...Tales of Two Cities: Kindergarten Crunch hits Migrant Parents Over the years, Liu Bo and his wife firmly believe that a happy life must a family of three people. Now he can still cherish his memory of the day when his baby girl was born. It was not long before this Hunan migrant family was full of confidence to start a new life in the metropolis of Guangzhou. All of sudden, the problem came here. Kindergarten crunch, a phenomenon happens in big Chinese cities where the scarcities of preschool places trigger record fees and has parents scrambling. The crunch first happened in a few state-owned kindergartens, and then on to many more private kindergartens, now some cottage nurseries are overcrowded. And it costs more to send a child to kindergarten today than it does to put him or her through state college. No More Children are allowed For Liu Bo, a migrant worker who runs a sidewalk snack booth in Chisha Village, Haizhu district, Guangzhou. And Yangyang, his three-years-old girl at the preschool age, there isn’t a suitable kindergarten for them in the village. “Not until my wife went to pick up our child from kindergarten and found worms and pebbles in their food twice,” Liu, cradling his girl, said. “I sent my child to the Chi Sha Kindergarten nearby, which was started by private organizers. The next day I took her home.” As a village inside a city, Chisha, not so long ago became an inhabitation where...
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