The mother was the first to leave. Perhaps it was domestic abuse that drove her away. Or perhaps it was simply the hopelessness in Cizhu, a village in Guizhou, one of China’s poorest provinces.

One way or another, Ren Xifen abandoned home in 2013. Her husband, Zhang Fangqi, walked out shortly afterward to find work.

They left behind more than a broken marriage, however. Cooped up inside the dusty house were four children, ages 5 to 13. Without their parents, the four siblings would have to fend for themselves.

They didn’t last long.

For two years, the boy and his three younger sisters survived on little more than corn flour, according to one Chinese newspaper. Abandoned by their parents, the children’s personalities changed. They shut themselves inside the cluttered house and refused to open the door even to visiting relatives, the New York Times reported. About a month ago, the kids stopped going to school.

When the doors finally did open on Tuesday, tragedy came tumbling out.

At about 11 p.m., a passerby found the oldest child sprawled out in front of the family’s house, suffering convulsions, according to Agence France-Presse. Neighbors soon found the other three siblings in similar conditions nearby. All four eventually died.

The four children drank pesticide in an apparent suicide pact, Chinese state media reported.

“Thanks for your kindness. I know you mean well for us, but we should go now,” read a note left inside the home, according to the Guardian, citing Xinhua, China’s official news agency.

“I made a vow that I wouldn’t live over the age of 15,” the note reportedly said. “I’m 14 now. I dream about death, and yet that dream never comes true. Today it must finally come true.”

[In China, one in five children live in villages without their parents]

Chinese police told Xinhua that they had analyzed the handwriting to determine that the boy had written the note, according to the Guardian.

The horrific child suicides have provoked criticism of the absent parents.

“The children did not lack food and clothes, but lacked the love and care of parents,” Xiao Wenying, a distant relative, said. “The parents failed to fulfill their parental responsibilities.”


Popular outrage has been checked, however, by how widespread the practice is in China of parents leaving their children at home while working in distant cities.

China has about 250 million migrant workers, most of whom are drawn from rural villages like Cizhu to mega cities where they can find manufacturing jobs, William Wan wrote in The Washington Post in 2013. Strict government rules and a shortage of schools in big cities mean that many parents leave their kids with grandparents or on their own.

There are roughly 61 million of these “left-behind children,” according to a 2010 China census. More than a third of all kids in rural China live without their parents. Nationwide, nearly 22 percent of Chinese kids have been left behind.

Debate rages over the costs and benefits of this system. “Many migrant parents believe they are fulfilling their duty to raise their family’s standard of living. Income sent home helps pay for better food and education, and some workers save enough money to build a new home in their rural village,” the Wall Street Journal noted in an article on left-behind children last year.

“Parents of left-behind children do not leave them without a careful consideration of the options they have available to them,” noted a 2011 dissertation by Wei Lu.

But “their absence forces children to shoulder the responsibilities of running a household,” the Wall Street Journal also noted. And Wei found that left-behind children performed poorly in school. “The drop in school performance could be the result of lack of supervision, additional housework duties, or the distracted attention of children caused by missing their parents,” Wei wrote. “The impact of their parents’ absence can affect children’s educational achievement either directly or indirectly.”

So sad. I don tire for all this bad news o. Me I dont even know the reason for creation in the first place.

I feel like crying lots of married couples are begging God, some are even going to babalawo for children, yet these ones have, buh they jx neglect them to the point of the kids committing suicide. smh