AN 8-year-old girl ran away from her parents on the afternoon of Christmas Eve in Nanshan District after her mother criticized her for behaving badly while learning to play the violin in the morning and her recent bad performance in her studies.

    Luckily for the parents, they found the girl at a bookstore near their home at 10:10 p.m. Saturday night with the help of the police.

    The mother, known as Chen, admitted that she had yelled at her daughter while walking on the street before the girl walked away from her.

    The girl’s academic performance had been declining over the last two months and the mother was telling the girl not to chat so much during class, according to Chen.

    “She was not paying attention when learning to play the violin this morning and I told her she had better be more focused because I would check on her, but she did not respond to me and it pissed me off, so I yelled at her,” said the mother. “I said ‘if you still behave like this, you should quit school and go away.’”

    Chen went to the bathroom after yelling at her daughter and when she returned, the girl was nowhere to be found, and she hadn’t brought any communication devices with her.

    The girl was wearing a cream-colored short jacket, red boots and pink glasses that day.

    The father spotted the girl on a surveillance camera wandering around the housing estate where they live between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m., and after searching for several hours, the parents eventually found the girl at the bookstore later Saturday night.

    (Zhang Qian)