On a snowy December morning, slipping on icy mud paths, six volunteers from a Beijing-based HIV/Aids action group entered the village of Houyang in Henan province, one of many hit by China's growing epidemic. They brought with them sweets and bean-milk powder for the children, who include many orphans and those infected at birth: a truck with warm clothes was on the way from Beijing.
Houyang and the other villages are suffering the consequences of grossly unhygienic commercial blood schemes in the mid-1990s which recycled infected blood among the peasant donors. The scandal, covered up for many years by the Henan health authorities (which had encouraged the blood collection), is now acknowledged by the central government in Beijing. In Henan, as the team from Aizhi Action soon found out, it is still an "official secret".
The condition of the families in Houyang made the activists weep: all the victims complained of the inadequacy of government aid. In one house, the villagers had organised a pre-school group for children orphaned by Aids. The teacher was a girl who was not yet fourteen years old.
The next day (December 25), the Aizhi team sat over lunch in the Shangcai hotel (the official guesthouse which also provides accommodation for visitors). They were planning to visit another village - after buying some pairs of galoshes so their feet would not be soaked for a second day.
Instead they received an invitation they could not refuse to an urgent meeting with health officials from Shangcai county, plus the head of the local state security office and some unidentified plainclothes policemen.
From these officials they learned the following:
1. The Aids epidemic is a state secret which may not be divulged without authorisation. Aids may seem to be a "social problem", but the situation has been turned by some people into a "political problem": that is why it is a secret.
2. The Aizhi Action Group (which had previously published material about the epidemic in Shangcai) had no right to do so. Nor could it visit the area unless it registered first with the county Civil Affairs Bureau, and then obtained permission. It was regarded as an "illegal organisation": even if it had good intentions, it must go through the proper channels. The volunteers must surrender all the notes and pictures which they had taken on the previous day in Houyang village.
3. The county authorities had done a lot of good work to help the HIV/Aids victims in Shangcai which was not properly appreciated. Even when health officials did not get paid themselves, because of financial difficulties, they still distributed aid. They had been slandered by the media: the Nanfang Zhoumo (Southern Weekend, the only Chinese newspaper to cover the crisis consistently) was "the worst of them all".
On the next day, the 26th, the team members were officially informed that they could not visit any more villages. Any material aid they had brought should be distributed via the authorities. Their luggage was searched and all notes and films confiscated. An "expert" was called in to examine their digital camera. Plainclothes police kept them under observation in the street and the hotel.
The sorry tale continued in a manner familiar to anyone who has had a similar experience in China. It was the familiar mixture of bullying and wheedling by local officials anxious to prove their zeal and to protect their own backs. On the third day, the team was threatened with arrest. On the fourth the atmosphere warmed again and the team was allowed to leave for the nearest railway station. "We understand you; you should understand us," said the security head as they said goodbye: "Long live understanding!"
The conclusion drawn from this experience by Aizhi researcher Hu Jia, who has circulated an account of his team's visit to Shangcai, is surprisingly positive.
Whatever shortcomings in the behaviour of local officials, he argues, their difficulties in the face of this appalling crisis have to be appreciated. In fact the team was treated "quite politely": for example, members were allowed to keep their mobile phones with them all the time. The supplies they had brought from Beijing were after all delivered to the victims later: there is a chance now that future deliveries of aid can be achieved by co-operating with the county government.
Education, particularly education of the "Aids orphans", should be a top priority. The philosophy behind this is simple and practical. The hostility and prejudice of local officials is a fact of life in rural China, but every possible way has to be tried to help people in desperate need.