WATCH: Video shows turmoil of China's “left-behind children”

“I think a family being together is more important than anything,” 14-year-old student, farmhand, and de facto household head Wang Ying laments in Max Duncan’s short documentary Down from the Mountains. “But if I told [my parents] that, I don’t think they’d listen to me.”

Wang Ying lives with her 12-year-old sister and 8-year-old brother in the remote Liangshan region, a mountainous area in Southwest China inhabited primarily by the Yi ethnic minority group. With their mom and dad, neither of whom speak Mandarin, earning $15 each per day working at a headphone factory in a faraway city, the Wang children are part of China’s “left-behind” generation, an estimated 9 million kids left to grow up without parental supervision. Their nearest grandparent lives a 40-minute walk away, which makes Wang Ying and her siblings among the 4% of those 9 million who live alone.

When her family was splintered by the harsh economic choices facing China’s most vulnerable rural poor, Wang Ying was left to shoulder the burden of raising the younger kids and tending the family’s potato and peppercorn fields.

Duncan’s film lays bare with heartbreaking clarity the psychological and emotional harm this causes the Wang family, from the dual perspectives of the children and their parents.

For Wang Ying, wrangling her misbehaving siblings and doing the brunt of the family’s farm work means that the remaining mental bandwidth she can muster for her studies is limited. It means a sense of abandonment and undue burden that makes her reluctant to pick up the phone when her mom and dad call.

For her parents, living far away means coping with the brutal repercussions of trying to strike a seemingly impossible balance between the material and psychological wellbeing of their children. It means simultaneously feeling a deep sense of shame for their choice and believing that it is the only one that can provide Wang Ying and her siblings with the chance for a better life.

Watch Down from the Mountains, a shorter version of which was recently spotlighted by the Atlantic Selects showcase series:

https://v.qq.com/txp/iframe/player.html?vid=b0558gd7ygs&width=500&height=375&auto=0

For those who would like to watch the full-length film, it originally appeared on ChinaFile in October alongside a powerful essay by Duncan about the summer that he spent with the Wang family. Click "Read More" to watch.

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