University students line up in central Chongqing on January 25, to offer private coaching services. Their signs read: Winter vocation coaching for maths, chemistry and physics. (Photo: Chinadaily.com)

In late-January, the campus of China Petroleum University was already beginning to wear a gray look. The leaves on trees had gone and so had most of the students, who were heading home for Spring Festival the most important time of the year for family reunions.

But Tang Jiaguo had chosen to stay behind, and for good reason.

The hard-up 20-year-old business management sophomore was waiting for part-time job offers, hoping to earn money to offset the cost of his education. Going home to spend time with his parents and his two sisters was something he just could not afford.

Tang's home is deep inside the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. To save on travel costs, he has to take slow trains, sitting on a hard seat for three days and nights assuming traffic conditions are good.

"I am OK with the travel, it's just that if I go home, I will lose the opportunity to earn some money," Tang said, as he walked out of the library, wearing a dark-green donated overcoat.

Tang believes in an old Chinese proverb which says that if a couple is impoverished, almost everything in the household is sad. "I can go home, but there are so many worries. The family is deep in debt to pay for my sisters' education, and I have my own living expenses in the next semester to worry about," he said.

According to the China Foundation of Poverty Alleviation, there are around 7,000 poor students in Beijing's 14 universities who cannot make it home for the Lunar New Year. Some are deterred by the cost of travel, while many others have to work during the holidays to support themselves and, sometimes, their families.

The foundation recently polled 2,790 poor college students who chose to stay in Beijing and found that 77 percent of the respondents actually "deeply miss the family and would love to go home for a family reunion".

"Most of my classmates can be with their families and talk to their friends at home, but I am stuck alone in Beijing. It's really depressing," said Hei Zhilin, who entered China Petroleum University last summer from a village in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in Northwest China.

A parent talks with a university student about the tutor services he could provide for her child in central Chongqing. (Photo: Chinadaily.com)

But the robust 22-year-old Muslim student said he had to stay to work. His family in Ningxia his parents and three younger sisters relies on 0.46 hectares of cornfield, which yields an annual income of less than 3,000 yuan (380 U.S. dollars).

Hei's tuition fee is around 5,000 yuan (640 dollars) a year, excluding the expenditure on food and boarding. Though he has taken loans to cover the majority of the cost, Hei said he had to earn enough money to ensure he did not ask for more financial support from the family in the next three years.

The survey also found that 35 percent of the polled students couldn't afford a ticket home. And around 70 percent said they would seek part-time jobs.

A month before the Lunar New Year, which falls on Feb. 18 this year, railway tickets were already hard to get as millions of college students and migrant workers prepared to hit the road. Airline companies too have started canceling discounts.

While some poor students long for a family reunion, for many urban kids, the holiday is just another time to be spoiled.

According to tradition, kids are supposed to be attired head to foot in new clothes, eat magnificent meals and receive "red envelopes" (hongbao) containing money from the elderly. It is not uncommon for kids from well-to-do families to receive thousands of yuan.

In the survey, most of the respondents said their monthly expenses were between 200-300 yuan (26-38 dollars). But Tang said in his university there were many rich students whose monthly expenses reach thousands of yuan, even though the school is located on the outskirts of Beijing, a two-hour drive from downtown.

China's expanding wealth gap has started to ooze into school life. For those who come from the countryside and mix with their rich urban classmates, it can be tough, said Zhuang Zenan, a postgraduate student of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, who comes from the booming coastal city of Xiamen in East China's Fujian Province.

"It is really sad to know classmates around you are too poor to go home at an important time like Spring Festival," he said, adding that such cases were not rare in his undergraduate class.

"The fact that they can't live like most people around is a big problem in China's schools. The concept of equality is on shaky ground," he said.

Even though many impoverished college students miss out on family gatherings, and even though they suffer disappointment and encounter dishonesty in their part-time jobs, they are nevertheless seen as their family's best chance to escape the poverty trap, said education experts.

Hei was the first person to enter a university from his home village in Ningxia. He said most of his high school classmates who failed the college entrance exam were preparing to take the exam again this year.

The reason was simple, Hei said. "Before entering university, I once worked at a construction site in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, earning less than 40 yuan (5 dollars) a day for 12 hours of outdoor toil, but now as a part-time tutor I earn 30 yuan (4 dollars) per hour teaching middle school maths."

"I want my parents to live an easier and better life," he said.

"Life has toughened me up, and I believe I can make a difference," said Tang, who wants to return to Xinjiang after graduation and find a job in an oil company.

"There is nothing wrong with being born poor, but wanting to stay poor is stupid, especially for young people."

Editor: Wing