Guo Anfei in Kunming contributed to this story.
Names of the sex workers in this story have been changed.
Opera hits right note with safe sex plot
By SHAN JUAN
DINGXI, GANSU - From pamphlets to workshops, health authoritiesacross China are trying every conceivable way to spread the word about AIDS andHIV prevention, particularly to rural residents.
One of the most successful in the northwest has been a tear-jerking love storyperformed in qinqiang opera, a style popular in Gansu and Shaanxi provinces andthe Ningxia Hui autonomous region.
Lily in Blossom is about the romance between a young woman called Lily,who discovers she is HIV positive on her wedding day and is ostracized byeveryone in her village, except her husband, Zhan Peng.
In searching for the cause of the infection, the couple learns key facts aboutthe disease and how it is transmitted.
“The play has been well received among rural audiences and has becomeone of the most effective tools for us to educate people on AIDS prevention andcontrol,” said Liu Weizhong, director of Gansu’s health bureau, which funded anddeveloped the play with a qinqiang troupe from Dingxi, a mountain-locked city inGansu.
Since May 2008, the play has been staged more than 160 times to a totalaudience of almost 2 million, including TV viewers, he said. Tickets are free,although for each performance the troupe receives 25,000 yuan (3,750) from thehealth authority.
The play, which has become a “real talking point”, said Liu, “has substantiallyhelped raise awareness of AIDS among the people”.
For previous intervention projects in rural areas, authorities printed guideson AIDS prevention and government policies, such as free medication, as well asgave away promotional items like wall calendars.
However, Wang Xiaoming, deputy director of Gansu’s health bureau, said hefound many of the calendars were posted up in pigsties.
“As the stigma surrounding AIDS is still widespread among the Chinesepublic, particularly in rural areas, they hardly want that kind of thing displayed intheir sitting room,” said Wang.
A woman surnamed Wu from a village in Dingxi said she receives thepromotional materials every year but rarely reads them as “the disease only strikesthose with low moral standards and wanton lifestyles”.
“Only after seeing the play did I learn that HIV can’t be transmitted throughcontact like shaking hands, or that people who are already suffering shouldn’t bestigmatized,” she said.
In recent years, the AIDS epidemic has been rising quickly among China’scolossal army of migrant workers, who leave behind rural hometowns and familiesfor better employment in the cities, said Wu Zunyou, director of the NationalCenter for AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Diseases Control and Prevention.
Of the 48,000 new HIV cases detected in 2009, more than 21 percent weremigrant workers, up 4 percent on 2008, according to official statistics.
“The rural population, including migrant workers, should be a focus forAIDS intervention efforts,” said Wu.
Roughly 740,000 people are suffering with HIV nationwide, including130,000 cases of full-blown AIDS, show official statistics.
December 1, 2010
Democracy takes root in rural areas
Farmers find their opinions matter in an experiment on grassroots decision-making.
Hu Yinan reports from Dengzhou, Henan.
Zhang Hongde and his family had only just relocated from their home of 35 years toanother part of Heilong village when officials revealed plans to build roads to “everydoorstep”. It was going to cost each household 160 yuan (25) - a lot of money for afamily which relies on a good harvest for income.
In most places with a population of more than 2,000, a handful of voices against sucha proposal may have gone unheard. Not in Heilong, where residents have been given afar greater say on village affairs thanks to historic measures rolled out in rural areas acrossDengzhou county, Henan province.
It meant Zhang and a dozen others were able to veto the project during a villagers’
meeting. In the end, only residents who directly benefited from the new roads had to pay.
“For the first time, our opinions mattered,” said the 60-year-old, who heads a familyof 10, including several grandchildren.
The democratic experiment in Dengzhou, a large farming area in China’s mostpopulous province, symbolizes both the spontaneous grassroots efforts to boost democracyin the countryside and the challenges they face.
The groundbreaking measures, which have been in place since 2005, are the brainchildof Liu Chaorui, the county’s Party chief, and are based on the belief that consensus - thebasis of stability - can only be achieved through compromise.
With a series of amendments over the last five years, the system offers detailedprocedures to formalize the approval of important rural matters.
Proposals relating to a village must now go through four “readings”, each involvingmore local residents and representatives, and Communist Party of China (CPC) members.
Plans are not usually rejected until the third reading, and are not approved until theypass the fourth, which is attended by 50 to 70 representatives and is the stage where mostdebates take place.
Dengzhou officials say the measures have helped revitalize the Party’s grassrootsorganizations, deepen rural democracy and enhance social stability.
Vice-President Xi Jinping and Vice-Premier Hui Liangyu have hailed the “innovativeexperiment”, while a document jointly issued by the Central Committee of the CPC andthe State Council in January encouraged all villages to learn from the measures.
Chen Xiwen, deputy director of the Central Rural Work Leading Group, said themeasures are an active response to the government’s call for vibrant mechanisms of ruralautonomy under village branches of the CPC.