Sugar farmer Lu Suhai and his neighbours have never spent a Spring Festival like this before.
Gone were the chickens and ducks that normally roam through Lu's village, clucking around the houses -- typical sights and sounds in the Chinese countryside.
Nor were there any of the usual tasty poultry dishes on local tables, which the farmers regard as an almost "absolutely necessary" part of Spring Festival banquets.
Nonetheless, the farmers did their best to have fun during this most important of Chinese holiday celebrations.
As usual, 43-year-old Lu and his neighbours lit firecrackers, pasted auspicious festival couplets on their doorways, and left their work in the fields for nearly a month to enjoy the traditional holiday respite, the centre point of which is Lunar New Year's Day, which fell on January 22 this year.
But a brief walk in Lu's village in Dingdang Township, part of Long'an County 100 kilometres west of Nanning, capital of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, revealed that things were definitely not "as usual."
White posters are posted alongside the red festival couplets on the front walls of all homes, telling people how to prevent the new poultry disease that most of Dingdang Township's 30,000 residents had never even heard of: bird flu.
Cautious measures
Lu and his fellow villagers were to find that it was a disease that would put Dingdang on the lips of almost every citizen of China overnight, after dead ducks on a farm 2.4 kilometres from Lu's village were confirmed on January 27 to have contracted the deadly H5N1 virus.
Lu had to sacrifice 60 chickens. They were not killed by the infection, but by Lu himself: His family seized the birds and put them into several burlap sacks, which they handed over to a task force composed of quarantine, veterinary and government staff of Long'an County.
"To prevent the infection from spreading, the task force collected more than 1,000 chickens and ducks on January 23, from 86 households in Yong'anli (Lu's village), and slaughtered and then buried them," Gan Qiangzhong, deputy magistrate of Long'an County, explained.
In the following days, nearly 14,000 birds were culled within a 3-kilometre radius around the duck farm, and all poultry on farms within 5 kilometres of the infection site were vaccinated and quarantined, he said.
They strictly followed the country's animal epidemic prevention law, which was enacted in 1997, Gan added.
"I can do without chickens for a while," said Lu, adding that he planned to start raising them again after the government gives the all-clear.
"Why shouldn't I raise chickens in the future?" he asked. "They told me if we fight this problem in a scientific way, there will be little to fear from bird flu."
Except for the absence of domestic fowl and the publicity posters on walls, the village of 436 people looks almost the same as it always has, local villagers said.
Some elder men are dozing in the sunshine in front of their houses. Not far away, tractors laden with sugar cane are chugging along the road to the refinery, women are peddling vegetables on the roadside, while children are meandering along on their way to school.
Like many of his neighbours in the village, Lu did not sell the birds but raised them for eggs and occasionally for meat on important feasts.
But Wei Xiufang is a different case. Wei's income came from the 9,000 ducks on her farm in Lianchou Village, in the Xingning District of Nanning, about 40 minutes' drive from Lu's village.
On February 6, 450 chickens on a farm a little less than 3 kilometres from Wei's duck flocks, died or showed flu symptoms. Experts suspected it was bird flu.
As a result, Xingning District authorities culled 5,612 chicken on the farm and put two poultry producers under observation for signs of bird flu.
Wei's duck farm was within the 3 kilometre radius around the suspected infection site. She had read the posters and knew what she had to do.
"Of course I'm still very upset," Wei said, five days after her flocks had been culled. "I believe they (the ducks) were all healthy... I started raising poultry in 1991 and have never before encountered such a thing."
The government gave her 40,000 yuan (US$4,819) in compensation.
"If the ducks had grown to market size, they would have brought in at least another 30,000 yuan (US$3,614)," Wei said.
Lu Jinfang, a duck farmer in Nadang Village in a suburb of Nanning City, was much luckier than Wei Xiufang.
Her farm is about 12 kilometres from the Dingdang bird flu site, a distance veterinary experts believe safe for poultry, if they are vaccinated properly.
"So far more than 1,000 ducks on my farm have been vaccinated twice," she said.
Strict quarantine
Back in Dingdang Township, Huang Shengde, whose dead ducks were confirmed to be China's first case of the fatal H5N1 bird flu, still lives in a small house under stringent surveillance and quarantine.
Dressed in a head-to-toe protective suit, the 32-year-old man told visitors last Thursday that doctors had stopped his daily medical checks after a dozen days of monitoring, as he shows no sign of having been infected with the avian influenza virus.
Huang's family and a score of others live at an isolated electric water pumping station, where the ponds are ideal for raising ducks.
"The quarantine staff come here twice a day to spray disinfectant and spread decontaminating lime," Huang said.
The air at the farm irritates the nostrils because of the frequent application of disinfectants. The roads look like they are covered with snow, as a result of the daily accumulation of lime.
Huang has a family of four. He said that after being confined in the small area for nearly two weeks, they felt somewhat depressed.
"I hope the quarantine will be lifted as soon as possible," he said. "I have nothing to do but attend fruit trees these days."
About 200 metres from Huang's farm is a checkpoint where staff of the Long'an Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Bureau started work on January 23. All the six checkpoints around Huang's quarters operate around-the-clock, said bureau staffer Li Ling.
"Until the quarantine on the epidemic site is lifted, no one is allowed to enter or leave the infection site without proper protection and quarantine approval," said Li. "We have appointed people to take to Huang and his fellow villagers the daily necessities they request ."
From the checkpoints near the Dingdang epidemic site to sugar farmer Lu Suhai's village, which is within 3 kilometres of the site, and to duck-raiser Lu Jinfang's farm 12 kilometres away, tensions seem to be easing and life returning to normal.
At a McDonald's outlet on Chaoyang Road in Nanning, bird flu reports don't seem to have spoiled people's appetite for fried chicken. A diner, who identified herself only as Liu, said she felt safe eating poultry products because of the strict quarantining and quality control measures.
In Dancun Farm Trade Market in Nanning, the sale of ducks and chickens with certificates continues, although volume is down to some extent.
With the confirmed and suspected bird flu cases having been brought under control, Long'an County Deputy Magistrate Gan Qiangzhong said he anticipated poultry raising will be back to normal throughout his county within six months.
After all, animal husbandry, including poultry raising, makes up half of local farmers' annual income, he said.
(China Daily February 16, 2004)
