A Day of Song Juan, forgotten angel in photos (5)

（People's Daily Online）  08:18, March 22, 2013  

Just like the girl in today’s story, some children who are not orphans, however, grow up without parental care and love. They have to deal with all problems of life by themselves. For them, the memory of childhood would be frustrations and tribulations of life.

Song Juan, a 10-year-old girl, whose father died of leukemia and mother remarried, lives with her grandfather in a small and shabby home in the rural area of Pingyi, east China’s Shandong province. Song’s grandfather, 90 , is too old to take care of himself. The two scrape along with the aid of relatives and neighbors.

According to local authority, the government assistance for orphans is about a 1,000 yuan per month (161 USD), which Song is not qualified for because she doesn’t meet the definition of orphan set by government. Her mother is remarried, yet alive. It turns out that it is a folk custom in rural area that remarried women have to give up her children of earlier marriage. Song becomes a forgotten angle since then.