China: Sex work to support the family

The young teacher kept her moonlighting job as a secret, until quitting two years later when she could no longer stand the torture of moral condemnation and her diseased body.

At the end of 2005, she posted her experience on the Internet, telling of the two years of her tough double life a teacher and a sex worker, which has attracted much public attention.

Xu is the eldest child of a family and she has a brother studying in university and two others in middle school.

In 1994, due to an unsuccessful fruit business venture, her family owed 200,000 yuan (US$24,900), a debt that made the family utterly destitute.

However, Xu's parents still spared no efforts to support the four children's study, saying that they would be just like them, spending their whole life in rural areas unless they could enter university.

To lighting her parent's burden, Xu did not further her study, and rather became a temporary teacher of a countryside primary school after she graduated from a technical secondary school in 2001.

Xu Ping in her simple dormitory

The first year, Xu roughed it in a small dormitory and often ate just some pickles, saving her slender salary to pay for her three brothers' tuition.

"Although I earn only 300 yuan (US$37) per month, every time I get together with my students I forget every unhappy thing and find myself," said Xu, adding becoming a teacher was her childhood dream.

Unfortunately, the family's already dire situation worsened during the Spring Festival of 2002, when the person they owed the money to dropped by and pressed the family to repay the debt. The person threatened to ask the court to seize the house if the debt wasn't repaid on time.

Fearing the prospect of the family being forced onto the streets and concerned about the possible tuition of her brother, she resigned herself to engaging in the dirty body business and saved all the money for her brother.

When the summer holiday came, the time for the three brothers to pay their tuition neared. Xu had no choice but to seek more "business" during the break to raise the 20,000-yuan (US$2,490) school expenditures during which she got a sexually transmitted disease.

Fortunately, things began to turn for the better for Xu. One of her former "customers" helped cure her disease and even proposed to her. She refused, but gained happiness from the whole ordeal.

When Xu's brother studying in the university knew of her secret job and the subsequent experience, he begged her not do that again or he would drop his study. Xu promised and they seldom mentioned that matter afterwards.

But in 2005, Xu did receive an email from her brother about the news of a Wuhan University college student who was infected with HIV after having sex with a foreigner, reminding her of her promise.

In 2004, Xu was assigned to another countryside primary school and became a permanent English teacher there.

Now she lives in another small dormitory, but one that is better in that it has both a bedroom and a kitchen, divided by a curtain. Xu has decorated the entire wall with her students' drawings.

Xu's biggest wish is to get the pay that the school owes her. She hopes to raise enough money for her three brothers and make up the presents she has promised to the students who got a 90 or above on an English test.