Aswarm of battered bicycles and pedicabs, cramming the narrow street, was usually the first sight that greeted Shuping Wang at the Zhoukou Anti-Epidemic Station, in Henan province. Most belonged to poor farmers who had ridden into the city in the small hours, eager to give blood. Every day around 500 would come. They were recruited from their mud-brick villages by local cadres, called bloodheads, who organised them into groups. The aim of this programme, run by the government, was to build up China's stocks of blood and plasma so that tainted blood was not brought in from abroad. How ironic that would seem, in time.
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