In 2017, there were 367 students at the Fan Arowana School in Hunan Province, of which about 80 percent were left-behind children. A second-year teacher asked the students to set goals for the upcoming exams so that they would not be left idle every day.

Most of the students set a target score of only 50 or 60 for each course. The teacher warned me that if I still didn't get good grades next semester, I would go out with my parents and work for a month or two. Let's see if the days outside are good or not.

Privately, teachers will discuss that mobile phones have too much of an impact on students. There are also students who hide steel pipes under their beds. In addition, there is a second-year junior high school student named Tang Hongfei, he is very emotional, he used to be in math class and didn't know what the teacher said, he suddenly ran to the railing outside and stood. The teacher was frightened as if he was about to jump off the building, but someone pulled him off the railing later.

The school is a boarding school and you live on campus from Monday to Friday. Teachers who inspected the dormitories said that the students had poor habits, spitting in their mouths, sleeping without washing their feet, and eating without brushing their teeth.

There is a 12-year-old poor sixth-grade student Shi Fengming, because he is too unhygienic and has lice on his head, and no one else wants to approach him. And she herself has low self-esteem and doesn't interact much with her classmates.

Shi Fengming's family is in Wutang Village, and there are only grandparents in their 70s, and the house is full of mess. Grandma said: "We sell rice and wheat bran for our children to study, but we still can't even afford to give five yuan a week in pocket money, and it is not easy to earn money." Feng Ming's father didn't take the money back, it was too hard to rely on the two old people alone. ”

Feng Ming's father hasn't been back for eight years. Because when Feng Ming was four years old, when his grandparents went to work in the fields, Feng Ming's two-year-old brother drowned in the pond in front of his house. Afterwards, the parents who were working outside the home divorced. They didn't come back. Dad is blaming the old man in the family for not taking good care of his grandson. Now the family doesn't even know where my father is. Grandma said, "He's a scumbag." I don't even want a home. ”

Shi Fengming wrote in his diary that he was very envious of those who had parents, and his best friend was the little black dog raised at home. Some students in the school have conflicts over five dollars, some students start early love, and teachers have to deal with all kinds of other situations in addition to teaching.

Regarding these situations, the teachers said: "Most of the students with good grades choose schools, and those who stay in the city do not study." Smoking, drinking, and surfing the Internet have resulted in worse and worse grades, and teachers are struggling to teach. Then the teachers were reluctant to come to the rural schools. ”

Tang Hongfei, who is in the second year of junior high school, is now 14 years old. When he was three or four years old, his parents divorced, and she was raised by her grandfather. Later, my mother remarried and gave birth to two younger siblings. After that, my mother went out to work, and my younger siblings were still led by my grandfather. Neither parents send money to the family, and the three children are all supported by their grandfather's salary alone.

Tang Hongfei didn't think about why his mother didn't send money, and he didn't dare to think about it. When he was fine, Tang Hongfei took out the diary that his mother wrote when she was in school and read it, and he didn't want to say much about the incident that almost jumped off the building, but I suddenly went to the balcony.

The other students in the school were all in groups, and only Shi Fengming was alone. She wrote in her diary: Time flies quickly, and a year is only a blink of an eye. I felt self-pity, low self-esteem, and self-abandonment a few times. Why? I don't want to say. Don't bother to say it. I almost forgot about it anyway. Whatever? I wanted to ask a friend to see if he could solve my problem, but as soon as there was someone standing opposite or beside me, my heart was like a river, and it immediately dried up. All sorts of problems are gone.

Because there are left-behind children in the local area who have been sexually assaulted, for safety reasons, the teachers in charge of the dormitory will go to the back of the dormitory every day after the lights are turned off, and they are afraid that there are bad people hiding there. After checking and leaving, the teacher will also lock the big iron door of the girls' dormitory.

In winter, Shi Fengming's little black dog is gone. Shi Fengming said with a smile: "The black dog has been divided. Half of the teacher, half of the uncle. "It was two weeks ago, and now Shi Fengming's family has two little yellow dogs.

Shi Fengming's wish on the wish wall of the sixth-grade class is: to be admitted to university and honor his grandparents. But this is completely false. Shi Fengming said: "He just thinks about finishing primary school. ”

He didn't like to talk at school because he didn't think many of his classmates were serious. At home, he is also half disguised. Holding hands with grandma is actually occasional fun, which does not mean that he is very good with grandma.

"My favorite thing is myself. Because only you are worthy of reliability. "Sometimes I talk to myself. Then I have something to say to myself, and I don't want to say it to others.

In January 2018, the school had its winter break. The teacher said helplessly: He has repeatedly asked the parents of boarders to enter the parent group. As a result, by the end of the semester, less than 15 of the 136 boarders had joined the group. It can be seen how indifferent parents are to their children. This also makes it difficult for school education to be effective due to the lack of parental cooperation.

During the Spring Festival, many parents returned to their hometowns from their work sites to visit relatives, and Tang Hongfei's mother also returned, but Shi Fengming's parents still have no news. The classmates all guessed that Shi Fengming must miss his parents very much. But he himself doesn't think so, to be honest, I really don't want to be seen for so many years, it's not good to come back all of a sudden, but do you want to see him? It's just that sometimes when you tell the truth from your heart, you just don't believe it, you really can't. I often think that when I grow up, what kind of person do I want to become, and I am considered a person who lives a mixed life at home, right? Why don't you have a good time? Why mess around? If I can get by, what else can I do?

This is a documentary produced by NHK. Dry up, the sorrow of China's left-behind children, broadcast in March 2018. The film points out that there are about 9.02 million left-behind children in China, and behind this huge number are a large number of families separated from each other. In order to earn money, parents leave home to work in a big city far away, and their children are left in their hometown to fend for themselves with the elderly.

Premature separation can lead to a lot of problems, undisciplined children sleep on mobile phones and games, and a life without a goal turns into a mess of doing nothing from the beginning. There can be many reasons why they are left behind, some because their parents are forced to make ends meet, and some because their parents are irresponsible and run away. But in either case, their essence is abandonment.

Children who are powerless to resist in the face of the pressure of survival are the most likely to be sacrificed, and the final result is good or bad, it is all up to the children themselves. While the children in the city cry and laugh freely under the shelter of their parents, the children left behind in the countryside have long seen the cruel reality that there is no one to rely on. Some of them have a maturity that does not match their age, but behind the appearance of maturity, there is an inner heart wrapped in disappointment and inferiority. The abandonment from their parents has hurt them the most. Then, where they were most wounded, they came into contact with the hardest and most indifferent scars. It doesn't matter about the future, it doesn't matter about the current situation, it's a day to be able to mix it up for a day.

Their footsteps began in the countryside, a place where they could not be helped more. After all, it still buried the lives of a large part of the people.