Watch: Chinese ‘left behind’ sisters cry when parents head back to city for work
- Footage viewed hundreds of thousands of times online
- Internet users recount their own similar experiences
A video clip of three young Chinese girls begging their migrant worker parents not to leave as they were preparing to return to their jobs in the city has touched hearts online.
The footage was shot in the village of Jiatui in Rongjiang county, south China’s Guizhou province, on Monday, news portal qq.com reported.
The girls refused to release their mother’s hands. They cried and yelled: “Don’t go, Mum.”
China has about 286 million migrant workers, according to official figures. Many of them are forced to leave their children in the care of older relatives in rural communities and see them only during national holidays.
In the video, when the mother manages to free her hand from her daughters’ grip, the youngest child sits on the ground and cries loudly. Her sisters try to comfort her but they also cry.
“We have to leave the village to work and earn money,” the father says in the film. “We leave them to be taken care of by my parents.”
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The man said his daughters followed him and his wife for about 200 metres (650 feet) along a muddy path to where they caught their bus.
“I asked their teachers to stop them following us,” he said.
As of Friday, the video had been viewed hundreds of thousands of times and had received 10,000 likes on Qq.com.
More than 13,000 people left comments.
“I burst into tears,” one said. “I previously wanted to do the same as the parents in the video, but now I have decided to stay with my daughter no matter how hard our life is.”
“Earning 5,000 yuan [US$740] a month in a city far away from your hometown is not as good as earning 3,000 yuan in your hometown. Especially for those with kids,” said another.
“The parents of the girls are also weeping in their heart,” a third said.
