Qiannan Prefecture: Determined to Call Back the Sunshine (2)

“Over the past two years, the efforts we made on anti-drug works have been huge. However, the work fell into the vicious circle of ‘addiction-retreatment-relapse’, which is a problems puzzles us most.”

In order to clarify this issue, Hu Xiaojian personally led a group and visited the communities after an anti-drug conference in early 2006.

That day, he led a group of six people from the relevant departments and visited Jianjiang Community in Duyun City. The community staff guided them into the house of a drug addict named Tong Xifeng.

Tong was a middle-aged man. He sat in front of the door under the sun, lazily opened his eyes when hearing the steps, but soon closed them again. Hu Xiaojian judged from the decadent look and weak body that this was the man they were looking for.

The staff described to Hu Xiaojian that the 48-year-old Tong Xifeng once had a happy family. His father was a cadre that served in South China. After graduating from junior high-school in the 1980s, Tong Xifeng engaged in individual transportation business and was well-paid. However, in 1995 he got addicted to drugs. After many rounds of compulsory treatment and labor education, his wife and daughter lost confidence in him and left him. Today, he led a poor life and could not even have three meals properly.

After listening to the description of the community staff, Hu Xiaojian stared at Tong Xifeng for a full five seconds, before squatting down to talk to him. The many doubts in his mind were gradually dispersed by the time he left that man’s house.

Tong Xifeng looked for job for three times after drug treatment. But all the employers refused him after learning about his experience. At the fourth time, he was finally hired as a security guard in a bar. But in less than a month after going to work, the complex people and environment in the bar soon made him relapse to addiction.

“The people in the special group such as Tong Xifeng are often rejected by the society. Their life and work space is relatively narrow. Without source of income or a healthy living atmosphere, they will easily continue to endanger the society. Duyun City must focus on long-term effect in anti-drug works, and not only help the addicts to get free of drug addiction but also provide them with a suitable job and a positive environment so as to achieve the purpose of returning to society.”

While Hu Xiaojian was making specific arrangements on the anti-drug work, dramatically, a female entrepreneur in Dushan County of Qiannan Prefecture, less than one hundred kilometers from Duyun City, thought of the same. This female entrepreneur was Jiang Shaoying, General Manager of Dushan Runyang Sports Equipment Company.