Just an ice water, please

Children of migrant workers attend school in suburban Beijing: Will they have spare beer money in college?

This is one of a series of letters written in the years 2002 to 2006 to a foreign advice columnist at 21st Century, an English newspaper published weekly by the China Daily.

Studious undergraduates from China’s countryside can seldom afford the notebook computers, designer mobile phones and dreams of graduate school that their more moneyed urban peers have counted on for years. Rural parents might have saved up the minimum undergraduate tuition for a child’s entire lifetime, sometimes at the expense of their own health care. No wonder college students from rural China feel intense pressure to repay elders as soon as possible by sending money back to the family from a lucrative career job right out of school. Here’s what can happen when rich and poor classmates go to dinner:

Dear Ralph,

I’m a freshman at a university in Nanjing. Recently, some of my roommates’ parents went to see them with a lot of new clothes and food. Then they invited our whole dormitory to have meals. I’ve attended three such meals. My parents are both (blue-collar) workers, and they hardly have holidays, even during festivals. Besides, my home is not very rich compared to those of my roommates. It would cost a lot for them to come to my university even once. So I didn’t slip even a word to my parents. But I do feel guilt, and I hope I can invite my roommates as they have invited me. What can I do?

Liu Yan, Jiangsu province

November 2001