‘Everything I did was for him’: a Chinese migrant worker’s haunting Lunar New Year regret
A migrant worker who decided to stay on at his job over the Lunar New Year to earn extra money for his son’s education said he deeply regretted the decision after the boy had died over the holiday in central China.
“Everything I did was for my child,” the tearful father said in footage released on Pear Video.
“If I had known this would happen, I would definitely have come back for the Lunar New Year to spend time with him.”
The 13-year-old boy, who lived in Yichuan county, Henan province, went missing after going outside to play on Friday night.
When he had not returned by 9pm, the family went looking for him.
They found him unconscious, lying in the road next to a garbage truck and covered in blood, Pear Video reported on Wednesday.
The boy was rushed to hospital but died on Tuesday.
The father, a security guard, said he had planned to work through the holiday to earn more money to cover his son’s education costs.
“Everything I’ve given in the past 13 years, material or spiritual, has now vanished,” the father was quoted as saying. “All my hopes have been shattered.”
The report did not say where the father worked.
Police had launched an investigation into the hit-and-run case, it said.
The boy’s uncle said travel costs were a factor in the father’s decision to pass up an opportunity to return home for the holiday.
“Travelling all the way home would also take a lot of time,” the uncle said. “It’s not easy to get back.
“By continuing to work through the Lunar New Year, he would earn them more money.”
The boy was one of an estimated 60 million children in China’s rural villages who have been left in the care of relatives by parents who have headed for cities to search for work.
The youngsters’ lack of proper care has been cited as a reason for numerous mishaps related to mental health and physical hardships, including the suicide three years ago of four siblings in impoverished Guizhou province.
