In the barren courtyard stands an evergreen tree, full of life. Its planter is gone, leaving the boy alone to grow with the tree.
"Papa died four years ago," says the boy from a Dai farming community, an ethnic group in the southwestern province of Yunnan, who identifies himself as Xiao Mao. "People say he lost his life to AIDS."
The news came when the black-eyed boy was asleep. "My uncle woke me up and said, 'Your papa is gone. Don't you cry.' But I cried," Xiao Mao, who is now raised by his uncle, recalls.
"His father shouldn't ever have taken sihao - Number 4, what the locals call heroin - he was a very good father before he became a junkie. Then his mother ran away from home, never came back," says Xiao Mao's aunt Kong Mielan, showing a tender affection for the olive-skinned boy, who is feeding pigs in a corner of the courtyard.
Xiao is just one of the 80 Dai children orphaned by AIDS in Yingjiang County of Dehong Dai-Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture, 864 kilometers southwest of the provincial capital Kunming. Aged from 5 to 16, most of them are children of intravenous drug abusers, according to Li Jianmin, deputy director of the Yunnan Development Center for Women & Children.
Bordering Myanmar, Yingjiang has a frontier 214.6 kilometers long, with 33 unguarded natural passes leading to the Golden Triangle, an area notorious for drug trafficking which crosses the borders of Myanmar, Thailand and Laos. The Golden Triangle produces 70-80 tons of heroin annually, with 80 percent smuggled into China overland across the Sino-Myanmar border.
Heroin abuse is common in Yingjiang. Many children have seen their parents, relatives, and neighbors succumb to the drug. A 15-year-old boy who prefers to be called Yu Si recalls: "More than once I saw my father sitting on the floor injecting drugs into his forearm. I was six then. He died of AIDS in 1997." Yu's mother committed suicide to end her misery after failing to drag her husband out of the heroin abyss.
The sharing of unsanitary needles among intravenous drug users has made them the highest risk group in Yunnan, says Wang Yunsheng, deputy director of the Yunnan HIV/AIDS Control Committee. "Occurrence of the lethal disease among this group jumped from 5.3 percent in 1993 to 21.2 percent in 2003, with certain areas witnessing an occurrence as high as 60-70 percent."
Out of the 2,485 newly reported HIV carriers in the province this year, he notes, 42.4 percent are intravenous drug abusers. By the end of September there were 17,390 HIV/AIDS cases in the province, while 665 of the 1,118 diagnosed AIDS patients have died since 1987 when the first case was reported in Dehong.
"This means a great number of children have no parents to depend on and are homeless," says Wang worriedly, adding, "more disturbingly, the children could develop hatred towards society and become destructive unless their relatives are willing to take them in, or the society accepts them."
How to care for and help AIDS orphans develop is on the government work agenda, while international and domestic organizations are also extending help to the children. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has granted 470,000 yuan (US$57,300) to Yunnan since 2003, with which the provincial government launched a program called "AIDS Orphans Concern & Fosterage" last year to enlighten local government leaders, medical staff, and educators on the disease, and to help the orphans integrate with their communities.
To date, the program has benefited the 80 registered orphans in Yingjiang. They are living with their relatives, says Wang Yunsheng, the program leader. The program subsidizes each foster family about US$12 per month for each orphan.
"That's not much, but extremely helpful," says Xian Yubao, 78, in Xincheng town, who has been taking care of her two orphaned grandchildren left behind by her youngest son in 2000.
With the subsidy, Xian is able to raise dozens of chickens, ducks and pigs, which can make some US$300 a year. "Without the government, I don't know what I would do," she says, bringing out a picture of her late son holding one of his two children. On the edge of the picture is an affectionate line, which reads: "This is a love bay, where I will take care of you forever."
Staring at the picture, Xian starts sobbing. "I don't know what will happen to my grandchildren after I die. I already have one foot in the grave and cannot hang on for them very long."
Xian is not alone in facing this predicament. Gao Yaojie, China's prominent AIDS prevention activist, says most AIDS-orphaned kids depend on elders, who are too old to see them grow up. "Yet no orphanage would accept the children unless they've lost both parents."
UNICEF estimated recently that China is home to 78,000 children orphaned by AIDS. The official Chinese figure puts the population living with HIV/AIDS at 840,000. And experts have warned that the country will end up with 10 million HIV carriers by 2010 if the epidemic is not treated properly and immediately.
The central government has pledged a series of measures helping AIDS/HIV victims and the orphans.
Today, all AIDS orphans of school age in Yingjiang are admitted to local schools with partial fees exemptions and "so far, they get along with their schoolmates well," says Xu Shaomei, vice-chairman of the local Women's Federation.
"Orphans are orphans. How they've lost their parents is not important to me. I only know all children have the right to education," says Zhang Chengren, principal of a rural school where Xiao Mao is a third grader.
Yet the 55-year-old man admitted his school keeps secret Xiao Mao's condition. "Except teachers," he says, "none of his classmates know he is an AIDS orphan. We need to protect him from discrimination."
Xiao Mao's pal, 10-year-old Ma Jing, envies Xiao for his excellence at maths and singing. Ma only knows Xiao's papa "died of illness and his mama left him too." Full of sympathy for Xiao Mao, he says innocently, "I should help him with drawing. He is bad at this."
There is one thing Ma doesn't like about Xiao, saying he has become a bit stuck-up after he came back from Beijing.
Last December, Xiao Mao and two other orphans from Yingjiang were invited to Beijing to attend a symposium concerning AIDS-affected children held by the China Youth Concern Committee and UNICEF. But the boy doesn't like the capital city, complaining "there is no place to grow crops and trees."
He says he would plant an evergreen tree like the one at his home in Tian'anmen Square in the centre of Beijing next time he visits the city. "I want children there to know that the tree is from my hometown, from me, who has no papa and mama, but has remained happy, because I have the tree."
(China Daily December 29, 2004)
