‘Daddy works too hard’: girl in China bursts into tears during a meet-the-parents video call at day care facility and goes viral
- Li Yanxi, 7, had been sent to a day care facility for the summer holidays and was present when the centre held a video call for parents to see the progress of their children
- On seeing her father on the screen the little girl broke down in tears and said: ‘I am concerned that he works too hard and becomes too tired’
A video of a seven-year-old girl in China who missed her father and burst into tears when seeing him on a video call at a day care facility has gone viral.
Li Yanxi, from Suzhou in Jiangsu, eastern China, had been sent to a day care centre for the summer holidays, video platform Nuan Video reported.
Last week, a teacher had organised an online video meeting to let parents meet each other and observe a class in progress. When Yanxi saw her father – wearing a safety helmet and a worker’s uniform – among other parents on the screen she became upset.
“Daddy!,” the girl called her father in a sweet-sounding voice.
Soon the girl’s eyes were filled with tears, and she told her teacher that she was missing her father and worried about him.
“Why are you missing your father? How long since you’ve seen him?,” asked her teacher in the video.
“It’s not [because I haven’t seen him for a long time],” Yanxi replied, sobbing. “I am concerned that he works too hard and becomes too tired.”
The girl said her mother is a stay-at-home mum while her father is an electrician and often works overtime.
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“He starts work between 4 and 5am every day. Sometimes I am awake at those times,” she said, adding that she hoped her father would stay healthy.
The video has been viewed 6.5 million times on the short video platform Douyin, with many viewers saying the little girl’s concern for her father was touching.
In an interview with Nuan Video, the girl’s father Li Mingxing said: “I hope my daughter will be healthy and happy every day.”
The video also attracted comments on Weibo. “I was touched and cried when seeing this video,” wrote one person.
“She is so adorable. I also want such a ‘little padded jacket’,” another user commented, using the term to refer to a daughter.
In mainland China, the public commonly call daughters a “little padded jacket” for being close to the body with the perceived ability to provide comfort and warmth and that they understand their parents’ hearts. For sons, who are generally deemed insensitive, they are often called “leather overcoat” because they can keep parents from “wind and rain” when there are difficulties affecting the family.
Although traditional Chinese parents prefer to have boys for various reasons including that it is the son’s obligation to take care of his parents when they grow old, a growing number of couples are trying to have daughters in recent years.
In addition to the belief that girls are more caring and loving than sons, families with a son have to prepare costly betrothal gifts for when he gets married which can be a huge financial burden for many parents.
