From the Los Angeles Times:
As capitalism transforms this nominally communist nation, it has quietly reshaped the lives of China’s rural young, creating a new underclass called liu shou er tong, or the “left-behind children.” An entire generation is growing up without parents in deserted villages populated mostly by the very young and elderly.
Here in Sichuan province, in this cluster of villages that make up Qingshen town, cornstalks and bamboo groves shadow abandoned country roads and barnyard animals haunt empty farmhouses. [Full text]