Watching from afar: Chinese migrant worker father bids his son a good week at school from 267km away
- The boy wakes up at 5am on Mondays for a 15km journey to school, where he spends the week
- The father, a migrant worker in Shenzhen, watches on a screen from afar
On Valentine’s Day, the first day of the new semester in mainland China, an 11-year-old boy left home in the dark at 5am to walk 4km to catch a bus to school, accompanied by his two dogs.
“We do not talk beforehand, it is our unspoken understanding,” Chen Yao, 39, the father and video poster, told the South China Morning Post.
The boy, nicknamed Xiao Teng, or “little Teng”, lives in the southern part of Jiangxi province, in the mountainous areas bordering Guangdong. The youngster’s journey to school, which is located in a town in Guangdong, is a three-part trek; a 4km walk, an 11km bus trip, and another short walk to the school.
Once at school, the boy lives on campus from Monday to Friday before returning home on Friday evenings to stay with his grandmother and siblings, who study in a secondary school in the same town. Chen’s wife also works in Shenzhen.