There are many terrible routes to the Dying Rooms, write REG LITTLE and PHIL CLEE. Some baby girls are abandoned by parents angry at not having a son. Because in China, where the State only allows one child per couple, sex is a matter of life and death - boys live, girls die.

Other children end their short lives there because physical weakness leaves them ill-equipped to survive in a brave new world hellbent on modernisation at any price.

It was inhumanity that also led Wantage mum Julia Hopper to one of the most cruel of orphanages - the inhumanity she witnessed sitting one night watching television in her living-room.

More than 100 million people in 37 countries are said to have watched the horrific television documentary, The Dying Rooms, about the forgotten children of China.

But while many expressed outrage about the orphanages, Julia pledged to fly out and offer what help she could. "Even the programme did not prepare me properly for what I saw," said the 44-year-old, from Hedge Hill Road, East Challow.

Children - some with severe physical handicaps - had been tied to chairs because there were not enough beds. Many were suffering from open wounds, eczema and chest and eye infections.

But her eyes were drawn to a cot holding a lifeless two-year-old girl, whom she was surprised to learn was called Lydia. As she discovered a little about the girl's wretched life as a victim of cerebral palsy, a doctor arrived to inform her the child was dying.

"The doctor told me the girl was no longer eating," recalled Julia. But in that instant she knew that in a country with thousands of orphans, she could perhaps make a difference for this one.

"I spent most of my time trying to get Lydia to eat. In the end I was able to feed her with a syringe." That was back in 1996. Julia, mother of two teenage children, has been back to the same orphanage in an industrialised city in central China many times since then.

Once, she was heartbroken to discover measles had taken hold in Lydia's tiny corner of the orphanage, causing the deaths of eight of the ten children there. But still Lydia clings to life, just as Julia clings to her hope that light is at last beginning to enter the Dying Rooms.

Recently back from her fourth visit to China with the Christian organisation International China Concern, Julia has been encouraged by signs of improvement, with the charity able to employ more volunteers in the orphanage. She said: "The work with the children consists of feeding them, bathing them - something that didn't normally happen - changing their nappies and spending time with them, which the Chinese staff just didn't have time to do." Sometimes it meant working long hours in sweltering temperatures of 35 degrees.

"It was so lovely to be able to pick up the kids. Some of them had never been cuddled before.

"They are just so grateful, even the very young ones, grateful that you want to spend time with them. The children were neglected because of the staff shortages. We didn't realise until the end of our time that most of the Chinese staff were deeply moved by the way in which we showed love to the children.

"When we came to leave there were tears on both sides. It has been a life-changing experience for me."

In her orphanage, a permanent project has now been set up, with a building in the grounds given to the ICC charity for a building programme for staff and to rehouse 40 of the most needy children. Oasis House, as it is called, opened last year and now trains staff from 70 other orphanages in the same province.

Julia said: "The baby rooms - normally two of them housing 80 to 90 babies - have been expanded to nine rooms, many with new cots. The children are no longer sleeping five or six abreast - only two at most. "But the most impressive change has been in the Chinese staff themselves.

"Around 20 of them had attended a training programme, which includes basic childcare, hygiene and nursing skills. The staff actually picked the children up and nursed them, fed them from separate bottles and bathed them," she added.

But even now she takes nothing for granted. Julia, whose husband Geoff works in management accounts at Harwell Laboratory, well remembers receiving the news that 13 children she had cared for had died from an epidemic.

Now she is back working as a catering assistant at St Katharine's House elderly ladies' home in Wantage.

But she was astonished to be rewarded in a most unexpected way. Registered disabled after years of chronic back problems, she found they dramatically disappeared as she prepared for her last trip.

"I really believe God healed me to go out there," she said. "I've got no academic qualifications. I just went out there as a mum to look after the kids."

For the orphans of China, that was qualification enough.

A TRAGEDY REVEALED

China strongly denied early rumours about the plight of children in their orphanages.

But the story of the forgotten children became public knowledge three years ago with the screening of a Channel 4 documentary, The Dying Rooms.

It revealed the appallingly high mortality rates and the inadequacy of care for sick children in Chinese welfare institutes.

US First Lady Hilary Clinton and then British Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind picked up the cudgel, raising the issue with the Chinese government.

Mounting political pressure eventually led China to reach agreement with the United Nations over funding improvements. In February, the Chinese indicated the intention to work closely with foreign agencies to bring about change.

At present there are 40,000 welfare institutions in China's rural areas and 100 orphanages in urban areas.

But a spokesman for the Dying Rooms Trust charity said: "It will take time. We are asking all governments to keep up the pressure on the Chinese to see that they fulfil their promises to the UN."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.