Lanlan, a founding member and now executive director of Tianjin Xin’ai （天津信爱）was born in 1978, a time of great economic change for China. After dropping out of school at thirteen, Lanlan tried her hand at farming and eventually found work in a restaurant, chopping vegetables and washing dishes. In 2000, after the birth of her daughter, Lanlan turned to sex work to support her child and aging parents. She was motivated to start a sex worker support group when she began to feel, as she says, that “AIDS NGO staff could not relate to sex workers or their particular needs.” Today, Tianjin Xin’ai conducts outreach to sex workers, providing them with occupational safety training, health training, and legal training. The mission, says Lanlan, is self-confidence, self-respect, and mutual support.
Because of restrictive U.S. visa policies, Lanlan may be one of the few sex workers in
attendance at the AIDS 2012 conference this year. Lanlan spoke to Asia Catalyst about her own work and why she looking forward to Washington, DC.
请向我们介绍一下你的工作？
Please tell us about your work.
2008年5月我和其他几个姐妹一起成立了这个工作组。在2008年到2009之间，我们没有任何的资金支持，靠自己出钱做活动。2010年，我们获得乐施会的支持，才有了现在的办公室。但是因为资金有限，我们的活动限于天津的一个区。目前我们面临的挑战在于，姐妹们出于工作原因会流动到别的区，但是因为资金不足，我们的干预工作不能跨区进行。
In May 2008, I worked with several other sisters to establish Tianjin Xin’ai. From 2008-09, we did not have any financial support; we had to rely on ourselves to fund our activities. In 2010, we gained funding support from Oxfam, and were finally able to open an office. But because the funding is limited, our interventions focus on only one district in Tianjin. The major challenge we face is that because sex workers are looking for work, they migrate frequently from district to district, but we don’t have enough funding to do interventions that cross several districts.
我们给姐妹们提供职业安全培训、健康培训、外展和法律培训等。我们教她们怎样避免遭受受客人和警察的暴力，如何说服客人戴套，怎么避免打劫等。我们明天就会举办一个法律培训，请一个有劳教经验的姐妹向其他性工作分享被警察抓住时，怎么录口供才能不被劳教。我们也会告诉姐妹警察在抓捕我们的时候要遵守哪些法律，让她们学会自己保护自己。
我看到消息说重庆取消了劳动教养，我把这个加入明天的培训内容。尽管在中国我们很难合法化，但至少我们的目是要取消劳动教养。
We provide our sisters with occupational safety training, health training, legal training and outreach training. We teach them how to avoid violence from clients and police, how to persuade clients to use condoms, and how to avoid theft. Tomorrow we will have a legal training. We invited a sex worker sentenced to a labor camp to share her experience and share how best to avoid police detention. We will also train sex workers in the laws police should respect during arrest to show women how to protect themselves.
I just saw the news that
Chongqing City has passed new regulations that end
re-education through labor for sex workers, so I will add this into the content of the training tomorrow. It would be difficult to legalize sex work in China, but at least our goal can be to end re-education through labor.
请问你是怎么开始这项工作的？
How did you start this work?
我最开始的时候在北京的一家艾滋病非政府组织当志愿者。当时我觉得，这个组织的工作人员并不真正了解我们，感觉总有隔阂。我想，如果我们自己做一个机构，效果会更好，所以就做了。
At first I was a volunteer for an AIDS NGO in Beijing. At the time I felt that the staff did not understand us (sex workers), and I always felt there were barriers between us (because of the lack of sex worker input). I thought that if we had our own organization things would work better. So I started one.
为什么要参加世界艾滋病大会？
Why do you want to attend AIDS 2012?
1、我想让大会的人能够听到性工作者的声音，分享她们的诉求；
1. I want to share the voices of sex workers’ and help conference goers to learn about our needs.
2、我想向大会传达这样一个信息：我们不是被迫从事性工作的，我们是为了让生活过得更好而自愿从事的。我们没有伤害到别人，我们没有错。
2. I want people at the conference to know this: that we are not forced into sex work, we do it voluntarily because we want to make our own lives better. I want to tell people ‘we do not harm anybody and we are not bad people.’
3、我希望通过参加会议能够了解同行的经验，学习他们好的做法。
3. I hope by attending the conference I can learn about other peoples’ experiences and best practices.
4、也希望让资助方了解我们的工作，支持我们。
4. I also want to take the opportunity to tell donors about our work and ask for their support.
你还有什么话想告诉我们的读者？
What else do you want to say to our audience?
我们是有益的，没有害处。只要社会不歧视我们，法律不惩处我们，我们就过得很幸福。
We (sex workers) are doing something beneficial for others, not harmful. As long as society does not discriminate against us, and the law does not punish us, we will lead a happy life.
另外，我从事这项工作，也是因为我在原来那个艾滋病组织工作的时候接触到了艾滋病人，他们看起来和一般人没有什么区别。这完全打翻了我原来的认知，我们以为看起来健康的人就是健康的。但实际上我们身边有多少是感染者呢？我们的姐妹也面临着这样的风险，所以我出来做这个小组，也是为了让姐妹们远离艾滋病。
Also, one of the reasons why I started doing this work was that when I finally met people living with HIV/AIDS, they just looked the same as everyone else. This completely overturned all my previous ideas. In fact, how many people around us are living with HIV? You just can’t tell by looking at someone. Our sisters are also facing this risk so I set up this group to help our sisters avoid the risk of HIV/AIDS.
