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.

他们的父母加入了人类历史上最大规模的自发的劳动力迁徙大潮，而他们却被留在中国各地荒凉的村庄中。他们中有的跟着一方父母留守家中，有的跟着目不识丁的奶奶或者年老体弱的爷爷一起生活。估计有200万儿童需要自己照顾自己。

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.

中国有6100万“留守儿童”(left behind children)，中国大陆经济奇迹把他们变得几乎和孤儿一样。从对社会工作者、非政府组织、经济学家以及留守儿童父母的采访中可以了解到，父母之所以外出打工，正是为了自己留在老家的孩子：为了供他们上学，为了给他们盖房子，为了给他们一个生活在摩天大楼之间、而非猪圈之间的未来。经济学家们称，这是中国现代化的代价，正如水污染和雾霾是中国工业发展的后遗症一样。

“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”.

我们称他们为‘经济孤儿’，”美国慈善机构“同一片天空”(OneSky)负责人博珍妮(Jenny Bowen)说，“大批的年轻父母外出打工，以至于农村正在解体。过去都是几代人生活在一起，如今一家人不能朝夕相处。”同一片天空最近开展了一些试点项目来帮助那些没有父母陪伴的农村儿童。

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.

由于劳动力萎缩，中国劳动力迁徙大潮正在趋缓。2015年，英国《金融时报》发表了一系列文章，探讨这场“劳动力迁徙奇迹”的终结及其对外出务工者的影响，这些劳动者在短短30年内推动了中国从落后农业国家向数字社会的转型。

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.

随着中国经济增速放缓以及政府设法在内陆地区创造更多的就业机会，一些外出务工者回到了离家更近的地方打工。这意味着他们可以每隔几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，科技发展也让父母能够以相对较低的成本与自己的子女保持沟通。

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，有些人到了离家更近的地方打工，也有些人第一次离开村子外出打工，或许是因为新修的公路使得此前相对封闭的地方与外部世界连接起来。因此未来许多年内，数千万儿童可能继续在没有父母陪伴的情况下生活。

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.

经济学家称，这种现象或将危及中国未来二三十年的经济增长。在贫困乡村学校接受教育的儿童（没有受过教育的父母的辅导）可能无法帮助推动中国政府所追求的“创新型”增长。

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.

在经济学家、政府研究人员以及其他研究留守儿童现象的人士看来，这种现象对中国社会、家庭结构甚至留守儿童心理造成的危害可能更为严重。

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.

北京方面多年来已经意识到了这一问题。但发生在留守儿童身上的轰动性事件——如喝农药自杀的四兄妹，死在垃圾箱中的五个堂兄弟，以及其他留守儿童遭到杀害或性侵的事件——首次使这一问题成为国家高度重视的议题。每一起发生在留守儿童身上的悲剧，都会引发一场对中国为过去30年资本主义改革所付出社会代价的反思。

A social stigma

坏名声

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.

杨雪莹今年12岁，头上戴着一个粉红色的缎面发箍。她是比较不幸的孩子中的一个——她仍记得曾经和父母一起生活的日子，因为他们是在她9岁时才外出打工的。雪莹的家位于中国中部陕西省、黄土高原上盛产苹果的豆家村，我们在村小学采访了她。你最想念什么？“亲亲热热的感觉，”她说。雪莹与爷爷奶奶一起生活，她跟他们很亲近，但这不同于跟父母的感情。“我很想念爸爸妈妈，”她说。

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.

但她觉得，父母在外也并非没有好处。她说，父母外出打工是为了“挣足够的钱让我上大学”。她戴的发箍就是去看望父母时得到的，他们住在离村子三小时车程的镇上。她说，爸爸妈妈两三个月回家一次，爸爸上次回来时还给她带了香蕉和橙子。她还说，她比父母没有外出打工的同学拥有更多好东西。

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”.

但在中国，留守儿童要同坏名声做斗争，即使他们的物质条件有时要好于那些生活在没有打工收入的家庭的孩子。雪莹的老师会问她是不是觉得自己“可怜”。想到这里她差点哭出来。“不，”她回答道，“因为我的小伙伴们和我相处得都非常好。”

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.”

雪莹所在学校的数学老师安大可说，留守儿童学习成绩差，难教育。“缺乏父母管教，他们身上的坏习惯更多。他们不做作业……跟别人打架，他们往往脾气暴躁。没人关心他们，他们也无法与别人友好相处。他们的暴力倾向比较多一点，”他总结说，“他们被爷爷奶奶宠坏了。”

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.

这些似乎是很普遍的看法，甚至许多祖父母都这样认为：他们无法培养出在学校或社会上出类拔萃的孩子。在商山脚下的王塬村，李改娥与丈夫在照看着两个还在学走路的孩子。

“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.

“与年轻父母一起生活的孩子更聪明，”李改娥说。她抱着自己一岁大的孙子，孩子穿着中国农村地区仍很常见的传统开裆裤。“我不识字。我可以喂他吃饭，但教不了他。我能做的就是让他在家里玩，”她说。不过，这个家显然不缺爱：在李改娥接受采访的时候，她的丈夫正在隔壁屋里抱着另一个孙子哄他入睡。当小孙子醒来时，他轻轻地亲了一口他的额头。两位老人看起来一刻也不愿放下自己的孙子。

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.

对于由祖父母抚养会对孩子在教育、身体发育方面造成多大影响——甚至是否真的存在负面影响——专家们众说纷纭。

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.

斯坦福大学(Stanford University)经济学教授、农村教育行动项目(Rural Education Action Program)联合创始人罗思高(Scott Rozelle)说，有家人外出打工的家庭要做一番权衡取舍。近10年来，农村教育行动项目一直在收集中国偏远农村地区儿童的数据。罗思高对中国农村儿童（包括父母在身边以及不在身边的）所做的研究是迄今规模最大的相关研究之一。

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”.

这项研究的结论与普遍的看法完全不同。“留守儿童并非中国农村地区最脆弱的群体，”研究报告的作者写道，他们“在我们所监测的健康、营养及教育指标上的表现与那些有父母陪伴的儿童相当，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.

罗思高的意思并不是要强调留守儿童生活得还不错，而是要说明农村地区有父母陪伴和没有父母陪伴的儿童都属于弱势群体，而增加政府资源以帮助留守儿童的措施——如“代理家长”计划——有可能会被滥用。

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.

关于心理问题，如孤独、焦虑、抑郁甚至自杀倾向，大多数研究发现，留守儿童在这方面承受的痛苦要超过那些有父母陪伴的儿童。然而，即使在这方面，证据也并不确凿。

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.

任强与唐纳德礠雷曼(Donald Treiman)2013年所做的一项研究发现：“父母一方或双方都外出打工或者跟父母一方或双方一起迁居外地对孩子的心理健康影响不大”，因为这些孩子并非父母离婚或者遭到亲生父母遗弃的受害者，他们是“社会关系完整的家庭”的成员，父母仍对他们尽责——即使他们不住在家里。

Tech bridges the miles

科技拉近距离

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.

将孩子留在豆家村的王军锋与杨信鸽夫妇希望他们的孩子们也能这么想。他们在约1500公里之外的上海工作，每年只能回老家一次。但他们使用微信(WeChat)——一款中文移动讯息服务——至少每周与孩子们联系一次，并通过网络监督孩子们的家庭作业。实际上，正是由于孩子们学习非常好，他们才决定到离家乡更远的地方打工，因为这样才能挣到足够的钱供他们上大学。

“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.

“多亏了科技，我不觉得远离孩子对他们有很大影响，”王军锋说，“我可以通过微信面对面与孩子交流，询问他们在学校的表现、平时的生活以及家里发生的事，”他说。但他也注意到，妻子每次看到微信上孩子们的照片时都会暗自流泪。

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.

不过，像大多数外出务工者一样，这对夫妇也认为必须这样做。他们要供孩子上大学，要为新房还贷，还要赡养老人。他们愿意为了让自己的孩子过上更美好的生活而牺牲传统的家庭生活。中国劳动力迁徙奇迹或许正在走向尽头，但这仍是农村人触摸中国梦的最佳途径——不论是否带着自己的孩子。

Extended family

拉家带口

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.

倪美红（音译）说她无法忍受把孩子留在农村，于是就把他带到了大城市生活——但这意味着要把孩子的外婆也带过来。

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岁的儿子周倪军（音译）出生在位于崇明岛的农村老家，这里距离上海只有两个小时车程。三个月大的时候，他和外婆叶是英来到了宝山与倪美红夫妇同住。位于上海市郊的宝山是来自崇明岛的务工人员偏爱的落脚地。中国政府去年公布的一份报告显示，越来越多的外出务工人员带着孩子一起来到城市。但这样做相当不易。这对夫妇不得不花费20万元人民币（合3.1万美元）——对普通农民工而言是一笔巨资——在宝山买了一套房，只有这样，她的儿子才能在当地上学。“如果没有房产，就不可能进入当地的学校，”她说。

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.

倪美红与自己开出租的丈夫代表着政府官员所说的中国劳动力迁徙的“新阶段”。中国国家卫计委(NHFPC)流动人口司司长王谦去年表示，外出务工的夫妻已经开始带着自己的孩子一起生活。“最初是劳动力的流动，接着到夫妻两个带着孩子流动，再往后是老人跟着流动，”他说。

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.

但大多数农民工无法负担得起这样做。他们大都希望尽可能住得便宜些，有可能的话住在公司宿舍，有的甚至住在建筑工地的简易房中，以便把省下的每一分钱都寄回家。即使他们有钱把孩子带出来，也没有财力让孩子的祖母一起过来。研究人员称，随着在城市中长时间工作的父母一起生活的流动儿童受忽视的程度往往与被留在农村老家的儿童相同，或者更甚。