Again very relevant to me being based in Fujian as well as the fact that Wan Ling comes from villages not unlike those of the people mentioned in the article. Life for these families just goes from bad to worse. The terrible fact is that the burden will be borne by serveral generations who may even through away the opportunities that education could have given them.
In Britain, the Morecambe Bay disaster is history. More than three years after 23 Chinese cockle pickers perished on the Lancashire sands, most people in the United Kingdom believe justice has been done. All but two of the bodies have been found, identified and repatriated. The gangmaster Lin Liangren has been sentenced to 14 years in prison. The authorities were so pleased with the outcome of Operation Lund (as the case was called) that investigators won last year's top criminal justice award. ITV received a Bafta for its coverage of the seven-month trial, which ended in march last year. It is as though the Chinese tragedy became a triumph, a vindication of Britain's way of dealing with disaster.
But 5,000 miles away in Fujian province, on the south-eastern coast of China, lives are still being sucked into the sands. The victims' families - especially their children - are being punished, even though they broke no law themselves.
The Morecambe disaster was recognised as a crime by a British court. Unable to read the warning signs on the beach, the victims were trapped while picking cockles by fast-moving tides on the notoriously treacherous sands. When their gangmaster, Lin, was convicted of criminal negligence the judge at Preston crown court said the accused was motivated by greed to shockingly exploit his countrymen with no heed for their safety.
But because the victims were all illegal migrants, their dependants have received no compensation, meagre charity, and endured such appalling harassment from debt collectors that several have been driven from their homes and at least one woman has killed herself.
It is as if they have fallen into a crevasse between justice and charity, from which there is no way out. Although this was a made-in-China and consummated-in-Britain tragedy, no one wants to take responsibility for the consequences. The authorities in Beijing have washed their hands of the matter. The British government has paid to send the bodies home, but it is reluctant to do more for fear of encouraging other illegal immigrants.
Lawyers in London are pressing a claim for money from Britain's criminal compensation fund, but if a payment comes at all it could take years. "It won't be easy," says David Tang, the London lawyer who represents the victims. "There is no precedent ... All we can do is wait."
Charitable appeals have made little progress. The UK Fujian Association gave 10,000 yuan (about £660) to many of the victims, but this was barely enough to pay for the funerals. Nick Broomfield, who made the 2006 film Ghosts about the tragedy, set up the Morecambe Victims Fund with the Guardian journalist Hsiao-Hung Pai last August aimed at raising £500,000 for the victims' families. Almost a year on, it has collected only £20,000, including £5,000 that ITV donated after its recent Bafta.
There is a common misconception that donations to the cockle-pickers' families will go into the pockets of the "snakehead" gangsters who smuggled the victims into Britain. In fact, the snakeheads were paid off long before the accidents.
The families' huge debts are now owed to relatives, friends and neighbours. Typically in such situations, they have each lent 5,000 to 10,000 yuan (£330-£660) to a family to pay the cash that the snakeheads demand as soon as the migrant has been smuggled to his or her destination. These lenders, many of whom are poor themselves, charge interest of about 10% a year. And so the debt grows, and grows, devouring the lives of those left behind.
Wu Hongkang
Dependants Wife Su Zhenqin and two daughters aged 10 and 14
Debt 300,000 yuan (£19,900)
Monthly income 300 yuan (£20)
Su Zhenqin has seen her life go backwards since the Morecambe deaths on the night of February 5 2004. The widow's house is easy to spot in Shangjiang village. Twenty years ago, the two-storey, red-brick building was probably the envy of the neighbourhood. Today, it is one of the oldest structures in a community of new factories and villas.
At a rough wooden table inside, she shows me the family photo album. It contains 10 pictures. Most are of her wedding. She is wearing a white dress and her husband Wu Hongkang is in a western suit. A family portrait in 2004 shows the couple smiling with their two children. "That was taken just days before he set off to Europe," she says, breaking into tears. "The only way I can bear life now is to imagine that he is still alive."
Her husband's death meant instant ruin. Su owes more than other families because she had to pay the snakeheads twice: once to get her husband to Germany and then, when he found no work there, to get him to Britain. To put her two children through school, she has borrowed more money, taking her debt to more than 300,000 yuan (£19,900) .
Her only income - 300 yuan (£20 a month) - comes from mixing concrete on building sites for other people's new houses. It is not enough to live on, let alone pay interest. "We cannot afford gas so I have to go up to the hill to get wood," she sobs. "My neighbours and relatives help us. They cook a little extra and bring some for us."
The creditors have also suffered, she says. "They lent us money because they sympathised with our poverty. They have to work hard for their money too." But they drive her to distraction. One creditor, a cousin, has sued her in court, saying she must remarry to clear her debt. She refuses. "My husband was good to me. I don't want another."
She shows me round her home. "Look at this house. The walls are cracked. The windows are broken. Birds have nested in the roof. I am terrified that one typhoon could bring the walls crashing down on top of us." She breaks down again. "Please help us. My husband is dead. My children are suffering. We are so poor. I don't know how we can go on."
There is little I can say to comfort her. We must go on. She comes outside to see us off. As we drive away, I notice the propaganda slogan daubed on the walls of her house in big red characters: "Serve Economic Development."
As we leave, our driver, Lin Wanxiong, explains how Fujianese people have been travelling overseas to make their fortunes for many generations. It is not just economic hardship that drives them, he says, but also tradition and a spirit of adventure. "I went myself when I was young. But I got caught trying to enter Japan," he recalls. "They put me in prison for a year. But the Japanese police were very good. They didn't beat me, not even once."
Money, though, is clearly the main driving force in a country where communist values have long since given way to a dog-eat-dog culture. Market reforms have produced stunning economic growth and many new millionaires, but they have also eroded access to healthcare and education for the poor. The absence of a social welfare net in China drives people overseas and then leaves their families exposed when something goes wrong.
Dong Xinwu
Dependants Wife Chen Yanchun, son Song Xinyao, 17, and the family's two grandmothers
Debt 240,000 yuan (£15,900)
Monthly income 500 yuan (£33)
The Fujian style of mourning is somewhere between a lament and an undulating, almost melodic wail of misery. It was first described to me in February 2004 as one of China's most beautiful and deeply distressing forms of art.
I heard it a lot that month, during two visits to the province to interview some of the families of the cockle pickers who had just died at Morecambe. In almost every home, it would start up almost as soon as I - or any other visitor - entered the house, and continue until we left.
Back then, I assumed that the cries would end after a few hours or weeks or months. But returning to Fujian more than three years later, I find that familiar lament greeting me as I enter the home of Chen Yanchun, who has met me at the airport and sobbed for most of the 50-minute drive to see her family. The death of her husband Dong Xinwu has left them with a debt of 240,000 yuan and no breadwinner to pay it back.
Migrants such as Dong take the fast route into the global workforce, while tens of millions of peasants take the slow road, by labouring in Chinese factories making products for western consumers. The smuggled Fujianese headed directly to the sources of wealth, including Europe. "If someone goes abroad, everybody in the neighbourhood lends them money because they believe they will be repaid in three or four years," Chen says. "Each family lends about 5,000 yuan (£330). There is usually less risk than for a loan for college or business."
But if something goes wrong, there is no bankruptcy law and scarcely any safety net - a poverty alleviation allowance of £3 per month per child is all that local government pays in cases of great hardship. And tradition says the wife and children inherit the debt of the father.
Chen says she has sold her wedding jewellery and persuaded the creditors to stop charging 10% interest. But she feels a constant pressure. "The families who lent us the money are also poor. They need to be repaid. Our close friends and relatives understand that we cannot pay, but the others gossip about me."
She makes 500 yuan (£33) a month doing piecework - hammering the soles of shoes into place on her kitchen table. It is less than she would earn at a factory, but at least she can stay at home and keep an eye on her son and his grandparents.
Chen's mother wails when she sees me and falls to her knees to beg for help. In sharp contrast, the dead man's mother is almost silent. "She has lost her mind. She refuses to accept that her son is dead. All she does all day is collect rubbish for recycling so we can get a little extra money," explains Chen. "But my mother almost never stops crying. She really got on well with her son-in-law and now he is gone, she knows what problems we face."
The focus of the family's concern is on the youngest member. Song Xinyao is a smart 17-year-old who dreamed of going to university. His father went overseas to earn enough for his tuition. Chen says that is impossible now.
"I can barely pay the fees for his high-school education. After he turns 18 next year, we won't be able to keep him in education." In any case, she says, her son no longer wants to go to school. He would rather start work early so that he can start making payments on the debt that he will inherit as soon as he comes of age - a responsibility that few children of his age have to bear. He cooks noodles for the family, helps his mother with the piecework, and trims his dreams to fit the new reality.
"My plan is to work in Kentucky Fried Chicken or McDonald's. There are some outlets just 10 minutes from here and I hear they pay OK, about three or four yuan [20-25p] an hour. I could earn 500 yuan in a month," he says.
One grandmother is still crying as I prepare to leave. The other quietly grasps my hand and implores me to help. I ask Chen how the family will manage. "I have no plan. My only hope is that all of the family stay safe and healthy. If anyone gets sick, it will be a total disaster for all of us."
Lin Guoguang
Dependants Wife Chen Jinyun and sons Lin Luan, 19, and Lin Huan, 18
Debt More than 100,000 yuan (£6,625)
Monthly income 600 yuan (£40)
Chen Jinyun is on the run. She has not broken any laws, but the death of her husband in Morecambe has made her a fugitive from the family's creditors. "Someone told them that we had received compensation from the UK, but it is not true. If I had any money, I would pay them, because I know they have to work hard for their money too. It is not that I don't want to pay. I just can't."
We sneak back into her home so that she can show me the life she left behind. It is a rough-hewn, empty house. The only decorations on the walls are some Christian posters and a portrait of her dead husband, Lin Guoguang. "It still makes me sad whenever I come here. Ten of us used to live here," says Chen. "The situation is getting worse. Just after the disaster, our relatives helped us a little bit, but they could not carry on supporting us indefinitely. Now we are on our own. And the amount that we owe is growing all the time because we cannot pay interest."
She shows me a letter she received from her husband before he died. It is a short, scrawled tale of misery: "Wife. Europe is a devilish prison. It is very hard to make a living here. To earn money, I have to endure the depths of bitterness. In this boring Europe, I miss you and mother and our relatives very much. I wish you and my son health and safety."
At the bottom, he tags on a brief message to their two sons. "Dad's only wish is that you study harder and harder and never act too proud. Always listen to your mother."
The eldest son has done his best to honour that final wish, but it is becoming more difficult. This month he takes university entrance exams, but his mother says she cannot afford the application fee, let alone the costs of tuition if he gets a place. Her house-cleaning job brings in just 600 yuan (£40) a month. This barely covers half the interest payments.
"I don't know how I will be able to pay for him if he succeeds. At the moment, it is impossible. I can't sleep with worry." But they need education to lift them to a level where one of them can repay the debt, which will be passed on to the sons - as is customary in this part of the world.
"I dare not tell my sons about our debts. I know it would influence them in a bad way. But they are not stupid. They realise we have problems," says Chen.
Outside, there are building materials for some home improvements that have been shelved indefinitely. On surrounding plots of land, meanwhile, neighbours are erecting huge new villas with the money sent back by family members overseas.
Chen Aiqin
Dependants Son Cai Zhixiang, 16, daughter Cai Huiling, 13
Debt 150,000 yuan (£9,940)
Monthly income 2,000 yuan (£132)
Siblings Cai Zhixiang and Cai Huiling were orphaned by the Morecambe tragedy. Their father had died in an accident several years earlier, leaving the family deep in debt. Their mother, Chen Aiqin, went to work in Britain because she thought it was her family's only chance to escape poverty. A week after she died, in 2004, I visited the family's home. Having heard so many wailing relatives in other houses, I was struck by the silence in this one. The children looked lost, disbelieving. Their uncle was too shocked by the size of the burden suddenly thrust upon him to grieve at the loss of his sister. He already had four mouths to feed. Now he had inherited two more and a debt of 150,000 yuan (£9,940).
Returning three years later, I find that he seems to have coped as well as can be imagined in the circumstances. The family has had to move. It wasn't the creditors this time. The children couldn't bear to live in their old house, where the pictures of their dead parents hung on the walls. "I'm scared to go there," says the daughter, Cai Huiling.
She now lives at her uncle and aunt's home in the hills. The siblings have been separated. The uncle, Chen Minyi, said he could not afford to keep them both, so the son stays with another aunt. Even so, small expenses quickly mount up. Education - supposedly free - costs more than 2,000 yuan (£132) a year. Healthcare, which is more market-driven than in most capitalist countries, is a heavy burden. Each time one of the children catches a cold, the family must pay a few hundred yuan for medicine.
And, of course, the debt from the dead woman's passage to Britain still hangs over them. The uncle, who earns 1,500 yuan per month, has repaid 20,000 yuan, but still owes 150,000. The creditors have stopped charging interest, but they are a presence that the children cannot ignore.
"I worry about their future," says the uncle. "The brother is 16 and he doesn't study hard. He wants to quit school and start work so that he can begin repaying the debt. He knows the creditors will never stop coming after him. He has seen what they are like when they are here."
Worries about the future contrast sharply with the upbeat mood in Fujian. With China's economy racing along at double-digit pace and huge inflows of cash from overseas, this region has never had it so good. But it is still not rich enough to keep people from leaving. In 2006, the average rural income in the province was 4,450 yuan (£270 pounds) a year, one-third higher than the Chinese norm - but little more than 1% of most British salaries.
Xu Yuhua and Liu Qinying
Dependant Son Xu Bin, 17
Debt More than 200,000 yuan (£13,250)
Monthly income 1,200 yuan (£80)
Xu Liying knows just how hard life can be without any support from society, the state or charity. She is the stalwart of her family: a doughty, intelligent woman with the only skilled, white-collar job among all the people that we have been meeting. Her salary of 1,200 yuan (£80) a month, from a Singaporean trading company, would normally ensure a modest but secure existence in Fujian. But she is dragged into poverty by debt and dependants.
She supports a daughter with learning disabilities, an unemployed husband, an elderly father, a sister who became mentally ill after being raped, and, since February 5 2004, a nephew.
Her brother and his wife were the only couple to die on the Lancashire sands, leaving their son an orphan. She shows me two photos of the father, Xu Yuhua, and mother, Liu Qinying, taken a week or so before the disaster. In the background of both is a British beach. "Is that near Morecambe?" I ask. "Perhaps," she says with a shrug.
Xu says her brother went overseas after his mother was diagnosed with cancer. It was the only way they could pay for the treatment. He earned a lot in his first year and wrote to say that he was happy in Britain. His wife joined him after local snakeheads told her that migrant men find mistresses if they are separated from their spouses for too long. Xu appears to be a reasoning, reasonable woman. But now she is furious at those who have left her alone with such a burden. She condemns the snakeheads for luring her brother and his sister overseas, she accuses the Chinese authorities of inhumanity because they would not let her see the bodies before they were cremated, and she is dismayed that Britain is treating the dead more as criminals than as victims.
"We are really poor. How can the Chinese and the UK governments say that it is not their responsibility? It is really unfair. All the victims were the main breadwinners for their families. They did not do anything illegal once they got to the UK. They were working and they died. Those who sent them to their deaths have not been punished as much as us." Her orphaned nephew Xu Bin has inherited debts of more than 200,000 yuan (£13,250). The creditors have taken over the dead couple's house, using it as a storeroom for their goods. The 17-year-old's schoolwork is suffering. When he returns home, he locks himself in his room. During the last school holiday, he went to work in a factory paying 60p a day so he could start to repay the debts of the dead.
"I adopted him as my son, but I am worried about his future," sobs his aunt. "It is his debt now. The creditors haven't started to harass him yet because they know he is just a kid, but they will when he grows up."
At last year's trial in Britain, the boy wrote to the judge. "The accident was a disaster for me. I had a warm and happy family even though we weren't rich. Now I have lost my parents. My uncle, auntie and grandfather help me. But I have a few hundred thousand yuan worth of debts. Although they don't say anything, I know they worry every day about debt."
Cao Chaokun
Dependants Wife Zhou Xiaomei and son Cao Xianyong 13, daughter Cao Meiyun 16
Debt 200,000 yuan (£13,250)
Monthly income 250 yuan (£17)
In Fujian, a man is judged by the height of his home. What is inside is almost irrelevant. The main thing is to be able to look down on your neighbours. Oneupmanship does not come much more literal. This crude architectural hierarchy marks Zhou Xiaomei out as a failure. Her miserable red-brick cottage grovels at the feet of neighbouring multi-storeys - designed in a European style with Greek pillars and pediments. The contrast is visually disturbing, a reminder that China is crushing several centuries of development into a few decades.
Where things are going right, the success stories - of giddy growth, sudden wealth and market domination - entirely justify the country's image as the nascent superpower of the 21st century. But let something go wrong - an accident, illness or injustice - and the clock whirs back to the 19th century and a worse-than-Dickensian nightmare of instant ruin, hopeless poverty and chilling social indifference.
Like most victims, Zhou's husband Cao Chaokun was not well educated. He went to Europe to make up for that: if he had succeeded, everyone would have benefited. But he lost his life, and now Zhou has not only to look after their son and daughter, but also a sick brother-in-law. "I work on a construction site from time to time, mixing concrete," she says, her dialect so heavy that even the interpreter has difficulty understanding; her words need to be translated into standard Mandarin before they can be retranslated into English for me. "It is hard work, but I barely earn enough to put food in our mouths," she says. "I was so tired last year that I had to stop and rest. But we quickly ran out of things to eat so I had to start working again. Sometimes, relatives help out so that her children do not starve. "Usually all we have to eat is noodles and rice. And perhaps some fatty scraps of meat."
There has been a little charity for her and several other families, from the Fuqing Overseas Workers organisation. And Lena Chen - a Chinese woman living in Britain - sends a small amount of money before each spring festival. But the family is subsisting rather than living. "It is not fair for the children. They have done nothing wrong."
Her sick brother-in-law says he feels like an extra burden. "One women supports two children and me. I have a serious disease. I am paralysed most of the time. I can't afford to go to hospital for the surgery I need so I just sit at home waiting to die. The doctor says it won't be long."
Guo Binlong
Dependants Wife Yu Lihong, daughter Guo Yuwei 16, son Guo Minghui 9,
Debt 300,000 yuan (£20,000)
Income 750 yuan (£50) per month
As Yu Lihong starts to recall her mother-in-law's suicide, warm rain thunders down outside the barred, blue-tinted windows of the apartment at the top of the dark staircase, a walk of nine storeys every time the family has to go out to buy some noodles.
"Wait a moment," I interrupt. "Shouldn't the boy go and play next door?" The young woman shrugs as she ushers her son into the bedroom next door. It probably makes little difference. He must be able to hear everything anyway, if not this time, then on countless previous occasions. He does everything he is told without complaint or enthusiasm. I hope he is able to escape deep into the comic books he reads as his mother tells me of a disaster followed by a tragedy followed by years of hopelessness.
It is a tale of globalisation, of events on one side of the world rippling to the other and back, each time with tragic consequences. Guo Binlong's brick-making business failed in China, so he went to Britain. He died in Lancashire, so his mother killed herself in Fujian. Thanks to satellites and modern communications, the bad luck bounced across the globe almost instantly. Unlike most of the families in Fujian, Yu knew that her husband was in trouble before she read about it in the newspapers because Guo had a mobile phone with him in Morecambe Bay. He may have been one of those who tried to call the emergency services; their panicked, mixed-up English pleas for help were replayed at the trial. But he also rang home to Fujian. "He told us the water was up to his neck and asked us to pray for him," says his wife.
His mother, Shi Aizhu, took that call. That last conversation with her son crushed much of her will to live; the hounding by the creditors finished her off. "They kept on and on at her. She was always crying. It was unbearable," recalls Lin in a matter-of-fact voice as her own mother sobs at her side.
In January 2005, just short of a year after her son's death, Shi decided to join him. That afternoon, she ate with her grandson during his lunch break. Then she went upstairs and swallowed a bottle of rat poison. It was the eight-year-old who found the body. "When my son came back home, he thought she was still asleep." The family is still in trouble. More than 1,000 days after the accident, they haven't paid back a single yuan of the original 80,000-yuan (£5,300) loan. Some creditors keep adding interest, which has pushed the debt to 300,000 yuan (£20,000).
Five of them depend on Yu's father's factory salary of 750 yuan. After they have paid the rent and utilities, there is barely enough for food. They have had to move. "I stayed in my husband's home for a while. But it is near the creditors so they used to come knocking all the time. Last time I was back there, word quickly got round and before I knew it there were 10 of them pressing me to repay our debts."
Yu went to Inner Mongolia for a few months to work. But she had to come back because her children's schoolwork was suffering in her absence. "I have no idea how we will get out of this situation," she says. "Maybe when the children are older, they can work and pay off our debts. I wish I could earn something now to ease their burden, but I can't leave my children alone. I really don't know what we can do."
The interview over, I ask if I can take some pictures of the mother, grandmother and son. The boy is lying on the bed, still flicking through a comic book. But he gets up without grumbling and poses patiently next to his mother. As they stare into the camera, I notice the painfully inappropriate English slogan emblazoned on her T-shirt. "Ha ha, smile!" it says.
Lin Zhifang
Survived by Father Lin Guohua
Debt 100,000 yuan (£6,625)
Income None
Even in grief there is competition. The families I meet in Fujian are all after pity - it is their last hope - but they are not equally able to press their case for sympathy, charity and compensation.
Lin Guohua is at the bottom of the heap. He makes no first impression, creates no fuss, just sits quietly waiting for his chance to speak while others are pulling at the heartstrings. His first words are an apology. "I am sorry I couldn't invite you to my place. The problem is the creditors. The last time a foreigner came to see me, they came knocking immediately after and caused trouble. If the creditors saw you they would assume you gave me money and demand I repay them."
Among all the people I meet in Fujian, Lin has come the furthest to talk but appears to have the lowest expectations. I guess he is also the poorest and least educated. Everything he says lives up to the archetype of the downtrodden peasant. "We once lived in the hills, but it was too remote, too far away from the nearest school, so we moved," he says in a thick local dialect. "We have no family home, no land. My son knew that he would never find a bride unless we had our own home, so he went to England to earn enough money to buy one."
The son, Lin Zhifan, was also poorly educated - quitting school before he was 16 so that he could work in a factory. But, unlike his father, he refused to accept that poverty was his lot in life. Soon after he turned 19, he went to England. A month or two after arriving, he was dead - the youngest of the Morecambe victims.
The father inherited his son's 100,000 yuan debt (£6, 625). It is an impossible burden for a landless farmer who is too old to find work in a factory. The monthly interest, 1,000 yuan (£66), is three times Lin's rent. The man and his wife survive on handouts from their three other sons. When the creditors come knocking - at least once a month for the past three years - he begs for more time.
"Some are polite. Others are furious and threaten to beat me. I tell them I am not worth killing. If I am dead, I will never be able to repay them."
There is no anger or grief in his voice. Misery appears to be what he is used to. It is the complications that unsettle him. "Three years ago, we were poor but our lives were tranquil. Now the creditors never stop bothering us." And with that, he slips back into the background. During lunch with two of the other bereaved relatives, he says nothing, just slurps his noodles and lets others talk of compensation, human rights and justice.
· Additional reporting by Chen Shi
