介绍:
Rapid urbanization① in China has seen the emigration② of millions of workers from rural areas to cities.
This has resulted in millions of children being left behind in rural areas under the care of relatives, mostly grandparents with little or no education, or having to take care of themselves.
Their parents make their living in factories and restaurants, on the streets and in construction sites in cities which are often a hundreds of miles away.
Parents are often stranded③ by work or enticed④ by the pay and therefore decide to sacrifice⑤ holiday time spent with family.
Here, we have 40 left-behind children in the sixth grade at Shangqiao elementary school in Hunan province pleading⑥ for their parents to spend the holidays at home.
"Mommy and daddy, I love you, please come home!"
Both parents and children feel the pain of separation as the parents seek a better life for the family in the city. Because of the uneven development and distribution of wealth between urban and rural areas, workers need to go into cities for better economic opportunities. But if there are jobs at your doorstep with even slightly less pay, what would you choose?
"Of course I'll work near home if I get to choose. My parents are old and my child is young, so I would like to be near them. Also, the cost of living is so much cheaper in my home town."
That's Chen Xinxing, a migrant worker, expressing his desire to find a job close to home. For many, there is not really a choice. The government has made progress in creating more job opportunities in middle and west China, so that migrant workers don't need to travel so far away from home to work.
According to the All-China Women's Federation, China is home to more than 61 million left-behind children living separately from their parents; almost 20 percent of all children in China and close to half of all children in the countryside grow up this way.
The local governments of provinces with large migrant worker populations have introduced various measures to maintain the well-being of left-behind children.
1. Urbanization 城市化，城镇化
2. Emigration 迁移
3. Strand 困
4. Entice 吸引
5. Sacrifice 牺牲
6. Plead 恳求
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