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Riches don't reach everyone and some need 'blood money'
Source: Xinhua |
September 28, 2010, Tuesday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
TO raise their four children, the last thing of value the couple had left to sell was their blood.
"We have been selling blood for five years," said Lu Yunjie from Xinfei Village of Weining Yi Hui and Miao Autonomous County in southwest China's Guizhou Province.
Lu is 37, but her sun-tanned face appears much older. The couple's four children are all at primary school, two in junior middle school and one in senior middle school.
In their adobe house, there's only a cupboard, a table, two sofas and a black-and-white television in the living room and a bed in the bedroom - their clothes are piled up in a corner - they sold the wardrobes.
They receive 900 yuan (about US$132) a year as a basic living allowance from the local government. Lu grows corn and buckwheat at home for food, and her husband looks for work in the neighboring town. When he can find work, he earns 10 to 30 yuan a day. But this doesn't happen every day.
Each month he sells his blood twice, earning a total of 240 yuan.
"With this money, we can buy 25 kilograms of rice, two packs of salt, a kilogram of pepper, and a bag of washing powder. The rest is used for transport and electricity bills," Lu says, counting on her fingers.
According to Wang Xian, head of the Xinfei Village, the population of the village is 1,770. Land in the village is arid and more than 700 people don't have any arable land. Without a road, many villagers have to trek five kilometers to get drinking water. "Lu's family is not alone," he said. "More than 200 people in our village live on blood selling."
The blood collection business saw its peak at the end of 1980s and the beginning of 1990s.
Back then, to help donors recover quickly so they could soon sell blood again, the "blood heads" pooled all the donated blood, spun it through a centrifuge to separate out the plasma, then pumped the residue back into the donors' bodies. This resulted in the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS among farmers in central China.
Blood selling was officially banned in 1998 when the Law of Blood Donation was enacted. The law stipulates that a donor can give no more than 400 milliliters of blood at one time and must wait for at least half a year to donate again.
But the requirement for donating plasma is more lax. People can still donate regularly as long as their blood is not pooled together.
In the Yunxian County of Hubei Province, people can see a boat on the Hanshui River, which farmers call the "blood ship." It transports farmers to a plasma collection station to "donate."
Each time a farmer can sell 600 cubic centimeters to get 160 yuan as a "nutrition fee" and eight yuan to cover transport.
Although the needle used in the station is "as thick as one to give injections to cattle" and the sight of it makes her dizzy, 52-year-old Gao Congfen still chooses to board the boat. Her son was able to attend a senior middle school in 2000 when Gao started to sell blood. When he went to college, the tuition was 5,000 yuan a year, so his mother continued selling blood. "I thought that we could stop the business when he graduated. But he didn't find a job," the woman complained.
Although China's economy, ranking second in the world, has been described as a "miracle," poverty is widespread.
The country has a staggering 150 million people living below the United Nations' poverty line of US$1 a day, according to China' National Development and Reform Commission. That number is larger than the entire population of Japan.
In the remote Songtao Miao Autonomous County of Guizhou Province, villagers' average per capita annual income is barely 400 yuan; some villagers are so poor that they risk making and selling illegal weapons. A police officer told Xinhua on a condition of anonymity that "we shed tears sometimes while nabbing the suspects ... They are just too poor."
"A man we caught selling guns was called Luo Qiang, whose extended family of 16 were squeezed in a shack of around 10 square meters in size. His youngest kid died of illness because they couldn't afford a hospital," the policeman said.
"We have been selling blood for five years," said Lu Yunjie from Xinfei Village of Weining Yi Hui and Miao Autonomous County in southwest China's Guizhou Province.
Lu is 37, but her sun-tanned face appears much older. The couple's four children are all at primary school, two in junior middle school and one in senior middle school.
In their adobe house, there's only a cupboard, a table, two sofas and a black-and-white television in the living room and a bed in the bedroom - their clothes are piled up in a corner - they sold the wardrobes.
They receive 900 yuan (about US$132) a year as a basic living allowance from the local government. Lu grows corn and buckwheat at home for food, and her husband looks for work in the neighboring town. When he can find work, he earns 10 to 30 yuan a day. But this doesn't happen every day.
Each month he sells his blood twice, earning a total of 240 yuan.
"With this money, we can buy 25 kilograms of rice, two packs of salt, a kilogram of pepper, and a bag of washing powder. The rest is used for transport and electricity bills," Lu says, counting on her fingers.
According to Wang Xian, head of the Xinfei Village, the population of the village is 1,770. Land in the village is arid and more than 700 people don't have any arable land. Without a road, many villagers have to trek five kilometers to get drinking water. "Lu's family is not alone," he said. "More than 200 people in our village live on blood selling."
The blood collection business saw its peak at the end of 1980s and the beginning of 1990s.
Back then, to help donors recover quickly so they could soon sell blood again, the "blood heads" pooled all the donated blood, spun it through a centrifuge to separate out the plasma, then pumped the residue back into the donors' bodies. This resulted in the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS among farmers in central China.
Blood selling was officially banned in 1998 when the Law of Blood Donation was enacted. The law stipulates that a donor can give no more than 400 milliliters of blood at one time and must wait for at least half a year to donate again.
But the requirement for donating plasma is more lax. People can still donate regularly as long as their blood is not pooled together.
In the Yunxian County of Hubei Province, people can see a boat on the Hanshui River, which farmers call the "blood ship." It transports farmers to a plasma collection station to "donate."
Each time a farmer can sell 600 cubic centimeters to get 160 yuan as a "nutrition fee" and eight yuan to cover transport.
Although the needle used in the station is "as thick as one to give injections to cattle" and the sight of it makes her dizzy, 52-year-old Gao Congfen still chooses to board the boat. Her son was able to attend a senior middle school in 2000 when Gao started to sell blood. When he went to college, the tuition was 5,000 yuan a year, so his mother continued selling blood. "I thought that we could stop the business when he graduated. But he didn't find a job," the woman complained.
Although China's economy, ranking second in the world, has been described as a "miracle," poverty is widespread.
The country has a staggering 150 million people living below the United Nations' poverty line of US$1 a day, according to China' National Development and Reform Commission. That number is larger than the entire population of Japan.
In the remote Songtao Miao Autonomous County of Guizhou Province, villagers' average per capita annual income is barely 400 yuan; some villagers are so poor that they risk making and selling illegal weapons. A police officer told Xinhua on a condition of anonymity that "we shed tears sometimes while nabbing the suspects ... They are just too poor."
"A man we caught selling guns was called Luo Qiang, whose extended family of 16 were squeezed in a shack of around 10 square meters in size. His youngest kid died of illness because they couldn't afford a hospital," the policeman said.
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