China’s Left Behind Children

I saw this image today and it made me catch my breath. The image is one in a series that has been titled “Little brother wants to sleep.” The image caused such a stir that the phrase “little brother wants to sleep” can no longer yield results in the major Chinese online search engines; discussions around the images got too political.

The little girl is Long Zhanghuan, a 10 year old girl from a small village in Fenghuang county in Central China’s Hunan Province. She is holding her 2 year old brother Zhang Junjie. Everyday, she somehow manages to walk for 40 minutes to go to school for the day with her baby brother in tow.

She and her brother and her cousins being raised by their grandparents are 8 of the 58 million children left behind in China, children left with relatives or left alone as their parents go look for work in cities so they can provide for their families.

58 million children like Zhanghuan. That’s 2/3 the number of total children in the United States.

I’m encouraged to read that some Chinese nationals have seen the need and are rising up to action. In some areas, migrant workers-turned leaders have developed grassroots worker-support centers in the heart of migrant worker neighborhoods that help workers maintain relationships with their children left behind in addition to serving them in other ways.

I just keep replaying the number in my head – 2/3 of the total number of children in all of the United States. I ache for them tonight. I wish I could pray for them each by name. Even if I could mention 25 names in prayer a minute and did that for 8 hours straight everyday, it would take about 13 years to pray for every child once. It’s that many children.

I just tucked my children into bed. Made sure their teeth were brushed. Heard about the book one chose from the school library today. Heard about the game they will play together tomorrow. Prayed with each one. Laid out their clothes for tomorrow morning. And packed their lunches and morning snacks.

58 million children left behind in China while their parents strive to do all they can to provide for them.

So thankful that He knows the name of every one of them and the parents who are giving everything to try to do right for them so they can have a future better than the one they had.