With bangs of firecrackers and smell of boiled meat, festive atmosphere filled Huang's house. In the early morning on Saturday, villagers came to help him prepare an evening get-together feast Huang had planned as a way to thank those who have helped him.

"I had told them (villagers) any one would be welcome to join the feast," said the 41-year-old, head of the No. 2 team of Lijiacun village in southwestern Sichuan Province.

Huang said he had asked his wife and two daughters who were working in Guangdong not to come back for the Spring Festival considering the traffic on their way home and the cost.

Huang, who was diagnosed with HIV in June 1995 after he had gone to sell blood in central China's Henan Province, also an AIDS-plagued area in the country.

"The blood collector did not take any protective measures," Huang recalled. "I really did not know it was a fatal thing."

In the early 1990s, thousands of poor rural residents in Henan and Sichuan contracted HIV from illegal commercial blood stations that combined the blood of sellers into common vats, separated the valuable plasma, and then pumped the tainted blood back into unwitting sellers.

Huang's world became dark after fellow villagers knew that he had contracted HIV.

"Acquaintances did not greet me on streets and friends who had visited my house frequently did not come any more," said Huang, whose life was then full of gloom and loneliness.

Like Huang, more than 100 people in Zizhong County of Sichuan Province who had gone to Henan to sell blood, have been diagnosed with HIV since 1995. Forty of them have died. Zizhong is an underdeveloped agricultural county with over one million people.

China has now an estimated 650,000 HIV/AIDS cases across the country.

In 2002, the county started an AIDS care program. Medical experts and county officials went to villages to spread knowledge about AIDS.

"The experts and officials shook hands with HIV-infected people, drank tea and talked with them," recalled Huang. "These were the most convincing acts for villagers who dared not contact with the HIV-infected villagers."

After that, villagers began to change their attitude toward them, said Huang.

"It is the most happiest thing to see people treat us in a natural way," said Huang.

A few days ago, Huang sent each family of his team a fish caught in his pond. The sound of fish in Chinese is the same as that another Chinese character meaning extra money, thus symbolizing an affluent life.

Huang said he also planned to help villagers build a three-kilometer highway for the village.

"If I can get the project done, it will be a good end for my post," Huang said.