Blood selling, illegal gun making tell bitter story of poverty in China
BEIJING, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) - To raise their four children, the last thing the couple could sell was their blood.
“We have been selling blood for five years,” said Lu Yunjie from Xinfei Village of Weining Yi Hui and Miao Autonomous County in southwest China’s Guizhou Province.
Lu is 37, but her sun-tanned face appears much older. The couple’s four children are all at primary school, two in junior middle school and one in senior middle school.
In their adobe house, the family has only a cupboard, a table, two sofas and a black-and-white television in the living room and a bed in the bedroom — their clothes are piled up in a corner due to the absence of wardrobes.
They receive 900 yuan (about 132.4 U.S. dollars) a year as a basic living allowance from the local government.
The Lu grows corn and buckwheat at home as food, and her husband goes out to seek work in the neighboring town. When he can find work, he earns 10 to 30 yuan (1.5 to 4.4 U.S. dollars) a day. But this doesn’t happen everyday.
Each month he sells his blood twice, earning a total of 240 yuan (35.3 U.S. dollars).
“With this money, we can buy 25 kilograms of rice, two packs of salt, a kilogram of pepper, a bag of washing powder. The rest is used for transport and electricity bills,” Lu says, counting with her finger.
According to Wang Xian, head of the Xinfei Village, the population of the village is 1,770. Land in the village is arid and more than 700 people don’t have any arable land. Without a road, many villagers have to trek five kilometers to get drinking water.
“Lu’s family was not alone,” he said. “More than 200 people in our village live on blood selling.”
Your text to link…