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.”