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GUEST COLUMN |
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Too Early to
Say Goodbye
Lin Gu |
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Lu Jing and Li Jun are squatting
behind the bars outside the Pingxiang Drug Rehabilitation
Center in southwest China, gazing at an AIDS prevention
poster featuring handsome actor Pu Cunxin, which is posted
on a billboard in the yard. "With that epidemic will
we really die?" they ask.
The young women grew up on the same street facing Pingxiang
People's Hospital, and were inseparable friends. Later
in life, they shared needles with mutual drug buddies,
and were sent together in early 1998 to a re-education
labour camp in Nanning, the capital city of Guangxi Zhuang
Autonomous Region. They were given a term of 5 years by
the local public |
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| security bureau, but were suddenly
sent back home on August 2, 1998, without explanation. |
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| "I guess the only possible
reason is that we had tested positive for HIV, for we both had
three blood tests in Nanning before being sent back," says
Lu, adding she wasn't surprised when the Pingxiang health centre
confirmed her suspicions. |
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| Ho Bo, Deputy Director of the Health Centre,
says Lu was strangely calm when he gave her the fateful news.
She said simply, "I knew this day would come." |
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| Lu, 24, dark-skinned with a baby-face, turned
to heroin four years ago to cope with the constant violent quarrels
with her boyfriend. When the last cent of her savings from a
previous job at a local casino was spent for drugs, Lu asked
her family for money, but eventually they turned her out. Like
many of the estimated 200,000 drug users in Guangxi, Lu became
trapped in the vicious cycle of selling drugs to buy drugs.
In 1997, she was sent by public security officials to a compulsory
drug rehabilitation centre for three months, but resumed her
habit soon after her release. She was packed off to the Nanning
re-education camp in early 1998 with Li Jun, who had fallen
prey to the same passions. |
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| Lu's outward tranquillity belies her deep fear
of HIV. The night she was sent home from Nanning, Lu's only
brother and two sisters met her at a restaurant, avoiding family-related
dinner conversation that might remind her of former, happier
days. "They begged me to stop taking drugs, for the sake
of the family," recalls Lu, "and we all cried."
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| For six months Lu did not tell her parents she
had HIV. "My father disowned me, and mother used to cry
every night." Lu can't explain why the desire for drugs
overpowers the warmth of family love. "Temptation is always
the winner," she confesses. |
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| Twenty-six-year-old Li Jun listened quietly to
Lu's story. Sometimes the unflattering details of drug use caused
her to smile with embarrassment. "She is lucky to still
have her family - my whole family, including my three elder
sisters, disowned me at the news. I feel like an orphan,"
says Li, burying her pale face in her arms. |
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| Lu says she used to go to bed every night, thinking
she would be dead in the morning. "But a new day still
comes, one after another, and then I begin to think maybe I
should find a boyfriend and try to live like other people."
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| "I was told there are seven to 10 years
before the virus turns into AIDS," says Li. "Maybe
long enough to find a cure?" |
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| Lu decided to educate herself about HIV/AIDS
and attended a lecture given by an American professor in Pingxiang.
Sometimes she called a local HIV/AIDS hotline with questions.
But even knowing what she knows, temptation kicked in and four
months after her last rehab release she was shooting up again.
Li lasted just one week. |
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| "Everybody knows you in a small world like
Pingxiang," says Lu, "and more and more are suspicious
about why I was sent back from Nanning so quickly." |
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| A rehabilitation centre with only 62 patients
leaves little room for secrets. Lu and Li have endured the sometimes
vicious gossip of fellow recovering addicts since they were
returned to the centre more than a month ago. In the daily hour-long
outdoors recreational breaks, hateful looks are shot their way,
and they have been singled out as untouchables in this already
marginalised world. |
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| Lu sometimes escapes the present by retracing
golden memories of her years as a junior high school student
making good grades. "I would have graduated from college
by now if nothing unhappy had happened," she says softly.
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| Lu and Li have promised not to give up on each
other. The childhood friends are thinking about starting a small
business together when they are released from this three-month
confinement. |
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| "Is Beijing snowing now?" Li wonders,
for in her 26 years she has never seen snow. Her face glowed.
"If I were in Beijing now, guess what I'd do? I'd hold
the snowflakes in my hand and take a long look." |
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| Note: The girls' names have been changed
in order to protect their identity. |
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| (All the views expressed in this column are entirely
that of the author) |
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the Author |
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