A test for one Chinese province: How to educate an influx of US-born children

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Christian Science Monitor:

HOUYU VILLAGE, FUJIAN PROVINCE, CHINA

 

A gray marble monument stands at the village’s entrance to document the latest fundraising feat: half a million dollars collected in 2011 to bring the villagers tap water. Donations overwhelmingly are made in dollars, remitted by local sons and daughters who work in America.

 

Elsewhere, plaques and other privately funded community projects – from streetlights to sewer lines – dot the landscape. And villa-style mansions with marble pillars now tower over mustard-colored brick shacks.

 

The mansions’ inhabitants are mostly the elderly and their grandchildren. While China’s countryside is teeming with such families as working-age adults migrate to cities in search of higher wages, the difference here is that many of the children are Americans by birth. They are known as yang liu shou er tong, or “left-behind foreign kids.”