“Reaching out to (sex workers) with safe sex education and free condoms is importantand benefits China’s overall battle against HIV and AIDS,” said Lu Lin, director of Yunnan’sprovincial CDC.
Official studies show the prevalence of HIV and AIDS among prostitutes is about1 percent (compared to 0.05 percent for the general public). In Hongta, though, thatpercentage has fallen from 2 percent to 0.7 percent since the project started.
Lu said the model will gradually be expanded to surrounding counties.
Hao Yang, deputy director of the disease prevention and control bureau under theMinistry of Health, said it is unlikely the project will be rolled out nationwide in the shortterm, however. “Due to policy and legal restraints, it’s hard to expand the model across thecountry,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean we should stop trying.”
In the clubs
Nightclubs are hotspots for sex workers, although most refused to even admit theyemployed them when first approached by the CDC, said Li Jinlin.
Meidong works as a so-called “bar girl” at Yedu, a glitzy new club in Hongta whereyoung women dressed in yellow miniskirts greet customers at the door. She is a key contactfor the district CDC and helps to organize more than 60 women for awareness meetings andfree health checks.
“We select those sex workers who are more eloquent and educated to help (us to reach)more women,” explained Li Jinlin, who said several leading members of this grassroots groupleft the city during recent crackdowns.
At Yedu, Meidong introduced two of her colleagues to China Daily.
“I’m a freelancer,” said Liu Ping, a 25-year-old college graduate from Yibin in Sichuanprovince. “I make 200 yuan (30) for every client and give 20 yuan to the club. It’sreasonable. Some nightclubs charge 50 yuan.”
When she was asked if she would have sex with a client without a condom, she replied:
“Of course not. That would be reckless.”
Next to her, Zhang Lifang, 24, said she only offers to have a drink with her clients, notsex. The shy girl from the nearby city of Qujing added: “I know drinking alcohol from thesame glass as a client is unsanitary but I won’t get infected with HIV doing it.”
Workers from the CDC have become familiar faces in clubs and “hair salons”. The firststep is speaking in a language sex workers are comfortable with. Simply put, “we can’t be shyabout it”, said Hongta deputy director Ma Yi.
However, the recent crackdowns have made prostitutes and their pimps less willing totalk.
Compared with the stark setting of Yedu, “hair salons” are often more shabby inappearance and more secretive. CDC workers usually have to go undercover before they cantalk to the women about safe sex and HIV prevention.
At a “massage parlor” China Daily reporters visited with Ma, a 19-year-old womanoffered Ma the chance to “date” her for 100 yuan. He immediately told the storeowner, LiAihong, that he was from the CDC.
“No wonder you look so familiar. I’ve seen you at the meetings,” replied Li Aihong,lifting her head only briefly from her cross-stitching. “These two girls just came to work forme in mid November 2010.”
Although unwilling to give her name, the 19-year-old agreed to talk about HIV,explaining that all she knows “is that people can die from it”.
When asked about how the virus is transmitted, she pointed at China Daily’s malephotographer as he was taking pictures and said: “I could get it from him.” She then laughedand pulled a blanket over her head, too embarrassed to continue.
Ghost town
Hulu, a residential community bordering the city’s urban and rural suburbs that has areputation as a red light district, had more than 70 “hair salons” and “massage parlors” beforethe last crackdown.
Today, it is like a ghost town, with darkened shopping units and empty street-side foodstalls. At 9 pm, usually the peak business hour for parlors and salons, most buildings wereshuttered, with rental signs and phone numbers posted outside.
“I put the ‘for rent’ sign out two months ago but I’ve only had two people call toinquire,” said landlord Chang Li, 34, as she played mahjong outside one block. “It used to beeasy to rent out these apartments.”
Chang said she did not rent to sex workers because the house is “near an elementaryschool”, with the only exception being a young woman who “worked on the other side of thecommunity” and had a child.
Most landlords in Hulu are farmers who bought the four-story buildings with thecompensation they received for their land, which was swallowed up in the city expansion.
Chang makes 14,000 yuan a year from her apartments.
As more than 300 sex workers rent homes here, both Hongta’s CDC and Women’sFederation have forged links with the landlords to help notify women of regular educationalprograms.
“We provide the platform, CDC provides the training,” said He Liqiong, president ofHongta Women’s Federation. “It used to be that prostitutes simply solicited on street cornersin the city, but now they’ve moved into apartments and live together in this community.”
He said helping sex workers with AIDS prevention is a way to protect women’s rights.
“Experience has proven beyond a doubt that the most effective responses to HIV arethose which protect the rights of those living with HIV and those who are most vulnerableto infection,” Michael Kirby, a renowned AIDS activist and former Australian High CourtJustice, said during an anti-discrimination event in Beijing in July.
“If we treat these individuals as criminals, we drive them underground, out of reach ofprevention, treatment and care,” he added.
Now that most “hair salons” have been closed down and sex workers have left thecommunity, landlords complain their incomes have been severely affected.
He at the Women’s Federation said the next plan is for the city government to transformHulu into a commercial district.
In fact, work has already started. One former “hair salon” that employed more than 20women is now a hotpot restaurant.