Qiqi, 16, an orphaned boy who grew up in the SOS Children's Village in Tianjin, has found showbusiness stardom by playing the marimba in international concerts. But he held a special concert two months ago. "I gave my mother an exclusive performance," he says.

Hong Kong action star Jackie Chan dances with children at SOS Children's Village in Urumqi, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Qiqi says that playing just for his "mother" is the best way to repay her for caring for him. "She has experienced too much hardship," he says.

In the shade of green trees, villas lie in neat rows in Tianjin's SOS Children's Village. Qiqi lived in the 15th villa where he, his "mother" Cao Jinrong and his orphan brothers and sisters were one big, happy and harmonious family.

"Qiqi was abandoned by his parents and sent to our village when he was just over one year old," Cao recalls.

One thing the 43-year-old "mom" feels most proud about today is that the kindergarten she chose for Qiqi to attend specialized for children's music and art. His musical talents developed from the age of three when he first played his beloved marimba.

To encourage Qiqi, Cao not only took him to music classes every day, but managed to construct a simple marimba-like instrument for him to play in his spare time away from school.

"Other parents bought their kids keyboard simulators to practice on but that was too much of a luxury to us. So my eldest daughter and I nailed discarded wood battens together into the shape of a marimba and our handmade musical instrument was widely applauded by other parents," Cao says.

Qiqi practiced very hard on his homemade marimba and became the best player in his class. At the age of 11, he was enrolled in the middle school attached to the prestigious Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing majoring in percussion.

In 1999, Qiqi, on behalf of all the orphans in China's SOS children's villages, participated in fund-raising performances in other countries organized by the SOS Kinderdorf International (KDI). He also won the Hermann Gmeiner Prize for Music, an award named after the founder of SOS KDI.

"Without mom, I could not have accomplished anything," Qiqi says. "That's why I played the marimba just for her on this extraordinary day.

In 1984, SOS KDI signed a cooperation agreement with the Ministry of Civil Affairs to set up SOS children's villages in China and construction started the following year of Tianjin SOS Children's Village. So far, there are nine SOS children's villages in China - in Tianjin, Yantai (Shandong Province), Qiqihar (Heilongjiang Province), Nanchang (Jiangxi Province), Kaifeng (Henan Province), Chengdu (Sichuan Province), Putian (Fujian Province), Urumqi (Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region) and Lhasa (Tibet Autonomous Region).

According to Bai Yihua, president of the China SOS Children's Village Association, the villages are non-profit, social welfare institutions who take in and raise mentally and physically sound orphans who have lost their parents and have no relatives and friends to turn to.

"We have challenged the traditional way of fostering orphans by rebuilding families for them and this constitutes the core of the management of SOS children's villages," Bai says. "Orphans can regain their sense of security and confidence in their new 'family homes' and gain a good outlook on life. They will learn to share responsibilities and establish close relationships with other 'family' members."

Led by a village head, every SOS children's village has 12 to 18 families, each of which has adopted six to eight orphans aged below 14. Each family has a single woman who acts as the mother. Boys when they turn 14 move to SOS youth apartments where they live with other boys communally, learn how to handle their daily lives and become independent.

Cao came to Tianjin SOS Children's Village in 1988 and is now the "mother" of 15 children. Every day, she is kept busy taking her kids to and from their schools, preparing their meals and cleaning the house.

"Mothers in SOS children's villages have to remain single which means we have to give up marriage and not have our own babies," Cao says. "Our task in rearing these orphaned children is not simple but we look after them and give them full-hearted maternal affection so that they are brought up in a healthy family environment."

There are now 314 employees, including single mothers like Cao, working in China's nine SOS children's villages. At the end of last year, 135 families had adopted a total of 1,297 orphan children. The 10th village is being built in Beijing.

With aim of providing orphans with family care, SOS children's villages were set up in Austria after World War II. The first one was built in 1949 by Hermann Gmeiner, a well-known doctor and an academician of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Today, according to SOS KDI, more than 440 of the villages have been established in more than 130 countries and regions.

"I really feel proud of our single 'mothers' and the young people they look after who are growing up in SOS children's villages," says SOS KDI president Helmut Kutin. "When we created the model village, we hoped the children would be influenced by the self-sacrificial spirit of their 'mothers' and they would grow up to be kindhearted and merciful adults."

(Xinhua News Agency August 10, 2005)