AIDS orphans struggle to live in Chinese poverty-battered county

Actress Zhang Ziyi attends an event as the new image ambassador for the China Red Ribbon Foundation in Beijing on Sunday, August 8, 2010. (Photo: CFP.cn)Getting up at 6 a.m., Zhihuo, a 14-year-old girl from the Chinese Yi ethnic minority, started her first day as a fifth grader by feeding the only pig in her home, where she lives with her 76-year-old grandmother.

Brought up hand-to-mouth by her grandmother, the girl lost her parents several months after her birth in Zhaojue, a state-level poverty-stricken county in Yi Autonomous Prefecture of Liangshan in southwestern Sichuan Province.

In Zhihuo's class are 41 Yi students who are all believed to have lost one or both parents to AIDS.

Most students in the class have been raised by their grandparents, while several lucky ones could also count on their uncles and aunts, said Mouse Wusha, who began tutoring the children right after he graduated from college in August 2006.

The class, established by the prefecture's women and children development center at Sikai Central School of Zhaojue in 2006, started accepting funding from the China Red Ribbon Foundation, a national non-government organization dedicated to the prevention and control of AIDS, in September 2009.


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