The three Yang sisters huddle shyly in a corner of a dormitory in Beijing's new "prison orphanage". The girls arrived here two weeks ago and are still getting used to their new surroundings. The eldest, Lei, is 13, but seems far older than her years. She is like a mother to 11-year-old Wei and the baby of the family, eight-year-old Lui.
The sisters are living in Sunyi special children's village, 40 kilometres north-east of Beijing. This residential centre is for children of convicts, and was opened six months ago by 53-year-old prison officer Zhang Shuqing. The children call her "Granny Zhang", a clear sign of the affection in which she is held.
The sisters' story is a tragic one. Lei explains that her parents always fought. Her father beat up her mother and gave her a tough time. It was not a happy household.
One day two years ago, her mother poisoned her father. "She was arrested and sent to prison. Last year, she was executed for my father's murder," Lei says. "We were sent to live with my grandmother, but she is old and can no longer take care of us, so we came to live here."
Tears well up in her young eyes when asked if she misses her parents and her home in Hebei province. "Yes, I do," she says, her bottom lip quivering. But she is determined not to cry. Then the youngest one, Lui, pipes up: "I don't miss them. It is much better here."
This is the first home of its type to open in the Beijing area. Three others have been established in the past five years in Zhang's native province of Shaanxi under the auspices of the China Charity Federation. Granny Zhang's ambition is to open a prison orphanage in each of the 32 provinces in China.
Every year, thousands of Chinese children whose parents are convicted of crimes become "prison orphans". In many cases, one parent is jailed for killing the other, and some are executed.
Their children suffer the disgrace of having a parent jailed or put to death. The children are often shunned in their villages and seen as having crime in their blood. They live in a highly punitive society where executions are publicised on posters, with a large red tick beside each culprit's name and crime. There is no getting away from their parents' misdeeds.
Often, older children are left to rear younger ones. Or relatives agree to take them in but send them to work in the fields. Sometimes the children run away to the cities to a life on the streets.
The number of prison orphans is not known. About 400,000 people are jailed in China every year and 70 per cent of these are married with at least one child. Many prisoners from rural areas, as in the case of the Yang sisters, have breached the one-child policy and leave two or three children to fend for themselves.
Zhang Shuqing got the idea of opening special villages for the children of prisoners after meeting a female prisoner in Shaanxi prison, where she worked as a warden. The inmate had five children who were in the care of an elderly grandmother, as her husband was also in prison. The youngest child was three.
Whenever the jailed mother thought of her children, she cried. Zhang agreed to visit them in their remote mountain village. She found that the eldest daughter had died from disease and the rest of the children were living in poor conditions. One had a broken arm.
"I used to see children outside the prison waiting to go in and visit their parents and it broke my heart," Zhang says. "Some as young as seven would have travelled hundreds of miles. I found that the worst-behaved prisoners were the ones with children left behind they were worried about. Some tried to run away to be with their children. When they got news of them, and visits, they calmed down."
Zhang's first special village was established in Xian in Shaanxi in 1996, with 20 children under 14. It was financed by donations from all over China.
One of the first residents was a six-year-old boy, Hei Dou, whose mother had killed his father. He was being cared for by a neighbour who was getting maintenance money from the village welfare fund. But Hei Dou was being beaten and forced to tend to goats. He was found covered in bruises and was filthy because he was sleeping with the animals.
At first, it was difficult to manage the children, admits Zhang. They had been used to looking after themselves and were strong-willed.
"We found that when they came to us they were afraid of no one. Love and care were not enough. They needed psychological help as well," she says.
The Sunyi village is made up of three rows of houses set on half a hectare. The site was donated by a local businessman on a 10-year, rent-free basis. The village has 36 children aged between four and 14, and eight staff, including two cooks, teachers and supervisors. All the money and materials needed to run the village come from public donations. On weekends, people come to talk to the children and help with cleaning and general maintenance. To date, the Sunyi village has cost $70,000 to establish. It costs $800 a year to keep each child.
The children attend the local Banqiao primary school. Initially the school principal, Mr Xiao Yugang, was reluctant to take in the children and was concerned that with their dysfunctional family backgrounds they would be disruptive and create chaos in the classroom. But he also felt that they should not suffer for the sins of their parents and agreed to give them a chance.
He has found that many of the children do have problems, such as the inability to control themselves, a tendency to fight and an unwillingness to study. Sleeping in class is common.
However, the teachers devote as much time as possible to these special students, says Xiao. Children with very bad problems receive counselling in the school and in the village, where a British psychologist visits every week.
The other pupils have accepted the "prison orphans" and donate books, shoes and clothes. During the holidays, local families take them on trips.
The village tries to ensure that the children get to visit their parents in prison as often as possible, but it is not easy as there are often long distances involved. On the day of my visit, one of the children is very excited as she is being taken to see her mother in jail.
Brothers Xie Bin (12) and Xie Wei (7) are luckier than most. They get to visit their parents two to three times a year. Their father is due for release in 2003. "But I like it here. It is better than home," says Bin.
The children walk home from school together in an orderly line for lunch every day. They are escorted by minders. Since the village opened six months ago, three children have tried to run away.
The children queue up for their bowls of noodles. Dai Zheng (14) goes up for a second bowl. "I like the food here. I used to always be hungry, but not any more," he says. His father murdered his mother in a row when he was two. "I never see him. I have been here four months and I am happy. I would like to stay until I finish school and then get a job."
Six-year-old Li Kin and seven-year-old Xie Wei are the village live wires. Trouble follows them wherever they go, says Zhang with a twinkle in her eye. They are small for their age and would pass for four-year-olds if they were in Ireland.
One of the hardest things for Zhang is seeing the children go home when their parents are released.
"Of course it is good to see families together again, but deep down you know in many cases the children are better off here," she says.
"The statistics show that a high percentage of people will re-offend and end up in prison again. It is especially heartbreaking when the children themselves don't want to leave."
Such is the scale of the problem that thousands of children of jailed parents will never get to live in Granny Zhang's villages. But those that do will at least be able to build lives for themselves away from the chaos of their broken homes.