一樣。

“We think of them as economic orphans,” says Jenny Bowen, head of the US charity OneSky, which has recently begun pilot programmes to help rural children being raised without parents. “Villages are unravelling because so many young parents go away to work. Generations of people who were always together are no longer together any more”.

我們稱他們爲‘經濟孤兒’，”美國慈善機構“同一片天空”(OneSky)負責人博珍妮(Jenny Bowen)說，“大批的年輕父母外出打工，以至於農村正在解體。過去都是幾代人生活在一起，如今一家人不能朝夕相處。”同一片天空最近開展了一些試點項目來幫助那些沒有父母陪伴的農村兒童。

These days the juggernaut of Chinese labour migration is slowing as the work force shrinks. This year, the Financial Times has published a series of articles about the end of this migrant miracle, and about how that is affecting the migrants who drove the transformation from agrarian backwater to digital society, in just three decades.

由於勞動力萎縮，中國勞動力遷徙大潮正在趨緩。2015年，英國《金融時報》發表了一系列文章，探討這場“勞動力遷徙奇蹟”的終結及其對外出務工者的影響，這些勞動者在短短30年內推動了中國從落後農業國家向數字社會的轉型。

Some are moving closer to home as the economy slows and Beijing tries to create more jobs in the inland economy. That means they can see their children as often as every few weeks, rather than only once a year or less. And technology can put parents in touch with their offspring relatively inexpensively.

隨着中國經濟增速放緩以及政府設法在內陸地區創造更多的就業機會，一些外出務工者回到了離家更近的地方打工。這意味着他們可以每隔幾周就回家看望自己的孩子，而不再是一年一次或者更少。而且，科技發展也讓父母能夠以相對較低的成本與自己的子女保持溝通。

Yet for every migrant who moves closer to home, there is one that leaves the village for work for the first time, maybe because the construction of a new highway has opened up areas previously inaccessible to the outside world. So tens of millions of children are likely to continue living primarily without their parents for years to come.

然而，有些人到了離家更近的地方打工，也有些人第一次離開村子外出打工，或許是因爲新修的公路使得此前相對封閉的地方與外部世界連接起來。因此未來許多年內，數千萬兒童可能繼續在沒有父母陪伴的情況下生活。

This could jeopardise the next generation of Chinese growth, economists say. Children educated in poor rural schools, without literate parents to help them, may be unable to fuel the new innovation-led growth that Beijing is aiming for.

經濟學家稱，這種現象或將危及中國未來二三十年的經濟增長。在貧困鄉村學校接受教育的兒童（沒有受過教育的父母的輔導）可能無法幫助推動中國政府所追求的“創新型”增長。

And the damage to Chinese society, to the family system and even to the psyche of the children involved could be even more severe, according to economists, government researchers and others who have studied the left behind child phenomenon.

在經濟學家、政府研究人員以及其他研究留守兒童現象的人士看來，這種現象對中國社會、家庭結構甚至留守兒童心理造成的危害可能更爲嚴重。

Beijing has been aware of the problem for years. But high profile cases of children who were left behind, like the four siblings who took pesticide, or the five cousins who died in a rubbish skip — along with other children murdered when home alone, or sexually abused — have put the issue high on the national agenda for the first time. Every new case of a left behind child tragedy triggers another wave of soul-searching about the social price that China has paid for the past 30 years of capitalist reform.

北京方面多年來已經意識到了這一問題。但發生在留守兒童身上的轟動性事件——如喝農藥自殺的四兄妹，死在垃圾箱中的五個堂兄弟，以及其他留守兒童遭到殺害或性侵的事件——首次使這一問題成爲國家高度重視的議題。每一起發生在留守兒童身上的悲劇，都會引發一場對中國爲過去30年資本主義改革所付出社會代價的反思。

A social stigma

壞名聲

Yang Xueying is a 12-year-old with a pink satin headband. She is one of those unlucky enough to remember when her parents were still living at home with her, since they only left when she was nine. What does she miss the most? “The feeling of intimacy,” she says in an interview at her primary school in the apple-growing village of Doujia, on the loess plateau of central China’s Sha’anxi province. Xueying lives with her grandparents, and she is close to them, but it is just not the same. “I miss my parents a lot,” she says.

楊雪瑩今年12歲，頭上戴着一個粉紅色的緞面髮箍。她是比較不幸的孩子中的一個——她仍記得曾經和父母一起生活的日子，因爲他們是在她9歲時才外出打工的。雪瑩的家位於中國中部陝西省、黃土高原上盛產蘋果的豆家村，我們在村小學採訪了她。你最想念什麼？“親親熱熱的感覺，”她說。雪瑩與爺爺奶奶一起生活，她跟他們很親近，但這不同於跟父母的感情。“我很想念爸爸媽媽，”她說。

But she agrees that having migrant parents is not without benefits. Her parents left so they could “make enough money to put me through university”, she says. And that Alice band she wears came from a trip to visit Mum and Dad in the town three hours away where they live. They come back every two to three months, and last time Dad brought bananas and oranges as a present, she says, adding that she has more nice things than some peers who live with their parents.

但她覺得，父母在外也並非沒有好處。她說，父母外出打工是爲了“掙足夠的錢讓我上大學”。她戴的髮箍就是去看望父母時得到的，他們住在離村子三小時車程的鎮上。她說，爸爸媽媽兩三個月回家一次，爸爸上次回來時還給她帶了香蕉和橙子。她還說，她比父母沒有外出打工的同學擁有更多好東西。

But in China, left behind kids battle a social stigma, even if their material conditions are sometimes better than that of children living in homes without migrant income. Xueying’s teacher, for example, asked her whether she considered herself “pitiful”. Remembering this brings her to the verge of tears. No, she replied, “because my friends all get along really well with me”.

但在中國，留守兒童要同壞名聲做鬥爭，即使他們的物質條件有時要好於那些生活在沒有打工收入的家庭的孩子。雪瑩的老師會問她是不是覺得自己“可憐”。想到這裏她差點哭出來。“不，”她回答道，“因爲我的小夥伴們和我相處得都非常好。”

An Dake, a maths teacher at Xueying’s school, says the left-behind children’s grades are worse than other students’, and that it is harder to educate them. “They have more bad habits because of the absence of their parents. They don’t do their homework... fight with others, and they tend to be hot tempered. No one cares for them and they can’t get along with others. They are more violent,” he concludes, saying “they are spoiled by the grandparents.”

雪瑩所在學校的數學老師安大可說，留守兒童學習成績差，難教育。“缺乏父母管教，他們身上的壞習慣更多。他們不做作業……跟別人打架，他們往往脾氣暴躁。沒人關心他們，他們也無法與別人友好相處。他們的暴力傾向比較多一點，”他總結說，“他們被爺爺奶奶寵壞了。”

That seems to be the conventional wisdom, even among many grandparents: that they are not capable of raising children who succeed in school or in life. Li Gai’e is raising two toddlers with her husband in Wangyuan village, in the lee of Mount Shang.

這些似乎是很普遍的看法，甚至許多祖父母都這樣認爲：他們無法培養出在學校或社會上出類拔萃的孩子。在商山腳下的王塬村，李改娥與丈夫在照看着兩個還在學走路的孩子。

“Kids living with young parents are smarter,” says Ms Li, holding her one-year-old grandson, dressed in the traditional split trousers still common in Chinese rural areas. “I am illiterate. I can feed him but I can’t teach him. All I can do is let him play around the house,” she says. Still, there is obviously no shortage of love in this home: as Ms Li speaks, her husband naps cuddled up with the other toddler in an adjoining room, and plants a kiss on the top of his head when he wakes. Both grandparents seem reluctant to put their grandchildren down.

“與年輕父母一起生活的孩子更聰明，”李改娥說。她抱着自己一歲大的孫子，孩子穿着中國農村地區仍很常見的傳統開襠褲。“我不識字。我可以喂他吃飯，但教不了他。我能做的就是讓他在家裏玩，”她說。不過，這個家顯然不缺愛：在李改娥接受採訪的時候，她的丈夫正在隔壁屋裏抱着另一個孫子哄他入睡。當小孫子醒來時，他輕輕地親了一口他的額頭。兩位老人看起來一刻也不願放下自己的孫子。

Experts are divided on how much children being raised by grandparents are hurt, in terms of educational or even physical development — or even if there is a negative impact at all.

對於由祖父母撫養會對孩子在教育、身體發育方面造成多大影響——甚至是否真的存在負面影響——專家們衆說紛紜。

There are trade-offs involved in having a migrant in the family, says Scott Rozelle, professor of economics at Stanford University and co-founder of the Rural Education Action Program, which has been collecting data on children in China’s remote rural areas for a decade. He conducted one of the largest studies so far of the state of China’s rural children, both with and without parents.

斯坦福大學(Stanford University)經濟學教授、農村教育行動項目(Rural Education Action Program)聯合創始人羅思高(Scott Rozelle)說，有家人外出打工的家庭要做一番權衡取捨。近10年來，農村教育行動項目一直在收集中國偏遠農村地區兒童的數據。羅思高對中國農村兒童（包括父母在身邊以及不在身邊的）所做的研究是迄今規模最大的相關研究之一。

The study’s findings go against the conventional wisdom. “Left behind children are not the most vulnerable in rural China,” the study’s authors write, adding they “perform equally or even better than children living with parents on the health, nutrition and education indicators we examine”.

這項研究的結論與普遍的看法完全不同。“留守兒童並非中國農村地區最脆弱的羣體，”研究報告的作者寫道，他們“在我們所監測的健康、營養及教育指標上的表現與那些有父母陪伴的兒童相當，甚至更好”。

Mr Rozelle’s point is not that things are just fine for left behind kids — but that both kids living with and without parents in rural areas are vulnerable, and that increasing government resources targeted to helping left behind kids, such as surrogate parenting programmes, may be misspent.

羅思高的意思並不是要強調留守兒童生活得還不錯，而是要說明農村地區有父母陪伴和沒有父母陪伴的兒童都屬於弱勢羣體，而增加政府資源以幫助留守兒童的措施——如“代理家長”計劃——有可能會被濫用。

When it comes to emotional distress, such as loneliness, anxiety, depression and even suicidal tendencies, most studies find that left behind kids suffer more than those that live with their parents. Yet even here, the evidence is unclear.

關於心理問題，如孤獨、焦慮、抑鬱甚至自殺傾向，大多數研究發現，留守兒童在這方面承受的痛苦要超過那些有父母陪伴的兒童。然而，即使在這方面，證據也並不確鑿。

A 2013 study by Qiang Ren and Donald Treiman found that “being left behind by one or both parents or migrating with one or both parents has little effect on emotional health”, because these children are not victims of divorce or parental abandonment, they are members of “socially intact families” where the parents remain committed to them, even if they do not live at home.

任強與唐納德礠雷曼(Donald Treiman)2013年所做的一項研究發現：“父母一方或雙方都外出打工或者跟父母一方或雙方一起遷居外地對孩子的心理健康影響不大”，因爲這些孩子並非父母離婚或者遭到親生父母遺棄的受害者，他們是“社會關係完整的家庭”的成員，父母仍對他們盡責——即使他們不住在家裏。

Tech bridges the miles

科技拉近距離

Wang Junfeng, and Yang Xinge, whose children are back at Doujia village, hope their children will see it that way. They work about 1,500km away in Shanghai, and only go back once a year. But they use WeChat, the Chinese mobile messaging service, to keep in touch at least once a week and monitor children’s homework online. In fact their children are such good students that they decided to migrate even further from home, so they could earn enough to put them through college.

將孩子留在豆家村的王軍鋒與楊信鴿夫婦希望他們的孩子們也能這麼想。他們在約1500公里之外的上海工作，每年只能回老家一次。但他們使用微信(WeChat)——一款中文移動訊息服務——至少每週與孩子們聯繫一次，並通過網絡監督孩子們的家庭作業。實際上，正是由於孩子們學習非常好，他們才決定到離家鄉更遠的地方打工，因爲這樣才能掙到足夠的錢供他們上大學。

“Thanks to technology, I don’t think that me being away has a big impact on the children,” says Mr Wang. “I can have face-to-face contact with my children via WeChat, and ask about their performance at school, their daily life and what’s happening in the family,” he says. But he notes that every time his wife looks at the children’s photos on WeChat, she cries.

“多虧了科技，我不覺得遠離孩子對他們有很大影響，”王軍鋒說，“我可以通過微信面對面與孩子交流，詢問他們在學校的表現、平時的生活以及家裏發生的事，”他說。但他也注意到，妻子每次看到微信上孩子們的照片時都會暗自流淚。

Still, like most migrants, the couple agree: it had to be done. They have kids to put through university, a new house to pay off and elders to support. They are willing to sacrifice traditional family life for a better life for their children. The migrant miracle may be ending, but it is still the best way for rural people to access the Chinese dream — with or without their children.

不過，像大多數外出務工者一樣，這對夫婦也認爲必須這樣做。他們要供孩子上大學，要爲新房還貸，還要贍養老人。他們願意爲了讓自己的孩子過上更美好的生活而犧牲傳統的家庭生活。中國勞動力遷徙奇蹟或許正在走向盡頭，但這仍是農村人觸摸中國夢的最佳途徑——不論是否帶着自己的孩子。

Extended family

拉家帶口

Ni Meihong says she could not bear to leave her baby in the village, so she brought him to the big city to live — but that meant bringing Grandma too.

倪美紅（音譯）說她無法忍受把孩子留在農村，於是就把他帶到了大城市生活——但這意味着要把孩子的外婆也帶過來。

Her nine-year-old son, Zhou Nijun, was born in her rural village on Chongming Island, two hours from Shanghai. When he was three months old, he and his grandmother Ye Shiying came to live with Ms Ni and her migrant worker husband in Baoshan, a suburb popular with Chongming migrants. More migrants are bringing children along, according to a government report published last year. But it is far from easy. The couple had to spend Rmb200,000 ($31,000) — a vast sum for the average migrant worker — to buy a flat in Baoshan so that her son could go to school there. “If you don’t have property, it is not possible to get into school there,” she says.

她9歲的兒子周倪軍（音譯）出生在位於崇明島的農村老家，這裏距離上海只有兩個小時車程。三個月大的時候，他和外婆葉是英來到了寶山與倪美紅夫婦同住。位於上海市郊的寶山是來自崇明島的務工人員偏愛的落腳地。中國政府去年公佈的一份報告顯示，越來越多的外出務工人員帶着孩子一起來到城市。但這樣做相當不易。這對夫婦不得不花費20萬元人民幣（合3.1萬美元）——對普通農民工而言是一筆巨資——在寶山買了一套房，只有這樣，她的兒子才能在當地上學。“如果沒有房產，就不可能進入當地的學校，”她說。

Ms Ni and her husband, a taxi driver, represent what government officials say is a “new stage” of labour migration in China. Wang Qian, head of the migrant population department at China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission, said last year that couples are starting to move their children to stay with them. “It starts with the migration of an individual, then the couple, then the children and later on it will be the elderly people,” he said.

倪美紅與自己開出租的丈夫代表着政府官員所說的中國勞動力遷徙的“新階段”。中國國家衛計委(NHFPC)流動人口司司長王謙去年表示，外出務工的夫妻已經開始帶着自己的孩子一起生活。“最初是勞動力的流動，接着到夫妻兩個帶着孩子流動，再往後是老人跟着流動，”他說。

But that takes money most migrants do not have. Most prefer to live as cheaply as possible, in company dormitories where possible, or even in prefabricated housing on building sites, to save every renminbi to send back home. And even if they had the money to bring baby, they do not have the funds to bring grandma too: migrant children who live with parents who work long hours in urban areas are often just as neglected, or even more so, than they would be back home, researchers say.

但大多數農民工無法負擔得起這樣做。他們大都希望儘可能住得便宜些，有可能的話住在公司宿舍，有的甚至住在建築工地的簡易房中，以便把省下的每一分錢都寄回家。即使他們有錢把孩子帶出來，也沒有財力讓孩子的祖母一起過來。研究人員稱，隨着在城市中長時間工作的父母一起生活的流動兒童受忽視的程度往往與被留在農村老家的兒童相同，或者更甚。