The Spring Festival is undoubtedly the most important festival of the year for the Chinese people.
In the hearts of different people, the Spring Festival may have different meanings.
It is a rare little long holiday, a sumptuous meal, a pleasant reunion for the family...
But for some, it means seeing each other once a year.
This group of people has a common name: left-behind children.
This is a large but highly overlooked group.
In some film and television works, he has also paid attention to the survival, growth and education of left-behind children.
For example, "No One Can Be Less", "The Taste of Rice Flowers" and so on.
There is a domestic film that also focuses on this theme, which took only 19 days to shoot, and the box office was only one thousand yuan after the release.
However, under the test of time, it has become a masterpiece recognized by the audience -
Looking at childhood in the south
Director: Yi Han
Starring: Yi Zhibing / He Weixin / Xie Yuan
Genre: Drama
Premiere: 2007
Duration: 91 minutes
Nearly 30,000 people on Douban commented, with a rating of 9.4, and more than 70% of the audience scored five-star praise.
It is a film based on true events and a debut film.
Director Yi Han's hometown is a village in Yichun, Jiangxi, and his brother works as a teacher in a rural primary school.
After learning about the current situation of left-behind children here, Yi Han was very touched and created this film based on his brother and the left-behind children in the village.
The actors in the film are recruited from the countryside of Yichun, villagers living in the local area, and have never had any previous filming experience.
Because of this, this film is even more moving, presenting a sense of reality comparable to a documentary.
The story in the film revolves around a rural teacher named Yi Mingtang.
Yi Mingtang is a Chinese language teacher who works diligently and is humane.
After teaching in a rural school for many years, he understood the importance of education, so he came up with a bold idea: to open a local kindergarten.
This starting point is good, but in the backward countryside, Yi Mingtang has suffered a lot of criticism.
Some people think that he is trying to make money, some people think that reading is useless...
However, Yi Mingtang made up his mind to overcome many dangers and obstacles, and it was inevitable that this kindergarten would be run.
Without a culture teacher, he let his wife teach and took over the school's logistics management.
In addition, he also found a local girl, Li Xiang, to teach music and dance.
Without classrooms, he transformed his home to a place where he could accommodate his students.
The place, although not spacious, is sufficient for the teaching of the children.
Without a school bus, a manual trailer for pulling goods was remodeled.
With a fence, a brush of paint, and a simple decoration, a special school bus for a kindergarten is done.
Yi Mingtang also found his brother to be a school bus driver, escorting the students in the village to and from school every day to escort their safety.
In this way, the teachers and logistics team composed of Yi Mingtang, Yi Mingtang's wife, Li Xiang and Yi Mingtang's brother were established, and the "Daystar Kindergarten" was officially opened.
After many days of shouting and publicity, day one of the day of Daystar Kindergarten welcomed more than twenty students.
Each student charges 60 yuan per month and manages a lunch, which is almost a loss price.
Yi Mingtang's wife cried bitterly about this, but he himself was willing to eat it.
What I didn't expect was that the real test of Yi Mingtang and his wife had just begun.
Due to the scattered places where the children live, and the rugged and bumpy mountain roads are not convenient for carts, it takes a lot of time to pick up and drop off the children every day.
Although Yi Mingtang's brother had no complaints, he delayed the family's farm work because of this, which made his sister-in-law complain a lot.
One day, in order to pick up the children, the water source that the brother had brought from the canal for irrigation was robbed by others, and the two sides quarreled.
After this incident, Yi Mingtang was inconvenient to find his brother to be responsible for the pick-up and drop-off work, and could only find someone else for this chore.
In addition, the biggest headache for Yi Mingtang is the management of children.
These young children are energetic and have a large meal, like to run around and are difficult to discipline.
One day, a little boy named Tuotuo was so angry that he ran away from school because he was misunderstood and stole food.
When everyone found out, the lump was gone.
Yi Mingtang and his family searched all corners of the village and the small river that was prone to accidents, but still found nothing.
When everyone's thoughts were gray, Yi Mingtang suddenly had an epiphany.
He didn't even have time to put on his shoes, so he pedaled on his bicycle like crazy, and hurried to a big tree at the entrance of the village, where he found a lump.
It turned out that when the parents of the original lump left home to work, it was here that they separated from the tuotuo.
They told The Lump that they would be home in a few days.
Since then, the lump has often run to this tree in a daze. It's just that as time passes day by day, he can't wait for his parents to appear...
Running a school is not an easy task, and running a kindergarten is even more difficult.
Yi Mingtang experienced all kinds of dangers and obstacles, and the last straw that crushed him finally arrived.
Li Xiang, who is responsible for teaching music and dance, blames herself for misunderstanding the lump, plus she has figured out her own life direction and decided to study for a teacher training major.
Li Xiang's departure made the operation of the kindergarten more difficult.
Soon, the administrators of the Education Bureau also came and told the kindergarten that it did not meet the norms and must be stopped.
In this way, Yi Mingtang was forced to disband the kindergarten.
On the last day of the school, he sent the children home one by one, and his eyes were full of helplessness and sadness...
"Childhood in the South" is a rough but realistic film.
Although the soundtrack in the film is very full, which becomes a flaw in the film, the whole film is not deliberately sensational.
Many of the plots in the film show the real situation of left-behind children and rural areas.
The mischievous little boy is a lump whose parents are both working in Shenzhen, leaving him and his blind mother-in-law to live alone.
The mother-in-law's own life was difficult to take care of, so she had to give the lump to her relatives and friends to take care of, and the relatives and friends turned around and threw the child to Yi Mingtang.
A child whose parents are not around is kicked around like a leather ball.
The shy little girl Xiuxiu, her mother is working outside the home, and her father pulls her up at home.
When her mother came home after many years, Xiu Xiu did not know her mother nearly, and she was not even willing to call her mother.
To make matters worse, the father has found a new love in his hometown, and the couple has begun to divorce.
Eventually, her mother left her hometown again, her father left home to work in the south, and Xiu Xiu was left to be raised at her uncle's house.
In the case that her aunt does not accept Xiu xiu and is unwilling to take on the responsibility of raising her, her future growth environment can also be imagined.
These left-behind children in the countryside do not understand what part-time work is, do not know where Shenzhen is, and do not understand what is called the south.
When they inquired about Yi Mingtang, Yi Mingtang took them to the top of the village.
He stood on a high place, pointed to another mountain in the distance, and told them:
At the end of the mountain, in Shenzhen, in the south, their parents worked there.
This is also the origin of the title "Childhood in the South".
The group of left-behind children is easily overlooked, but the number cannot be underestimated, as can be seen in one piece of data:
In the process of filming the film, Yi Han once did a survey of a local junior high school.
The data shows that nearly 90 percent of the students' fathers or mothers work in southern China.
According to a report released by the All-China Women's Federation in 2013, there are 61.03 million left-behind children aged 17 and under on the mainland, which is close to the total population of the United Kingdom.
This also means that about one in five children is left behind.
By 2016, that number had reached 68 million, and their living environment and growth status had to be worried.
In recent years, with the emergence of everyone's attention and the emergence of corresponding national policies, the number of left-behind children has shown a downward trend.
However, our attention to this group should not be reduced.
Because of the close association with left-behind children, there are two major problems of child molestation and juvenile delinquency.
According to a 2016 statistical report, rural left-behind children accounted for 75% of the child molestation cases exposed by the media across the country.
Because they live in backward rural areas, these victimized children are more vulnerable to coercion and are unable to report crimes.
They may even not even know that they have been molested because of their lack of sexual knowledge, and the real situation may be far worse than we think.
In addition, according to a report from previous years, the crime rate of left-behind children also accounts for the majority of juvenile crimes.
This proportion is above 70% and has a trend of increasing year by year.
Growing up in a poor environment, lack of education, and the various malice and temptations around them, they are extremely prone to going astray.
And once they commit crimes in adolescence, they will have an indelible impact on their lives.
At the end of the film "Childhood in the South", the director arranged a warm ending for us.
Yi Mingtang took in the unattended Tuotuo and Xiu Xiu, and took on the heavy responsibility of raising and taking care of them.
Daystar Kindergarten received special approval from its superiors and can continue to run in the village, which also allows the audience to see hope at the end of the film.
Childhood is the first stage of growth in everyone's life, and its importance is naturally self-evident.
As the classic summary goes: Some people use childhood to heal a lifetime, and some people use a lifetime to heal childhood.
Thanks to "Childhood in the South" for filming those children who deserve more attention, I also hope that every child can have a happy and happy childhood.
*This article is written by Ah Wei