Zhao Wanzhu is the chief of Zhuanhuawan village in China's impoverished Qinghai province. Years of drought resulted in successive crop failures and Mr Zhao and his wife have been forced to sell blood to survive.
The couple are among an estimated 10,000 desperately poor peasants in north-western China, who are selling their blood at illegal collection banks to make a living, sparking fears that a new blood infection scandal may hit the country.
Although blood sales have been banned in China since 1998 in an attempt to cut down on the spread of AIDS, state-run blood collection centres are still reported to be involved in the illicit trade.
According to the official Beijing Youth Daily, villagers from five towns along the border of Qinghai and Gansu provinces, driven by poverty, are travelling to various blood collection centres daily to earn cash. With the help of "agents", villagers can easily flout the regulations by producing fake blood donation certificates to collection centres and even large hospitals.
Many are depending on the money to put their children through school and some villagers are making several trips a week depending on their financial situation.
Last year details emerged of a major blood scandal in which people in the central Henan province were infected with the HIV virus after selling blood to illegal mobile blood banks in the mid-1990s. In one village in the province, Wenlou, it is estimated that 80 per cent of the population is infected with HIV/AIDS.
Last week, residents from Wenlou protested at the failure of the local government authorities to provide medicine for the ill.
Despite this scandal, blood sales are still the main source of income for farmers from the rural villages bordering Gansu and Qinghai. Some of the poorest farmers earned hardly enough to feed themselves last year.
But for donating 600 cc of blood, which is more than the volume of a regular mineral water bottle, the farmers receive €8, 4 kg of sugar and 1 kg of tea leaves.
The Beijing Youth Daily reported yesterday that villagers rise as early as 3 a.m. and walk for four hours to blood-collection centres. There they undergo blood tests before making a donation.
Blood sales have been a tradition in impoverished townships for decades. With an altitude of 2,200 to 2,700 metres and little rainfall, villagers can grow only potatoes.
It is reported that almost every household has at least one person selling blood. Even local officials such as Mr Zhao have now been forced to join the queue of those giving blood.
The Beijing Daily openly questioned why local governments had set up a large number of blood-collection centres in the impoverished region. "The official blood-collection centres are often located in the poorest mountainous areas. Is this intentional?"
The newspaper added that it would be ruthless to think that by allowing farmers to sell blood the government was helping the poor. The newspaper report did not say if any of the villagers had contracted the deadly HIV virus.
Medical specialists have warned China of the risk of an HIV/AIDS epidemic caused by unsafe blood collection and supply. Eight people out of every 1,000 HIV/AIDS sufferers are confirmed as being victims of unsafe blood collection and supply in China, whose HIV/AIDS figure is feared to have surpassed 600,000.
Although a national law to spur donations for clinical use has become effective, experts said China has to further encourage blood donation by setting up qualified collecting stations with strict testing.
The Chinese authorities announced last year a plan to invest heavily in the construction of blood collection and supply networks in central and western areas, and to close illegal stations this year.