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SCMP Reporter

As millions of mainland students return to school this week after the winter break, 11-year-old Tan Yuke , who lives in one of the areas worst hit by the snowstorms, is facing a completely different semester.
She has to get her frostbitten hands working so she can labour in the local fireworks factory to earn her school fees.
Yuke has to toil 10 hours a day in the makeshift fireworks factory - one of the deadliest workplaces in the world - so she  can pay  the entrance fees at the local school.
Normally the young girl would have made enough money by now to go back to school as other  children do. But this year, her hometown in  Yizhang county, Hunan province , was hit by the worst blizzards in decades. Yuke, and hundreds of other  children living in the area, could not work because their hands were numb. Many suffered frostbite and could hardly move their fingers.
With the Lunar New Year - the peak season for fireworks sales - ending formally on Thursday, Yuke and others are racing against  time  to earn their school fees.
Despite mainland laws clearly forbidding factories to hire under-age workers, it is common for  children in  poverty-stricken Yizhang county to work in fireworks  plants, which need workers with nimble fingers to join fuses to explosives.
Ever since she was  seven years old, Yuke has been making firecrackers from dawn to dusk every weekend and during the summer and winter holidays.
The money she made went towards her education and to help  her family. Her parents are casual workers at a fireworks plant in Yizhang and each earns  20 yuan a day by  fitting fuses to  about 32,000   firecrackers. To achieve that, they have to work without rest from 7am  until 6pm.
'My whole body is writhing in agony after the work. I cannot go  to sleep at night. Sometimes I weep quietly  until morning,' said Yao Guirong , 40, Yuke's mother.
Yuke and other children have had to give up their  part-time jobs for more than 20 days because of the extremely cold weather.
As a result, the family could not pay Yuke's school fees on time. Despite their pleas to the school, Yuke has been told she cannot go back to study until she pays her fees.
'I will probably have to wait for September before I can go to school again,' she said sadly. 'I'm so worried that I won't be able to catch up.
'My dream is to make big money one day and build a big house for my parents. Without knowledge, there is no chance I can live out that dream,' she said, adding that she was puzzled as to why 'some bad teachers' have refused to allow her and her siblings to return to school.
Working in a fireworks factory is a deadly business. Last week, at least four villagers in Foshan  were injured after more than 15,000 cartons of fireworks exploded,  triggering tremors of 1.1 on the Richter scale.
On April 6, 2001, 41 primary pupils - being forced to make fireworks to pay for their school fees - were killed in a huge explosion that reduced the buildings to rubble in Wanzai, Jiangxi province .
To improve  work-safety records, the Guangdong provincial government ordered all fireworks manufacturers to move out in 2005. Most of them  relocated to nearby provinces and many settled in Yizhang.  Fireworks suddenly became the pillar of the local economy.
A factory boss, who refused to be named, said the snowstorms had cost him more than 200,000 yuan.
'We have 190 firecracker factories in Yizhang. It is inevitable that some of them have had to hire under-age workers [because of a labour shortage]. It can help them reduce costs,' said the 35-year-old businessman, who claimed all his employees were adults.



Blizzards merely delay a girl's perilous toil