In some villages, dozens of children have dropped out of school because their families can no longer afford the fees, and proposals to offer such children discounts have proved ineffective. Some children from homes where a family member has HIV say they have been barred from school. Others say the discounts are often so small, about 20 percent, that school remains unaffordable.
Wang Beibei, 10, a star pupil from Suixian, a county in northern Henan, was expelled from third grade last year after school officials discovered that her father had died of AIDS.
"They were afraid to let me in, and my friends stopped playing with me," she said by phone, from the home of a sympathetic neighbor. About a third of the families in her village had sold blood -- fewer than in Donghu -- in large part because the village was farther from blood stations.
In June, Beibei's mother died of AIDS. School is out of the question. There is no one to work the family's land, and she and her brother struggle just to look out for each other. "My brother cooks for me and we eat noodles," she said. "We have no money for eggs or meat."
In Donghu, the school still admits such children if they can pay but offers no significant tuition breaks.
Likewise, though government plans have called for families unable to farm because of AIDS to be exempt from grain taxes, families here and elsewhere say they are still required to pay in full.
"The government doesn't do anything for me and likewise it didn't do anything for my family," said Gao Li, 14, an orphan from Donghu, with cropped hair and a quiet, matter-of-fact voice.
"I'm responsible for my brother, who is 10," she said. "Nobody among my relatives can help. My dad had brothers but one is dead and the others are sick, too. My biggest difficulty is, I have no future."
Indeed with so much death and so little reason to hope, many poor farmers with AIDS have shifted their focus from securing treatment for themselves to ensuring a future for their children.
Since late last year, Xie Yan, who is in her late 30s and is HIV positive, has had an obsession: She wants to find someone to adopt her 4-year-old son, who is not infected, as well as to find someone to support her two daughters, 13 and 9. Her husband died of AIDS last year and last winter she watched her best friend bleed to death on a hospital's doorstep while the friend's 4-year-old watched in terror.
"I try not to think about myself since I know I won't be cured," she said. "But at night I can't sleep -- I have nightmares and wild thoughts -- worrying about what will happen to the kids."
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