Two Families--but No Place to Call Home

She still wants to run away. But her little body is held back by an iron chain formerly used to restrain the family dog. The chain wraps around her left ankle, travels up her pant leg and dangles between her waist and a bolted lock on the wall.

Her biological mother in this remote mountain village in Sichuan province does this out of desperation. She doesn’t know how else to stop the 12-year-old from escaping to the city.

“Even if you kill me, I still don’t want to be here,” the girl told visitors last month as she perched on the doorstep like a wounded animal.

Why she is here--and why she doesn’t want to be--is the story of one troubled and troublesome Chinese girl’s effort to fight her fate. It also shows the limits of a new law designed to reduce crimes committed by children.

Zhong Min, or Xiaomin for short, grew up in the provincial capital, Chengdu, with adoptive parents. She rejected them when she found out that she was adopted. But after a taste of life in the country, she decided she would rather sleep in the city’s video arcades and survive on handouts from bar girls than live in this backward village where she was born.

Few in the bustling provincial capital of 9 million people would have cared about Xiaomin--until the girl attracted police and media attention after heisting about $10,000 from a seafood market. She was caught carrying a backpack stuffed with large bills while buying new clothes and an expensive cell phone.

Crime committed by young children was relatively rare during the early years of Communist rule. But dramatic social changes during two decades of economic reforms have brought it back, forcing the country to find new means to slow its growth.

Although no official data exist, juvenile cases are estimated to account for at least 10% of all crimes, said Nan Shan, a researcher with the Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences. But no charges can be filed against children younger than 14.

So, instead of allowing them to get off scot-free, a law put in effect in November by the national government now targets parents: They can be ordered by the state to take responsibility for and discipline any offspring younger than 14 who have committed a crime.

The law does not spell out punishment for the parents who fail; but in a society where state power is widely feared, it is considered a powerful inducement for forcing parental action.

Government Compels Control of Children

Xiaomin’s biological mother and father are the first to be held responsible for their child under the law: They were reprimanded for not doing enough to control their daughter’s behavior.

But the rural couple claim that they have no idea how to tame a city child they barely know.

Xiaomin, in fact, is an outlaw by birth.

Although the government officially limits Chinese urbanites to one child per family, it permits couples in certain rural areas to have two children. But Xiaomin was born the third of three daughters, an “excess” child. To avoid stiff fines, her parents asked a relative to secretly find the child a home in the city.

The desire to produce a male heir drove Xiaomin’s parents, Li Jun and Wang Huiying, to gamble a fourth time. Another daughter was born. This time, despite the possibility of fines, they kept the infant. Heavy farm work demands as many hands as possible.

Zhong Jiaxiang and his wife in Chengdu could not bear children. They were told that an 80-day-old infant had been abandoned under a bridge. Not knowing that Xiaomin’s parents were still alive, the couple took her in. Xiaomin grew up thinking that they were her only parents.

But Xiaomin’s Cinderella life ended before she turned 8. The kind woman who adopted her died of an incurable illness. Her adoptive father took a second wife, who bore him a son. Xiaomin’s status instantly dropped from princess to, once again, excess.

Her transformation after her brother’s birth was sad to watch, neighbors say.

“She told me her stepmother would save all the good food for her brother,” said Zhuang Shufen, 66, who lived near Xiaomin’s former apartment in Chengdu. “She was always hungry, so she developed a bad habit of snatching other people’s money to satisfy her own cravings.”

Physical abuse was the typical response to her worsening behavior, according to the neighbors. Once, her stepmother grabbed her by the head and yanked it against the water faucet, they say.

But her adoptive parents tell a different story.

“If we were bad to her, why does she keep running back?” asked the stepmother, who refused to give her name. She is a former rural woman herself who now runs a modest noodle shop with her husband, a former electrician.

According to the adoptive father, his second wife was no more abusive to Xiaomin than would be any other Chinese parent who rightfully disciplines his or her children. Most important, he said, he never intended to eject the girl from the family.

It was Xiaomin who, at 9, severed her relationship with her city parents after discovering through a neighbor that she was adopted.

“Before she was told about her biological parents, she was very well behaved,” said Zhong, her adoptive father. “Ever since she found out, she refused to listen to us anymore. She’d always say: ‘You can’t tell me what to do. You are not my biological parents!’ ”

Cutting school, stealing bicycles and picking pockets became Xiaomin’s new talents, her city parents and neighbors say.

Girl Convinces Court Adoption Was Illegal

Then Xiaomin learned that she could take her adoptive parents to court and legally dissolve the relationship. A child with living parents who are known is not allowed to be legally adopted by another family.

Showing an unusual gift for manipulating adult emotions, Xiaomin made up words to a popular tune and sang them in court: “My mother doesn’t want me. My father doesn’t want me. The world is so big. Where is my home?”

Moved by her plea, the judge sent her back to her biological parents in this lush mountain village, whose name--Huanxi--means happiness.

Instead, what she found here was an awkward new identity as “Li No. 3,” because she is the third child from the Li family. She had to cut grass to feed the family pigs, start the fire with straws to cook dinner, wash clothes with mountain water flowing to the house through a halved stalk of bamboo.

Her sisters’ angelic personalities contrast vividly with hers. Two of the girls willingly take the long hike to school each day and do farm work without complaint. Her father and eldest sister are migrant workers who are almost never home. Her mother is a stranger who toils in the field and raises three girls and 11 pigs in virtual silence.

The dream of homecoming soon turned into all-consuming regret.

“I don’t want to eat because she chained me up like a dog,” she told the recent visitors in a grainy whisper that belied her fighting spirit.

Family members had left her chained for the day while they went to school or the fields. A pile of her siblings’ used textbooks and homework papers was all that was within her reach.

Her mother wanted her to go to school but can’t afford to take any more chances. In the past, Xiaomin tried to escape, sometimes taking her classmates’ or teacher’s pocket money with her.

She even stole the family’s last $11 to use for bus and cab fare to the city a few months ago. On the way, she climbed over walls, fell down hills and used her urban accent to pretend that she had been accidentally separated from her city family.

Nobody knows how many times the girl has made the journey between the two different worlds. She only reluctantly came back to the village early this year after a Chengdu television crew promised to help her get back to the city when she is old enough.

So she waits, looking deceptively subdued. The notebook in her hand has one phrase written in it: “I have a younger brother.” The wall to which she is chained has graffiti written upon it with blue ink: “I don’t like it” and “I want to leave.”

Her relatives have had enough of her change of heart. Others, however, can’t help feeling for her.

“She has lived in the city. . . . It’s impossible for her to adjust to life in the country,” said Zhuang, the neighbor in Chengdu.

When she does reach the city, it shows no more mercy to a homeless child. She no longer dares visit most people she knows, because they urge her to return to the village. Instead, she depends on the kindness of strangers. Call girls, vendors and department store clerks have become her godmothers and big sisters. Bars and discos with names like Spice Girl and Midnight are her havens. Chairs in the all-night movies and video arcades double as makeshift beds.

“She told us her parents are dead, she’s being raised by a sister who is a hostess at a bar. But each time, her story is a little different,” said a clerk at a fashionable makeup counter in Chengdu. “Lots of girls felt sorry for her and bought her clothes and food.”

‘It Was Wrong That She Was Born’

On one occasion, Xiaomin’s city parents caught up with her and told her to go back to Huanxi. She responded by threatening to jump off a highway ramp. They let her be.

“It was wrong that she was born, wrong that she was given away and wrong that she was told about her biological parents,” said her angry stepmother, who refuses to let her husband consider taking the child back.

Some who want to help her have suggested eventually putting her in a boarding school. But they do so with mixed feelings because, in China, such facilities are more like reform schools. And Xiaomin won’t qualify until she’s 14.

The future seems so far away to a child who can’t walk more than five feet without being held back by a rusting chain.

“What can I do when I grow up, clean toilets?” she asked. “You need a primary education for that. I don’t have a primary education, so I can’t even clean toilets.”

But she is skilled at tugging heartstrings. Recently, she changed her song, hoping that somebody would listen and save her:

“The city is so big. Where is my home? I feel abandoned and all alone. Daddy, Mommy, I want to go home. Please take me back.”