Dreams of the Village of Dinchzhuang

This is a novel about the HIV epidemic that swept through many provinces of China in the early nineties, when the government decided to develop its own blood plasma market and launched the "donor economy" campaign. Numerous "blood donation centers" opened across the country, and "blood elders" appeared in the villages. Tempted by the slogan "Donate blood and get rich," the impoverished peasants rushed to donate blood and, due to unsanitary conditions, were mass infected with HIV. After some time, a devastating wave of the epidemic rolled across the country, destroying entire villages. The book is the result of three years of the author working "undercover" – by becoming an assistant to a well-known anthropologist in Beijing, he gained the opportunity to study the history of one of the extinct villages.