LIU HENGQING is 66. In 2007, after more than 30 years of marriage, she and her husband left Jian’ou, the town in Fujian province in southern China where they had lived until then, and followed in their children’s footsteps—she to the provincial capital, Fuzhou, to take care of a newborn grandson, he to Xiamen, 250km (150 miles) away, to look after a granddaughter. “It takes a toll on you,” she says, “especially being apart, but it’s worth it.” She launches into “The Pensioners’ Marching Song”, a popular parody of a classic military march:
We are the kids’ logistics force, We are their quartermasters.Listen, the kids are calling,We run to the market.Stuck in the kitchen, we care for them.
The march ends “Forwards! Forwards towards our last fight.” The fight on the horizon is over China’s social services and the hukou (household registration) system that restricts them. For Mrs Liu is part of a new wave of urban migration that is reuniting families, but putting extra strain on schools, hospitals and the government’s social controls.
In the 1990s China saw the biggest mass...Continue reading
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