Out for blood

On December 30 around 6 am, 20 people piled into a minivan that had just four seats at a bus station in Shunyi district, Beijing. Soon after the van hit the road, a man named Lele collected their identity cards.

They were on their way to sell their blood.

They were packed in too tightly to look out the window. People crowded at the back were not able to see outside to know where they were headed. "It was like we had been kidnapped and blindfolded, all we could do was follow," one of the sellers was quoted by the Beijing Times as saying.

On the way, Lele asked each of them to take 17 or 18 yellow pills which would help them pass physical examinations. Doctors suggest that at one time, patients should only take five of these pills, which decrease the levels of transaminase enzymes in the blood.

The van later arrived at a theater located in the yard of Yujiayuan village in Huairou district. While lining up in the theater, the blood-sellers were asked to sign donation forms. All of the information on the forms, including their personal health status and ID numbers were already filled in.

In regard to where they work, the organizer wrote the name of a village. It was not where they worked, but it was enough for the forms.

A seller surnamed Hao was given a certificate demonstrating that he worked in a company in Xinxianjie village, with the signature of a village official and the stamp of village committee in case the staff at the blood station doubted him.

Five out of the 20 sellers were found physically unfit for blood collecting and the other 15 each provided 400 milliliters and were given a donation certificate. These people received 400 yuan ($64.24) in cash from Lele.

A source told the Beijing Times that villages in Beijing are assigned a certain number of blood donors, but the actual donors are usually far below the number required, which provides a business opportunity for organizers like Lele.

An organizer usually pays 200 yuan for 200 milliliters of blood and receives 900 yuan for himself. If 20 people each sold 400 milliliters, the organizer could receive 30,000 yuan.

Financial bloodsuckers

"I know this is illegal," an anonymous young blood-seller said, but he was not concerned enough to balk at the money offered.

This man, who requested anonymity, told the Beijing Times that he took on some casual jobs after getting out of jail, where he had been doing time for robbery, but often found he was tight on funds. Selling blood proved to be easy money. The pay from each sale was not much, but was still enough to sustain him for several days.

Once he was taken to a hospital by an organizer and sold 400 milliliters directly to a patient for 700 yuan, but the organizer made much more.

"I got the organizer's information from the walls of a men's room in a cyber cafe," said a migrant worker surnamed Ma in Shunyi. He didn't remember exactly how many times he had sold blood as his income was not even enough to pay for his cigarettes and alcohol, but he still considered it a better business than theft or robbery.

As the Blood Donation Law specifies that there must be a duration of at least six months between two blood collections, Ma has to borrow ID cards from his friends to help pass the identity checks.

Blood-selling organizers can also provide ID cards if a seller doesn't have one, but they will charge the blood-sellers 100 yuan for it.