Cross-border students return to Shenzhen from their schools in Hong Kong via Luohu Checkpoint on Monday. Sun Yuchen
After three years’ separation from his teachers and classmates in Hong Kong, fifth-grader Guan Yezhen from the mainland was finally able to restart school life on the other side of the border, thanks to the resumption of quarantine-free travel between Shenzhen and Hong Kong.
Guan was among the early birds of cross-border children to start the new term a week ago. He woke up at 6:20 a.m., left home at 6:50 a.m. and started morning reading at 7:45 a.m. at the Lam Tsuen Public Wong Fook Leun Memorial School.
“In three years, we had experienced a lot in the bitter struggle against COVID-19. Many children became near-sighted due to online classes and also became isolated from others as they had no classmates to play with,” Guan’s mother, surnamed Gong, told Shenzhen Daily yesterday.
For the start of the new semester, Gong helped her son make preparations and even accompanied him in Hong Kong the whole day.
Border-crossing is now more convenient after nucleic acid testing requirements have been scrapped since Monday. Gong was happy to see that Futian Checkpoint has opened a special passage for cross-border children and hoped that the Hong Kong side would also open a special passage as soon as possible. This would save her 5-10 minutes at both borders.
“The children are required to declare their health condition through an app for customs, and it is not very handy for young children,” Gong said, adding that she hoped the health declaration requirements for children would be canceled.
Cross-border children refer to children with the right of abode in Hong Kong, but are residing on the mainland and studying in Hong Kong. Around 27,000 cross-border children go between Shenzhen and Hong Kong in a day. Among them, approximately one-third cross through Luohu Checkpoint.
At Luohu Checkpoint, a woman surnamed Li accompanied her 12-year-old daughter to the border Monday, the first day of the full resumption of border crossing between the two cities.
“I don’t need to accompany her to the other side of the border as she could handle the health declaration herself,” Li said.
“Over the past three years, she had lost her campus life, and become near-sighted for taking online classes for a long time,” Li said, hoping the new campus life could revive her daughter’s happy personality.