Shenzhen delivery driver Yang Zhijie has been posting videos about street wanderers on social media for many years, with one particular video of a homeless mother and daughter drawing significant attention.
The video shows that the homeless mother and daughter live on the streets or in parks in Shenzhen, laying down cardboard on the ground and surrounding themselves with collected garbage such as discarded plastic bottles to create a makeshift shelter.
According to Yang Zhijie, both the mother and daughter are undocumented residents, without household registration or identification. They have been wandering in cities like Guangzhou and Shenzhen for over a decade. It was later revealed by internet users that the girl’s mother is Vietnamese, and the girl was brought over from Vietnam as well. The girl’s mother married a Chinese man, gave birth to a son, and was later sold to Fujian. Then, in 1993, she was abducted to Ling Mountain in Guangzhou and has been without a home since then.
Yang Zhijie mentioned that the girl’s mother is mentally unstable, and the girl has been wandering with her mother since she was a child and is now 18 years old. Due to lack of household registration, they cannot rent a place to live or attend school. They rely on the girl’s mother collecting and selling scrap materials for a living. Years ago, while delivering food, Yang Zhijie encountered this mother and daughter, and since then has regularly supported them by buying food, clothes, shoes, and other items.
Yang Zhijie, a migrant worker who has been delivering food in Shenzhen for 8 years, only earns enough money to rent a single room in a village within the city. Recently, he brought this mother and daughter to his small rented room, where the three of them crowded into a 10-square-meter space. However, after only 10 days, the mother and daughter returned to the streets of Guangzhou. Regarding this, in a video on March 2, Yang Zhijie also expressed that they felt uncomfortable living there, so they returned to the roadside.
Yang Zhijie stated that his reason for continuously filming videos of this homeless mother-daughter pair is to hope that kind-hearted people can adopt the girl, get her registered, find her a job, and live a normal life. She is already an adult and he does not want to see her continuing to wander the streets with her mother.
The video has sparked attention online. Some netizens expressed, “Where are the community rescue department officials? It has been so many years.” “There are homeless people sleeping outside the entrance of Guangzhou Tianhe Nan Party and Mass Service Center at night, where are the authorities? If they don’t even take care of those right at the door, what can we expect?”
According to previous reports, in China, “black households” without household registration are excluded from the Communist Party’s household registration system due to various reasons such as exceeding birth limits. They are unable to attend school, work, seek medical treatment, take trains, enter public places, lack basic survival guarantees, do not have access to social welfare and benefits, and are unable to enjoy social security protections due to their lack of identification.