Cold rural reality
China’s Snowflake Boy epitomises the plight of children abandoned by mothers who couldn’t bear their family’s poverty.
LAST week, he returned to reality in his impoverished village in Yunnan province, China, where he lives with his father, older sister and grandmother. His mother walked out over two years ago.
When the now-famous image of Wang Fuman with his head covered in icicles went viral this month, it attracted national and even international attention to the plight of children living in poverty. The frosty hairdo was the result of Fuman walking more than four kilometers to reach school in subzero temperatures.
The story also illustrated a deeper issue, which is the sheer number of children in poor rural areas who are growing up without mothers, a situation educators and experts warn can often have long-lasting effects on a child’s mental health and life prospects.
Fuman and his family arrived in the capital last week on a trip arranged by chinapeace.gov.cn, a website affiliated with the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the Communist Party of China Central Committee. The boy, who dreams of becoming a police officer one day, was given a tour of the SWAT team’s headquarters and the People’s Public Security University of China.
The giant city must have seemed like a different planet from his village, Zhuanshanbao, which is home to 540 families, almost half of whom live below the poverty line of 2,952 yuan (RM1,800) in annual earnings.
Fu Heng, principal of Zhuanshanbao Lihuimiaopu Primary School, where Fuman is one of 140 students, said at least eight of the children never see their mothers.
Observations by China Daily reporters who have covered stories in impoverished areas nationwide suggest the problem is not an isolated one.
Li Yifei, a professor at Beijing Normal University’s Faculty of Education who has conducted extensive studies of children in rural China, said villagers are now free to travel more widely than ever before in search of employment opportunities, so the risk of “broken families” has soared.
The problem is often exacerbated because many migrant worker parents who experience city life are unwilling to return to their rundown villages or their spouses, he added.
Exodus from poverty
While both mothers and fathers are raising children in single-parent families, anecdotal evidence suggests that women account for the majority of people who end marriages and leave impoverished areas.
Wang Gangming, head of Zhuanshanbao village, recently told Beijing News that women from other areas who marry local men often struggle to cope with the bad weather and poor conditions. In most cases, he said, they simply leave.
Moreover, many villagers fail to obtain official marriage certificates so their unions are not legal. That means women can leave without going through regular divorce proceedings, he added.
In the countryside, it is traditional for women to move into their husband’s home after marriage, which usually means living with his parents and even grandparents.
Many women find it difficult to adjust to the new situation, and in the event of marital disputes, it is unlikely the family will be sympathetic to the wife’s cause.
Without family support, the situation can take a heavy toll and some women see no option other than leaving home.
However, ultimately, their children are the real victims, according to Li.
“Living in poverty will make a child unhappy about their immediate life, but growing up without a mother or a father can make them feel hopeless about the future,” he said.
“Those combined factors could make them want to somehow take revenge in later life or even become suicidal, which may result in severe social problems when these children reach adulthood.”
In 2017, Li conducted a study on the psychological conditions of children in rural areas who are growing up without one or both parents.
“Although there are similarities, the impact on children who grow up in sin- gle-parent and poor families is obviously more pronounced than for ‘left-behind children’, those growing up in the countryside who rarely see their parents who are migrant workers in distant cities,” he said.
“The psychological trauma is more severe and their behaviours are more extreme.”
Fu, the school principal, has noticed that students from broken families, especially those without a mother, start displaying both positive and negative effects at a young age, although the negative effects are “much stronger”. His observations show that these students are more independent and stronger than their peers.
“For example, they can cook and do heavy housework on their own, and can even look after the whole family,” he said. “They don’t want to be independent like that; they just don’t have a choice.”
Fu, who originally shared the “Snowflake Boy” photo on social media, said he did so because he was not only struck by Fuman’s appearance, but also by the boy’s stoic attitude. However, he added that students in Wang’s situation usually perform poorly in coursework and also tend to be introverted and stubborn. They may even exhibit extreme behaviours.
“One of the things that hurts them most is being called ‘motherless’ by other students. Sometimes they don’t react immediately, but they bear grudges and later throw punches at the people who made the comment,” he said.
Hardened hearts
When asked by a reporter in Beijing if he misses his mother, Wang responded calmly. “No. I don’t think about her anymore because my heart would be broken again if I did,” he said. As a result of its remote location and poor transportation infrastructure, Zhuanshanbao is one of the poorest villages in Xinjie township.
Wang Gangkui, 28, the boy’s father, said his wife, Lu Dafeng, asked for a divorce at the end of 2015 because she could no longer bear their impoverished existence and the family was in debt.
Gangkui refused Lu’s request, so several days later she left home without telling anyone. Her husband tried contacting her, but Lu had changed her cellphone number.
“Fuman and his sister cried a lot after discovering that their mother had gone. They really wanted her to come back, but I lied and told them that she had left to look for work elsewhere,” he said.
Lu returned to the village in July. Once again, she asked for a divorce, and once again Gangkui refused. Lu disappeared again three days later.
The children cried again, and this time, Gangkui told them that their mother had left them for good.
“After their mother left for the second time, the children stopped saying they missed her. They just wouldn’t talk about it or cry for her like the first time,” said Gangkui, who works on a construction site.
Although Fuman said he no longer thinks about his mother, the traumatic experience may cast a shadow on his life or even change it irrevocably, as happened to Tan Denghong.
Tan, a resident of Yumuzhai village, Hubei province, was nine years old when his mother left their poverty-stricken family and never returned.
“She left because of the poverty. When she left, we didn’t even have enough to eat,” said the 39-year-old, who quit school shortly after his mother disappeared.
When he was 12, Tan left the village in Moudao township, and travelled to Guangdong province to look for work. Without parental care, he quickly went off the rails and began mixing with a bad crowd. “My mother left and my father could not support me. I often felt hopeless and soon I just gave up hope,” he said
When he was 16, Tan moved to Jiangsu province, where he joined a gang of thieves.
Luckily, he managed to turn his life around and returned to his poverty-stricken village in 2008, following in his father’s footstep by raising goats.
He is not the only person in the village whose mother left because they could not bear the poverty.
“I have not seen my mother since she left. Time has clouded my memories of her, but of course I miss her. After all, she gave me life,” he said.
A taste of fame
Fuman received star treatment as soon as he arrived in Beijing. He was followed by news crews and constantly stopped by people on the streets who wanted to have their photo taken with him.
While the boy enjoyed the attention, his father expressed concern. “Nothing will change. We will be still poor and his mother still won’t contact us,” said Gangkui, who rarely spoke during their trip in Beijing. “People will soon forget about us; I wonder when that will happen?”
Fu, the headmaster, was also worried about the effect the trip may have had on Fuman.
“The media has focused on him too much in recent days, and that’s not good for him. He should return to his normal life,” he said.
However, Li, the professor at Beijing Normal University, said the visit to the capital may have been beneficial because it may have given Fuman a sense of purpose and something to aspire to.
“We should not forget that there are so many children like him in China. Only poverty alleviation can help to reduce the number of parents leaving their children in the countryside, and provide children with a healthier environment to grow up in,” he said.
Fuman, who seemed almost unaffected by the attention, said he prefers to be called by his real name rather than “Snowflake Boy”.
The third grader has never missed a day of school, no matter how many times he has fallen on the slippery mountain road or been ridiculed because his mother has left the family.
“I just want to study as hard as I can so I can become a real policeman and take down bad people in the world,” he said.