Profile in courage: A teenager who lives by herself

Fan Xiaohui's mother mostly manages to reach her daughter over phone but the same can't be said of Fan. There are times when Fan's calls to her mother go answered because her parents work at a supermarket in Beijing and she lives in Taihe county in the outskirts of Fuyang, a large city in Anhui province.

The 15-year-old, who has been living here since the past three years, is among the 4 percent of 9 million "left-behind" children in China who are deprived of adult supervision by a close family member on a daily basis. Theirs is a story of heartbreaking reality.

Some sociologists argue that the percentage of such children is lesser than what estimates show, but these cases even if in the minority, are of grave societal concern.