On Wednesday, the families of some of the eight Chinese nationals kidnapped in Iraq talked to journalists about their anxieties.

The hostages are all from Pingtan County in the eastern province of Fujian. Many people from villages there have gone overseas to work, since at home they could expect annual incomes of less than 1,000 yuan (US$120.48) from farming, said Lin Xinqing, a cadre in Aodong Town.

The workers applied for passports as tourists to Thailand on November 23, 2003 and on January 12 and April 6 of last year, according to county officials.

The mother of 39-year-old Lin Bin wept silently in her stone house in Hushan Village in Zhonglou Town, whilst her dinner, some boiled potatoes, cooked. The room contained only a simple bed.

The mother of Zhou Sunqin, 17, the youngest of the hostages, could hardly utter a complete sentence through her tears: "I just hope our government can get them out safely. I'm so worried. I didn't want my son to work in those places, but we're so helpless... he had nothing to do here."

Lin Qiang, 39, and Lin Xiong, 34, are brothers from the village of Canghai.

"I would not have allowed him to go abroad, but he completed the procedures without telling me," said the elder brother's wife Gao Yun, "I don't want anything now, just his safe return."

Family members of 19-year-old Wei Wu could not be reached in Aowang Village.

"He has one brother and one sister. The family made a poor living, just like the others in the village. Each family has a meager acreage of farming land, which could grow nothing but sweet potatoes and peanuts, " said Chen Shangmei, a cadre in the village.

The call to the home of 37-year-old Chen Qin'ai was answered by his daughter, 14-year-old Chen Mei.

"It's painful to see father under the guns of the kidnappers on TV," she said, "my father risked his life to go abroad because he wanted to make money and support my and my two brothers' education."

But recently, she said, there were no jobs because of the war and no money for phone calls home.

Pingtan is an island county of 371 square kilometers with a population of 390,000. The hostages are all from Aodong Township, where per capita tillable acreage is only 2 fen (about 130 square meters) and farming is not much of an option. Fishing is also off limits because villages are about 15 kilometers from the sea.

Chen Shangmei, said many people took on long expeditions to look for work, sometimes through murky arrangements with people traffickers, or "snakeheads".

Those who can afford it choose places like Japan at a cost of 70,000-80,000 yuan (US$8,400-9,600), or Singapore at 50,000 yuan (US$6,000). The poorer ones have to make do with a destination like Iraq, costing 30,000 yuan (US$3,600).

To finance their trips, job seekers have to borrow from loan sharks, often the same people as the snakeheads, and pay interest of 25 percent a year.

There were still traces of posters advertising overseas jobs in Xiangyang Village yesterday.

(China Daily, Xinhua News Agency January 20, 2005)