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New life for hapless kids

By Wang Ru (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-10-16 09:25

Li, a 10-year-old boy, stares intently at the clay he is molding. Ten minutes later, his face flushed with excitement, Li raises his arm to show off his work: a Beijing Olympic torch.

"Again a torch? I will make a sunflower this time, much better than yours," reacts his neighbor, 8-year-old Zeng.

The whole class bursts into laughter.

Street children sing and dance at the Changsha protection Center in Central China's Hunan province. [China Daily]

Just four months ago, Zeng escaped from her adoptive parents who abused her and forced her to do circus acts on the streets in East China's Jiangxi province.

When Zeng was 5, her father abandoned her after her stepmother had a baby. She was given to a couple and brought to Jiangxi.

This couple only adopted her to exploit her as a bread winner. They trained Zeng to do acrobatics and treated her like a circus animal.

For two months after she escaped this hell, Zeng performed on the streets to beg and slept at bus stations.

When she wandered back to Changsha in Hunan province, where she was born and abandoned, a policeman found her and sent her to the Changsha Street Children Protection Center.

Located in the center of town, this three-story building now houses 20 children aged between 5 and 16, who are placed under the care of seven supervisors and volunteer teachers like Yang Zhang.

"Good job, Li! Let's see who will make the best model today!" Yang says after listening to the exchange between Zeng and Li. He comes to teach the children art every week.

"Children love the art classes," says Yang. "As they shape clay, they forget their bad experiences for just a while."

For street children like Zeng, the protection center is not only a temporary refuge, but a place to reclaim a lost innocence.

The children are up at 6:30 every morning and first clean their dorms. At 7:30, they line up and sing the newest song they have learnt before heading to breakfast.

"We want to give their lives some structure to help them overcome the habits of the street, such as fighting, stealing and lying," says Xiao Zhengcai, a 32-year-old former army commander, assigned in 2006 by the local civil affairs administration to take charge of the center.

"Children are naturally nave and happy, but not street children. They often show the hardened habits of adults," he says.

"The streets make them mean. If left on the streets for long, they will eventually turn to crime."

Wang Ying, 30, began working at the center two years ago and is like a mother to the children.

"These children can never be left alone. Every one of them has a heartbreaking story that affects their emotional stability and behavior," says Wang.

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