Late on Saturday night, there are crowds at the arrival hall at Beijing airport. The Tahiliani family walks past customs. Priti pushes her daughter Shonia in a small wheelchair.
Shonia's father Kishor has the luggage. They look around for a sign with their name on it. They have flown 5,000 miles from Bournemouth to be here.
"We're not nervous," says Kishor. "We're just trying something totally new. We actually hope something better will happen."
"Just keeping our fingers crossed," adds Priti. "We don't know what the future will hold, but we are just giving our best try as parents."
Their daughter Shonia has cerebral palsy. She is eight years old - but she cannot walk or talk. Her parents have raised £18,000 to bring her to China for stem cell treatment. It is something they cannot get back in the UK.
'The right thing'
A hospital minibus collects the family from the airport and takes them into Beijing. Shonia spends the journey quietly sitting on her mother's lap.
On Monday afternoon, the Tahilianis settle into their room on the ground floor of the Tiantan Puhua Neurological Hospital. Kishor leans over his daughter and gives her lunch.
In one corner, the family has set up a webcam. On the windowsill, they burn some incense. For the next three months this will be their home.
Soon, doctors will begin to remove stem cells from Shonia's bone marrow. And then they will inject the cells into her spine. The hospital hopes to give Shonia better mobility - but it doesn't promise a total cure. Her parents believe they have done the right thing by coming here.
"We are not hoping for drastic results like she will be totally normal," says Priti.
"I know what the reality is. No one has promised us anything. She's my only daughter and I wouldn't send her for a trial like a guinea pig... I wouldn't do that."
Doctors' concerns
Further along the corridor, in the hospital's exercise room, a physiotherapist throws a ball towards a patient.
Right now the hospital is giving stem cell treatment to seven foreigners.
One man has come from Hungary to try to recover from a stroke. One woman has come from London to get over a brain injury. She says her doctor back home doesn't know she is here.
But this hospital says that these patients - including Shonia - have every right to stem cell treatment.
"We give them a little hope," says Sherwood Young, the hospital's vice president.
"False hope?" I ask.
"No. We provide good hope."
"How do you know?"
"From the results."
"Documentation?"
"Yes, yes."
"Publications in medical journals?"
"Not really journals."
"Why not?"
"We haven't collected enough data and documentation yet."
This lack of publication concerns doctors in the UK. Many we have spoken to say they are worried that China is not following international procedure by skipping on proper peer review.
"As far as I know these treatments offered through this clinic in China have not been subject to those procedures," says Professor Colin Blakemore, the chief executive of the Medical Research Council.
"Nothing would be accepted for treatment in the NHS - or indeed any other developed country in the world - without proper evidence they do work and are not dangerous. And I don't know evidence for these kind of treatments in China."
Doctors in the UK suggest that there will be huge advances in stem cell therapies in Britain in the next 10 to 12 years. But the Tahilianis say they cannot wait that long.
In the hospital lobby, another family stops to say hello to Shonia. A little boy goes up to her wheelchair and shows her his toy dinosaurs. But Shonia can't grab the toys, and she can't even say hello. Her parents hope that, one day, this will change.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6720453.stm
(Last Updated: Monday, 4 June 2007)
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