Song Pengfei, one of the first HIV-infected people to go public in China, has received international media attention for his attempts to turn his tragic story into an agent for change. In 1998, Song, then 16 and living in Shanxi Province, sat on a pair of scissors. Surgery following the accident led to transfusions with HIV-infected blood. Soon after Song learned of his infection, word spread among his neighbors, some of whom urged the government to bar him from living in the small village. "Some villagers threw rotten apples or dead mice at my home," he says. School friends also shunned him, as did his school. "I was driven out of my village by my villagers," says Song. The Shanxi hospital agreed to pay for his living expenses and medical care in Beijing, but when the money stopped, Song went public with his outrage, with stories everywhere from CNN to The New York Times (in which reporter Elizabeth Rosenthal perfectly described him as a "thin, angular young man who looks like he stepped out of a Modigliani painting"). Song now heads a group he calls the Positive Arts Workshops and seeks no less than "to eliminate stigma and discrimination for AIDS patients." |
