Firestarter, 12, just wanted to see her mom
Print Edition
A 12-YEAR-OLD girl in a village in southwest China’s Sichuan Province set fire to a neighbor’s house in an attempt to get her mother, who was working in another province, to come home.
The fire, which broke out at 7pm on March 6, spread to five other houses and was not extinguished by firefighters until four hours later.
An Xiaolin had taken a lighter from home and went into the neighbor’s house in Guang’an City after school, setting light to a pile of firewood, according to Chengdu Business News.
The houses were occupied by three families and their losses were estimated at more than 50,000 yuan (US$8,000), the newspaper reported.
“I didn’t intend to burn their houses. I just thought that if I did something seriously bad, my mom would have to come back to pay compensation to them,” Xiaolin is said to have told police.
When she was told about the incident, her 27-year-old mother, surnamed Qiong, promised to return to Guang’an from south China’s Hunan Provice on August 25 to celebrate the girl’s birthday, the newspaper said.
Qiong divorced Xiaolin’s father when her daughter was just two years old. Qiong remarried in Hunan. Xiaolin’s father is a migrant worker, who returns home only once every two or three years, the paper said.
After offering her psychological counseling, police decided to leave Xiaolin’s punishment in the hands of her grandparents and the school.
The case has put the problems of China’s “left behind children” back in the spotlight.
Xiaolin is one of 60 million Chinese children left behind by their parents when they go to seek work elsewhere.
She had seen her mother just once since Qiong left the family home 10 years ago.
That meeting was last summer and when her mother left again, the girl cried often as she missed her terribly. She posted a picture of her mother above her bed so she could always see her.
The village where Xiaolin lives is a typical left-behind village. It used to be home to more than 200 villagers, but only 30 or 40 of them live there now, mostly elderly people and children.
On January 20, Xiao Lin, a 9-year-old boy in east China’s Anhui Province, hanged himself after learning that his parents would not be returning home for the Spring festival.
Last November, an 11-year-old boy in east China’s Hubei Province went to look for his parents in Beijing with less than 100 yuan in his pocket. He was sent home by police.
At the time, Sang Qingsong, a professor with Anhui Normal University, said the lack of parental love and care toward “left-behind” children created a sense of helplessness and abandonment.
According to an All-China Women’s Federation report last May, problems facing “left-behind” and migrant children, including a lack of family closeness, security, protection and educational opportunities, have not been resolved.
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