THE distance between Tian Rong — not her real name — and her two daughters is 274 kilometers. Once a month, the girls make the 3-hour train journey from Hengshui, in north China’s Hebei Province, back to Beijing to see their family.

Around 1,000 children, with ages ranging from 6 to 17, have been sent to private boarding schools in Hengshui — like the one Tian’s daughters attend. Their parents work in Beijing and the children were born and spent time growing up in the capital.

However, without a Beijing hukou (residence permit), they are not allowed to take the college entrance examination in Beijing. And they have only five days each month to go back to Beijing and spend time with their parents.

Tian has lived in Beijing for more than 20 years and runs a cigarette and alcohol store with her sister. She has bought a property in the Beijing suburbs.

“The college entrance examination in Beijing is not open to children without a Beijing hukou,” she said. “We can’t gamble with the kids’ future. My daughters have to study at primary school of Hengshui to get used to the local life and custom there as quick as possible.

“As there are different test papers of Beijing and Hengshui, we can’t take the risk of sending them to Hengshui just days ahead of the examination.”

Xiaolin, one of her daughters says that she misses her home in Beijing very much. She loves to go to the neighboring park with her family to ride her bike or fly a kite.

In summer, she had a lot of happy times with her parents, catching fish and playing in the park.

“My classmates and I have gone through days of crying because we have such little time to stay with our families,” she says.

“Now we are getting used to the life of boarding school, I can do my own laundry and simple housework for my mother.”

Every month, fast tracks are specially prepared at the railway stations in Hengshui and Beijing to handle the large number of children.

Tian is now used to the scene of meeting her daughters on the railway platform that is crowded with anxious parents. The tension is only relieved with the safe arrival of their children. Children, clad in red or blue school uniform, get off the train in a queue to be met in the welcoming arms of their families.

After leaving children with their parents, teachers take the 11pm train back to the boarding school. Five days later, they will return to Beijing to bring the children back to the school after the break with their families.

A teacher, surnamed Wei, with Hengshui Yingcai School has been a leading escort of the trip for the past 3 years. Every month when he makes the journey between Hengshui and Beijing with his students, Wei says that he takes chocolate and cookies with him in case the children are hungry during the trip.

Wei told the Beijing Youth Daily that this commuting phenomenon started in 1998 in his school, and now 800 of the 4,000 students are compared to “migratory birds” who only have their few days with their families each month.

Although the concept is strange to many Beijing natives, Wei’s school is now becoming well known among the migrant workers in the capital and neighboring big cities.

Most choose the boarding schools of Hengshui out of sheer necessity. They got married in Beijing. They have worked and lived in the city for many years, but their school-age children don’t have a Beijing hukou.

Shang Jie — not her real name — from Handan in Hebei Province, arrived in Beijing in 2002. Her daughter was transferred to the boarding school of Hengshui after two years’ study at a primary school in Beijing.

“To make a living in Beijing, my husband and I do not have much time and energy to help my daughter with her studies,” Shang said.

“She had better study in Hengshui as soon as possible otherwise she couldn’t keep up with her classmates.”

While Shang’s daughter Jiajia has quickly adapted to her new environment, she admits to being homesick occasionally and crying quietly to herself. Each time she goes back to home, her parents make her favorite dishes of shrimps. She also enjoys watching the latest TV series with her mother.

Jiajia says that studying at the boarding school of Hengshui is not so bad because teachers help them with studies.

“But I still think of Beijing as my home,” she adds.

It also takes time for parents to get used to not having their kids around. One father says that he felt at a loss for the first time sending his beloved little daughter to a school outside Beijing.

“But it sounds like the best alternative for us,” he adds. “We have been working and lived in Beijing for many years. We don’t want to leave the city.

“What we hope is that one day the college entrance examination in Beijing can be open to our kids.”

Most parents also wish that their children could enter the colleges of Beijing in the future since in big cities there are a lot more opportunities.

More than 52% of China’s population now urban dwellers

After decades of urban expansion, city dwellers now account for 52.6 percent of China’s population, if calculated by total usual residents, according to Huang Ming, the vice public security minister. This falls to 35.3 percent of the population if calculated based on hukou — household registration.

The country’s hukou system ties public services such as health care and education to residential status. Those without local hukou are usually barred from sending children to public schools and many are left with few choices but to send children to schools back home. Those without hukou also face restrictions on buying houses and cars.

The 17-point gap between the two “populations” exposes the gap between public welfare for the locally registered population and for newcomers unable to register — largely migrant workers.

“For a long time, China’s urban areas have demanded labor from rural migrants, but offered little in return,” said Wang Xiaoguang of the Chinese Academy of Governance. “There is no public welfare, let alone housing. This unfairness demands a change in state strategy.”

Aware of the downsides of the existing strategy of simply increasing city size, the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China put forward a “new type of urbanization,” which states that “people come first.” At the third plenum of the 18th CPC Central Committee, the CPC incorporated “human-centered urbanization” into an approved policy, calling it the core of urbanization.

(Xinhua)