The story of a two-year-old girl in China who thought her border-guard father lived inside a surveillance camera has triggered an emotional reaction on mainland social media.
For about 300 days a year, Xuanxuan, who lives with her mother in central China’s Henan province, cannot be with her father, Wan Xuelong, because he is on duty in Yunnan province. southwestern China.
Instead, she talks to him through the surveillance camera installed in the yard of their rural home, which has a speaker and microphone.
Xuanxuan has become accustomed to talking to her father every day via the camera.
In video footage filmed by her mother, Xuanxuan can be seen running towards the camera shouting “daddy”, and telling him she wants a gift of the character Princess Elsa from the Disney film Frozen for her birthday.
On another day, Wan asks her via the camera, if her cough is better, and if she is afraid of needles. She answers “yes” to both questions.
The one heartbreaking question Xuanxuan most frequently asks via the camera is: “When will you be back?”
Her father tells her to be a good girl and listen to her mother, and that he will return home soon.
Wan is a border guard in Yunnan’s Xishuangbanna Dai autonomous prefecture, which borders Myanmar and Laos.
It is a potentially dangerous job as the responsibilities include watching and stopping the transport of illegal drugs.
He has been in the job for 12 years, and was awarded three third-class merit citations. He is a top sniper in the prefecture.
Wan says Xuanxuan thinks he lives in the surveillance camera, and will speak to it whenever she misses him.
“We live such a safe and stable life because some people are carrying the burden for us,” one person said on Weibo.
“It would be good if the border guards could be given more annual leave to get together with their family,” said another.
Xuanxuan’s story has resonated with other parents who work in different cities from their children.
A mother from southern China’s Guangdong province, said she and her husband, who work in the city away from their one-year-old son and their family who live in a rural area, used to talk to their son via the surveillance camera.
She said they once asked him, where daddy and mummy were, and he pointed at the camera. They then decided to take the three-hour train journey home every weekend to be with him.
The mainland had nine million so-called left-behind children in 2022, according to the 2023 China Rural Education Development Report by the China Foundation for Rural Development.
The number showed a significant decline from 22 million in 2012, after the introduction of policy solutions that increase migrant children’s medical care and education opportunities in cities.
