这是一篇让人感到呼吸沉重的文章。
文章选自经济学人的深度报道——中国农村留守儿童。这是一个数量庞大却又经常被忽略的群体，他们人数有千万之多，却长期处于社会边缘，他们正值人生中最天真美好的年纪，却要背负不可承受之重——父母远离，孤独随形，遭受虐待... 城市万家灯火的背后是多少留守儿童家庭的辛酸，如何让这群孩子们更加健康更有尊严地成长，这是一个值得每个人思考的问题。（全文篇幅实在太长，因此我不得不把它拆分为上下两篇，这是上篇）
19:20 China_s left-behind 来自经济学人赏析 
China’s left-behind
中国的留守儿童
Little match children
卖火柴的小孩子
Children bear a disproportionate share of the hidden cost of China’s growth
留守儿童为中国的经济增长背负了过高的隐形成本
Oct 17th 2015 | BEIJING | From the print edition
TOWARDS the end of “Jude the Obscure”, Thomas Hardy’s final novel, comes one of the most harrowing scenes in English literature. Jude, an itinerant labourer struggling to feed his family, returns home to find his eldest son has hanged himself and his younger siblings from the coat hook on the back of the door. A note says “Done because we are too menny.”
托马斯.哈代所著最后一部小说《无名的袭德》尾声部分所描绘的场景在英国文学中的悲惨程度无出其右。四处打零工的袭德艰难地支撑着家庭，小说尾声，当袭德回到家时，却在门后的衣帽钩上发现儿女的尸体。大儿子吊死了他的弟妹，随即上吊自杀。遗书写道“人太朵（多），只由（有）死”。
In June this year China suffered a real-life variant of this terrible scene. In a rural part of Bijie township in Guizhou province, in south-west China, a brother and three sisters, the oldest 13, the youngest five, died by drinking pesticide. They had been living alone after their mother had disappeared and their father had migrated for work. The 13-year-old boy left a note saying, “It is time for me to go—death has been my dream for years.”
今年六月，这样悲惨的情景却在中国真实上演。中国西南部贵州省毕节市的一个农村，一个哥哥与三个妹妹集体喝农药自杀，他们中最大的不过13岁，最小的才5岁。自从母亲失踪，父亲进城务工后，他们就无依无靠。13岁的小男孩在遗书中写道，“我该走了——死亡是我多年的梦想。”
Three years before that, also in Bijie, five street children died of carbon-monoxide poisoning after they had clambered into a roadside dumpster and lit charcoal to keep themselves warm. Chinese social media drew parallels with the little match girl in Hans Christian Andersen’s story of that name: afraid to return home because she has not sold any matches, she freezes to death in the winter night, burning match after match because the light reminds her of her grandmother. It is a well known tale in China because it is taught in primary schools as an example of the uncaring nature of early capitalism.
三年前毕节也发生了同样的悲剧。五个流浪儿为了取暖，爬进了路边的一个垃圾站，在里面点起了炭火，最后全部死于一氧化碳中毒。中国的社交媒体将这个故事与安徒生童话中那个卖火柴的小女孩类比：小女孩没能卖出一根火柴，害怕回家，只有划燃火柴，因为只有火柴的光亮能让她想起祖母。小女孩一根接一根划掉了所有火柴，最终冻死在大街上。这个童话在中国家喻户晓，因为小学课本中就教导说，这个故事揭示了资本主义初级阶段社会的冷漠本质。
Over the past generation, about 270m Chinese labourers have left their villages to look for work in cities. It is the biggest voluntary migration ever. Many of those workers have children; most do not take them along. The Chinese call these youngsters liushou ertong, or “left-behind children”. According to the All-China Women’s Federation, an official body, and UNICEF, the UN organisation for children, there were 61m children below the age of 17 left behind in rural areas in 2010. In several of China’s largest provinces, including Sichuan and Jiangsu, more than half of all rural children have been left behind (see map). In effect, some villages consist only of children and grandparents. This is a blight on the formative years of tens of millions of people. Alongside the expulsion of millions of peasants from the land they have farmed and the degradation of the country’s soil, water and air, this leaving behind is one of the three biggest costs of China’s unprecedented and transformative industrialisation.
根据2010年的统计数据，6100万留守儿童中，只有刚过一半的儿童与父母一方生活在一起，另一方则在外地打工；2900万儿童被交给他人抚养，大部分孩子由爷爷奶奶照看，但仍有大约6百万儿童被交与远亲或是国家抚养（这一统计数据包括孤儿或被遗弃的残障儿童）。跟毕节那“卖火柴的小孩子”的情况类似，两百万儿童只得自食其力。
Not all parents who up sticks to look for work leave their kids behind: in the 2010 figures 36m children had gone to live with their migrating families in cities. But this has its own problems; very few of these children can go to a state school or see a state doctor at subsidised prices in their new homes. Moreover, their hard-working parents often cannot look after the children. Without grandparents or a state school to keep an eye on them, such migrant children can be just as neglected as those left behind in the country.
但也不是所有在外地工作的家长都抛下了他们的孩子：2010年的统计数据表明，3600万孩子随其父母一起到城市生活。但这也有弊端；这些孩子基本上不能上公立学校，在城市的公立医院看病也无法享受医疗补助。他们忙碌的家长时常抽不出空来照看他们。爷爷奶奶不在身边，公立学校又不接收，这些打工子弟被忽视的程度可能与那些留守儿童别无二致。
A damaged generation
受伤害的一代
On top of that there were about 9m left behind in one city when one or both parents had moved to another. Add it all up and, in 2010, 106m children’s lives were being profoundly disrupted by their parents’ restless search for jobs. For comparison, the total number of children in the United States is 73m. And the proportion of these children who were left behind, rather than migrating with their parents, grew a great deal in the late 2000s (see chart 1).
此外城市也在上演着双城记。大约有9百万城市留守儿童，其父母一方或是双方均前往外地工作。2010年的数据表明，父母马不停蹄地寻找工作，使得1.06亿儿童的生活受到了极大的影响。相比较而言，美国儿童的总数也只有7300万。无法与父母一起移居的留守儿童所占总数的比例在二十一世纪最初十年的后半段开始大幅增长。（见表1）
The experience of those left with one parent while the other is away working is perhaps not so different from that of the children of single parents in the West. But a study by a non-governmental organisation, called the Road to School Project, reckons that 10m left-behind children do not see their parents even once a year and 3m have not had a phone call for a year. About a third of left-behind kids see their parents only once or twice a year, typically on Chinese New Year.
那些双亲中有一方在外打工，另一方留在身边的孩子与西方国家单亲家庭的孩子别无二致。非政府组织“通往学校之路”（Road to School Project）的研究结果表明，1千万留守儿童一年到头都见不到父母。3百万留守儿童的父母一年到头都不会给孩子打一个电话。1/3的留守儿童一年只能见到父母一到两次，基本上是在春节才能相见。
Though any child may be left behind, there are some patterns. The youngest children are the most likely to be left, and girls are slightly more likely to be left than boys. This preference for taking boys along means that in cities the preponderance of boys over girls that has been produced by sex-selective abortions is exaggerated further. Anecdotal evidence suggests that an unusual number of left-behind children have siblings. One reason for this is that China’s one-child policy has been implemented less strictly in the countryside, and so more rural families have two children to leave behind.
尽管任意一个孩子都可能被“留守”，但谁更有可能成为留守儿童却有迹可循。最年幼的孩子往往被“留守”，女孩比男孩留守的可能性更大些。家长带着男孩进城将造成城市中男孩数量相对过剩，这将进一步扩大性别选择人流造成的男女比例失衡。有小道消息称，留守儿童还有兄弟姐妹，因此他们的数量比统计数字更多。其中原因之一是，中国的独生子女政策在农村抓的不严，因此很多农村家庭有两个留守儿童。
It is not yet possible to say whether the phenomenal level of leaving behind found in the late 2000s persists. There is some evidence that with the slowdown in the economy migrant labourers are starting to drift back to their villages. But even if the trend has slowed, the dislocation still represents a third blow to the traditional Chinese family. First came the one-child-policy. Then the enormously distorted sex ratio. Now a mass abandonment.
二十一世纪最初十年的后半段调查发现，留守儿童数量惊人，然而很难说是否还有这么多留守儿童。有证据表明，随着经济增长放缓，外来务工人员正开始返回他们的村子。但即便进城打工趋势放缓，这种颠沛流离仍然是砸向中国传统家庭的第三记重拳。前两记重拳分别是一胎政策和高度失衡的性别比例，现在则是大量的留守儿童。
Being left behind damages children in many ways. In Cangxi county, Sichuan province, in south-west China, the local education authority (as part of a study) gave eight- and nine-year-old left-behind children video cameras and taught them to film their lives. Sun Xiaobing, who is eight years old, is in the charge of her grandparents, but she is left alone for days on end. She shares her lunch with a stray dog to attract its companionship. Her two days of video consist almost entirely of her conversations with farm animals; she has no one else. Wang Kanjun’s film is about his little sister. The five-year-old girl spends most of her time at home playing with the phone; she is waiting for her mother to call.
留守儿童在许多方面深受伤害。中国西南部省份四川苍溪县，当地教育局交给八到九岁的留守儿童录像机，让他们拍摄他们的生活。8岁的孙小冰（音）由爷爷奶奶照顾，然而她在几天的拍摄中却是孤身一人。她将午饭分给流浪狗，好让它来陪陪自己。她拍摄的两天的录像中几乎全是她与牲畜的对话，因为她没有人可以说话。王康军（音）拍的是他的小妹妹。这个5岁的小女孩在家里的大部分时间都在玩手机；她等着妈妈打电话。
Most left-behind children are lonely. Many live in rural boarding schools far from their villages because, in an attempt to improve educational standards in the countryside, the government shut many village schools down in favour of bigger institutions. About 60% of children in the new boarding schools have been left behind. A non-governmental organisation, Growing Home, surveyed them this year and found that they were more introverted than their peers and more vulnerable to being bullied; they also had “significantly higher states of anxiety and depression” than their peers. Many say they do not remember what their parents look like. A few say that they no longer want to see their parents.
大部分留守儿童都十分孤独。为了提升农村教育水平，政府裁撤了许多村镇学校，取而代之的是规模更大的学校，因此许多孩子在远离他们村子的寄宿学校念书。在这些新建的寄宿学校中，大约60%的学生为留守儿童。非政府组织“家庭生长”（growing home）今年的调查表明，这些留守儿童比他们的同学更加内向，更易被人欺负；这些孩子比他们的同学“更容易焦虑与沮丧”。许多留守儿童说他们记不清父母的样子。有一小部分说他们再也不想见到父母。
In 2010 researchers at the Second Military Medical University in Shanghai studied over 600 children in 12 villages in Shandong province, in the north-east, half left behind and half not. The difference in the physical condition of the children was minor. But the difference in their school performance was substantial and so was the emotional and social damage to them, as measured by a standard questionnaire (see chart 2). “The psychological effect on left behind children is huge,” argues Tong Xiao, the director of the China Institute of Children and Adolescents. “The kids will have big issues with communications. Their mental state and their development might suffer.”
2010年，上海市第二军医大学的研究员研究了山东省12个村庄的600多名儿童，其中一半是留守儿童，一半不是。尽管这些儿童的身体状况差不多，然而一份问卷调查的结果表明被研究儿童在学校的表现却有显著差异（见表2）。“被 ‘留守’ 将极大地影响儿童心理，”中国儿童与青少年研究所所长童晓（音）说，“留守儿童存在沟通障碍，他们的身心发育可能会受到影响。”
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