Opera hits right note with safe sex plot

Dingxi, Gansu - From pamphlets to workshops, health authorities across China are trying every conceivable way to spread the word about AIDS and HIV prevention, particularly to rural residents.

One of the most successful in the northwest has been a tear-jerking love story performed in qinqiang opera, a style popular in Gansu and Shaanxi provinces and the Ningxia Hui autonomous region.

Lily in Blossom is about the romance between a young woman called Lily, who discovers she is HIV positive on her wedding day and is ostracized by everyone in her village, except her husband, Zhan Peng.