Tu Ling likes to draw pictures for his father and dreams of being reunited with his mother. The 10-year-old is completely unaware that he will never live with either of them again. Tu’s father has been jailed for life for murdering his mother.
The boy is one of dozens of Chinese children living at Sun Village, an institution in the suburbs of Beijing set up by a former prison officer who says she wanted to give the offspring of inmates a chance for a fresh start.
“I realized what the prisoners were concerned about the most was not themselves, but their children and families,” Zhang Shuqin, the founder of Sun Village, said in an interview at the facility.
PHOTO: AFP
Zhang, 62, was inspired to start Sun Village after interviewing dozens of inmates for the prison administration bureau’s internal newspaper in northern Shaanxi Province.
Moved by their heartbreaking stories about being separated from their children and their distress at not knowing where they were, Zhang opened the first village in 1996 in Shaanxi.
Since then — and with no government funding — she has built another five villages, including the one in the Beijing area.
“Some kids were missing, some had been sold and others had been taken away by relatives. Some had no one to protect them when they were very young,” Zhang said.
Children as young as four months old are sent to Sun Village centers after their parents have been sentenced to serve time. Many have been abandoned by their relatives who are too old or poor to care for them.
Before arriving at the village, some children have been living on the streets for months, or even years, scavenging for food and resorting to crime to survive.
Ma Yufei, 12, said he has spent half his life at the village. Police brought him here from Hebei Province after his father was sent to prison. He says he doesn’t know where his mother is and is too traumatized to discuss his father’s crime.
“The children have various problems when they arrive — some hate the police for taking away their parents and others have a strong wish for revenge,” Zhang said. “Some have bad habits like stealing, telling lies or being violent because they have been living on the streets. We try to rectify these behaviors and give them counseling.”
The children live in brightly painted dormitories surrounded by vegetable gardens, orchards and playgrounds. Each dormitory has a live-in “mother” who cares for the children.
Zhang said the children attend local schools and then, if they pass the entrance exams, are sent to university or attend technical colleges to prepare them for adult life.
“It’s not enough to just feed and house the children. They must acquire skills so they can find a job in the future,” Zhang said.
With no help from the government, Zhang relies on donations from generous individuals and businesses to feed, clothe and educate the children.
“I like living here because there are lots of children, older brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles,” said Cao Xiangqian, 12.
Zhang said she has helped more than 2,000 children since starting Sun Village 14 years ago, but she knows it is only a drop in the ocean.
A government survey in 2005 found 600,000 children of prisoners needed help, she said. As China’s prison population grows, the situation is getting worse, so more Sun Villages are in the works, Zhang says.
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