Profile in courage: A teenager who lives by herself

Fan Xiaohui, 15, is among the 4 percent of 9 million "left-behind" children in China who are deprived of adult supervision by a close family member on a daily basis.[Photo by Zhu Lixin/China Daily]

Fan Xiaohui's mother mostly manages to reach her daughter over phone but the same can't be said of Fan. There are times when Fan's calls to her mother go answered because her parents work at a supermarket in Beijing and she lives in Taihe county in the outskirts of Fuyang, a large city in Anhui province.

The 15-year-old, who has been living here since the past three years, is among the 4 percent of 9 million "left-behind" children in China who are deprived of adult supervision by a close family member on a daily basis. Theirs is a story of heartbreaking reality.

Some sociologists argue that the percentage of such children is lesser than what estimates show, but these cases even if in the minority, are of grave societal concern.

While she understands her mother's inability to receive phone calls at work, or the fact that her parents and a 10-year-old brother live in a crammed room in the capital's Haidian district, Fan is working hard to cope with the psychological fallout from the family's decision to send her to Fuyang to continue her school education.

The bespectacled girl, whose bright smile seldom betrays her pain, was born in Huzong village in the same county. When she was aged 3, her parents, now both in their late 30s, migrated to Beijing along with her. There she studied for a few years in a school for the children of migrant workers but eventually her parents realized Fan needed better access to resources that her hometown could provide.

She was then enrolled into the Central School of Huzong Township in Fuyang.

In China, migrant workers aren't often able to send their children to schools of their choosing in host cities because of the household registration system or hukou.

A reform of the system has been urged by many and could be expected in the long term.

Fan lives in a furnished apartment that belongs to a relative who only occasionally stays in it.