Ma Chaohun was desperate. The farmer from impoverished Ningxia, in northern China, had been sentenced to death after killing his wife in the belief she was having an affair. As he awaited the end of his life on death row, his concerns were not for himself, but his two sons. He wrote to the only person he believed could help him - Zhang Shuqin, a woman who has devoted her life to caring for the children of prisoners. He begged her to look after his boys.
'He was afraid that Jiadong and Jiacai faced a bad future because they would have no parents left and his family was so poor. He feared they would grow up no good,' says Qian Hong, one of Zhang's assistants. 'They were living with relatives. But without any parents, they were a burden to their family.'
Zhang received the letter during a busy time at work. She read it and considered its contents. Every year, she receives hundreds of similar letters from jailed parents pleading with her to take their children into Sun Village near Beijing, one of just four homes in mainland China for the offspring of prisoners. Zhang had grown up around Ningxia, from where the letter had originated and from where the children would have to be fetched. Bordering on Inner Mongolia, it is a tough part of the world and difficult to reach. Zhang put the letter aside for the time being.
'Then one day, she picked the letter up again and called the jail to find out what conditions the boys were living in. They told her Ma had been executed an hour ago,' says Qian. Shocked and guilt-ridden, Zhang arranged for Jiadong, then 11, and Jiacai, nine, to join her in Beijing. 'She felt awful because he died not knowing what would happen to his sons.'
About one million children on the mainland have parents in jail, but no law dictates what happens to them. Many are shunted from relatives to friends to orphanages. Often, they are abused or exploited along the way, the victims of a cultural prejudice against the offspring of prisoners. In imperial China, relatives could be executed along with a wrongdoer. After 1949, Mao Zedong taught people that 'the son of a hero is a hero, the son of a bad egg is a bad egg'. Tainted by association, many end up on the streets, where the cycles of violence and crime are perpetuated.
Awareness of the problem is growing, with a law to protect the children under discussion, according to a spokesman for the Ministry of Civil Affairs in Beijing. Progress is painfully slow. In December, for the first time, the government mentioned the issue in a long document on social order that called on Communist Party and government departments across the country to 'help the children of convicts, abandoned children and other minors facing difficulties to overcome practical problems and help them grow up healthily'. In the arcane world of mainland politics, the mention is a sign that such work can go ahead unhindered.