Faced with the fact that the family yearly income was less than 2,000 yuan (293 U.S. dollars) in cash, Fang's mother Xie Kui'e made the difficult, practical, but heart-breaking choice between attending her two sons and earning more money for the family.

Though she insists that she has never regretted her decision, her eyes turn red when she recalls the scene the day she left home for the first time in 1997.

"Zhiqian cried and went to lay on the ground, holding my legs and yelling 'don't go'. I managed to release myself from his arms. I ran out of the house, starting to cry," Xie recalls.

"Of course I worried that the boys would not behave when we were not around. But if we didn't leave, they might not have enough food, let alone the money for going to school."

For Zhiqian, it was hard to adapt the life of being a left-behind child. He remembers clearly the day a classmate gave him the "special title" for the first time when he was at the third grade.

"I was scared. I thought it meant that my parents were dead and I had become an orphan. I punched the boy," says Fang.

The Fang couple found a few means to maintain the connection to their boys, except for a phone call every 10 days. During the regular 30-minute conversation, they mainly talk about the children's study. Their sons' inner thoughts, however, remain unfamiliar territory, which they seldom try to explore.

The Fang couple hoped that the sons would be mature enough to understand their leaving was for the best. They thought it would also sharpen the boys' independence, but Zhiqian was still young and believed that love comes from their parents' caring all the time.

"My brother and I often asked them on the phone when they would come home. They usually repeated that we would be letting them down if we didn't study hard," complains Zhiqian. "They rarely asked how we felt about their leaving."

Xie Kui'e is ashamed that her sons see her as neglectful and uncaring. She suffered the pain of "irresponsible mother" guilt when her sons often mistakenly called her "granny" as they spent their first summer vacation with them in Zhejiang.

"But what can I do? Other children in our village live the same life," says Xie.

The Fang brothers are now both spending their last year at the Luoshan High School and preparing for the college entrance examination in June of 2010. They board at school and have one day off to see their grandparents some 90-minute ride away.