chat

It was nearing midnight and we were exhausted so we decided to book a hotel room for the night. We found a relatively cheap hotel which was priced at 400 Yuan per night. Around sunrise, we were awoken by intrusive knocking. I looked over at my partner with a look of bewilderment; morning call to prayer had already began so I assumed maybe it was custom. The knock persisted, so my partner got out of bed and opened the door revealing two police officers in all black uniform. They spoke saying “You’re [Xiaohongshu] and [partner]?”

My partner looked back at me and we were both stunned. My heart started beating faster while I tried to process what it could be about. And so my partner asked them why they wanted us and saying nothing, one of the officers proceeded to cuff my partner whilst the other asked me to put my shoes on and face my back to him. I cooperated because there was nothing we could do. I know it’s custom for some officers to reveal as little to the detainee as they themselves might not even know the reason for arrest, they are told only to make an arrest and bring them to the location to be questioned.

After a seemingly long drive, maybe shy of an hour and a half, we arrived to a large ten foot tall fenced off compound somewhere within a desert area. At this point I was very afraid and me and my partner were placed in different vehicles. I kept agonizing over why we were detained, worried about my partner's safety as well as my own. After passing the first set of fencing we arrived at a second, and after that the “prison” was in full view. I was convinced that they were taking us to a jail but instead we were being brought to what seemed to be a large detention center and the questions along with anxieties were increasing. I asked the officers where we were. They paused, saying nothing, and then resumed their conversation. After parking in an underground parking area with lots of police and military vehicles, one of the officers opened my door and let me out. I looked around to see if my partner was here as well, but they were nowhere in the area I wondered if they had already arrived or if they were back at the entrance. I was so worried for them... We're both levelheaded people but it was hard to imagine them being hurt due to saying the wrong thing. Before I knew it, tears were rolling down my face.

With a hand grasped around my arm, we made our way through the prison facility until we reached a soundproof cell with a table in the middle of it. They cuffed my hands and left. Not too long later, two uniformed guards entered the cell and sat in front of me. Saying nothing, one of them stared at me as the other browsed through their binder, flicking the pages back and forth. The one with the binder took out an image of a young man and placed it in front of me. He asked “Do you know (persons name)?” The name was familiar to me, as this person had the same surname as the woman who we visited. I spoke, saying “I visited the family last night, I didn’t meet the son however... I assume this is him?”

“That’s convenient,” said second guard. “What was the purpose of your visit?” I didn’t like the way they used convenient and the implications scared me. At this point, the visit to the family was getting to me and I felt like me and my partner had the worst luck. I would have never imagined to be in a predicament like this, no thought of any “danger” after visiting a family ever crossed my mind, but I was now detained without knowing where my partner was, or the condition they were in, and they were thinking the same thing.

I tried not to let these negative thoughts get to me. Without implicating my family, I mentioned that I had read about this family online and that I wanted to understand their point of view from a position of criticism. I told them I was in disbelief that the Uyghur population were subject to arrests like this and that I wanted to hear their story firsthand. The two officers sat in silence for a moment. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

A pit in my stomach formed when I realized that the mother and son could be in this same prison with me at this very moment. Did I bring danger to them? I tried to fight back tears but I was holding in so much and so I broke down. The officers looked at one another and one of them asked if I wanted a drink. I asked for some tea and one of them left the room, presumably to go get it. While he was gone, the other started talking to me.

“So do you like Xinjiang?”

Small talk?

“It’s nice.”

Understanding where this conversation could lead, I tried my best not to put any focus on my family or implicate them in any of this. “I’ve been here for twenty years, I like it very much. The people they’re very good, peaceful. There’s a sense of community here which I like” the officer told me with a slight smile. Maybe he was just making small talk but reading in between the lines this is just a means to force me to drop my guard along with the “nice” gesture of offering me tea and tissues. So I remained silent as they talked.

The other guard arrived with my tea and a bottle of water; I thanked him and he nodded. The tea was a well needed stress reliever in this situation. The officers then asked me to educate them on who I was and where I was from and why I had an interest in Xinjiang. I avoided mentioning my family for as long as I could, but they told me they knew I was staying with my aunt and cousins. At that point I admitted that my aunt is friends with the woman I had met and that my main goal for the trip, besides learning the culture, was to try to understand this family's story.

I thought I sounded reasonable and straight with them and I had no reason to fabricate anything. The officer with the binder then flicked through the binder and then took a page out, placing it on the table next to the portrait of the young man. My heart sank. It was a screenshot of Hexbear. More panic kicked in because of the worrying implications that I may be some sort of threat to national security. I said nothing but looked at the paper.

“We know that you have used this website. Can you tell us more about it?”

I didn’t know what to say. My posts are specific to educating you all on China and financial studies, but I didn’t know how to communicate this, nor would it have mattered. “I have posted here before,” I said. They brought out more pages this time, with pro-Palestine posts and a post about the Uyghur encampments with a few hundred comments.

“Are you engaged in these discussions? What is your opinion on these events?” I told them that I had supported Palestine for a long time, as are a lot of Chinese citizens, I also told them that I was of the opinion that China isn’t committing genocide of the Uyghurs. I still believe this to be true, as the family I met seemed innocent enough to me, but the fact they had an image of him implied that there is more to this story that I am not aware of.

They took the pages from the table and placed them back on the folder. “We can take you to your partner now,” they said, and I felt a rush of relief. I was hopeful that this was over, that our stories matched up and that they had nothing on us. The guards left for a few minutes and then returned, unshackled my cuffs from the table and then led me down some corridors to some cells. I was unaware with what the next steps would be, but I wasn’t too hopeful that our difficulties were over just yet.

We got the cell where my partner was seated alone with their head slumped, looking up at me they stood up and looked relieved. There was a certain absence to them that I was afraid of, what had they told my partner or put them through? After unlocking the cell doors, they let me in and then closed the doors behind us. Embracing my partner, I cried a bit. I felt safe in their arms again and I felt more at peace. My partner sat down and asked how the interrogation went. We pretty much shared the same details except the portion where Hexbear was mentioned. My partner didn’t know I used the website but was concerned due to the content posted on here.

They sat back down and kind of sulked for a moment. I sat next to them, asking if they were hurt at all, and they mentioned they showed my partner the piece of paper that the son of the mother we visited with the text “黄雪” written in red ink. This definitely meant that the family was being interrogated in this same facility. My worst fears were true; we had some part in pushing this family back into the trouble they had just escaped.

“I don’t think it’s our fault,” my partner said, and wiped some tears off my cheek. I didn’t even feel the tears, as I was numb from the shock.

“They told me what 黄雪 translates to. It means Yellow Snow.”

“They told me how Yellow Snow is a folk legend in the prison.” I looked up at my partner, asking why they told them this. “I don’t know, maybe to scare me, or just to educate me on what the paper meant. 黄雪 was a man who was out doing manual labor on a cold morning and asked the guards for the toilet. The guards ignored his request and told him to get back to work. Half an hour passed, the man struggling to continue. He was shaking, not just from the cold but from bladder contractions. Eventually he stopped working and decided to urinate in front of everyone. After relieving himself, the guards took him. He was never heard from or seen again.”

I was still confused as to why they told my partner this. It still didn’t sit well with me. I laid my head on my partner's lap and tried to sleep.

Awoken by an alarm and rhythmic banging on walls, my partner stood up. “The gate, it’s open!” Was this our opportunity to leave?

As soon as the cacophony began, a silence filled the prison. There were no guards within the area. I was hesitant to leave but my partner wasn’t. They slowly crept out of the cell as I repeatedly whispered to get back in. Realizing they were leaving, I began to follow. Upon hearing a thud and a yelp, I rushed back inside, but then I heard it again. The exact same sequence of thuds and yelps. At this point I remembered the “Morse code” that the mother had told us about; the “secret language” used by the prisoners to pay respects to the dead, stomp yelping their obituaries at midnight.

The stomps and yelps were distinctly clear and using my memory from my limited knowledge of the Chinese Morse code I decoded the message.

6663 5887…

Run.

Run? Was this a sign telling us to leave?

I told my partner. They looked at me and asked how I knew, and I told them to remember the “secret language.” We sprinted down every hallway, seeing no guards throughout the entirety of the cell block. When we left the detention area, we encountered several uniformed guards in a lobby area by the door to the main yard where people in jumpsuits were idly standing. I assumed this was the yard area of the prison. We decided to make a break for it, the guards yelling after us, “Wait! Stop!”

We refused to heed their commands. On the other side of the fence was freedom. I refused to be kept prisoner in this death camp. I was not going to let myself or my partner be kept hostage, to become a shell of a person. We were not going to become martyrs like Yellow Snow. I screamed at my partner to begin climbing and took my shirt off to throw over the barbed wire so we could get around it. I began my ascent, the guards following.

“Stop right there! You forgot your wallet!”

My wallet? What did they mean?

“Stop! You don't have to do this! You're free to go!”

I looked down at them, then to my partner. We remained on the fence for a while, weighing our options. My shirt was already on the barbed wire; if we didn't believe them, our way out was right there. We stayed on the fence for a few minutes as everyone in the yard stared at us.

“Shu, let's just see what happens.”

My partner began to climb down and I followed. The guards came up to us, handing us our belongings and unlocking the innermost gate. “You should go,” they said.

Before I did, I looked back at the people in jumpsuits. Full families grouped together, wearing matching jumpsuits. I couldn't help but feel bad for them as they stared back at us with sullen eyes. I was free to go, but they had to stay. It tore me up inside. I had to give them some kind of hope. Before I left, I turned to them and peed my pants in full view of everyone. Their discomfort became my own. Their looks turned from disgust to acceptance as I did my best to stomp and yelp out the Chinese Commercial Code for “Stay strong.”

I hoped they would.

After that, we left the prison with a lot to think about. The bus ride back to my aunt's house was uncomfortable for many reasons, some of them obvious. What was true, what was a lie? Were those people prisoners? Could they leave just as easily as us? Why were we let go? Did I have another pair of pants at my aunt's house? All of these questions burned in my mind, but I could only answer one of them.

Although I changed my pants that day, I refused to get rid of the pants I peed. It was my own sign of defiance, a sign of connection with those who are suffering, a sign of mourning for those who have died. I decided to buy a shadowbox for them, mounting the pants inside. I have those pants on my wall now above my desk, a constant reminder of how easily the things we value, like freedom, like life, can be taken away from us.

If you take anything from my experience, please let it be that things are not always as they seem. I'm still not sure that there is a “genocide,” but I have seen the internment camps for myself. They exist. If you'd like to argue this point, please remember what Mao said: No investigation, no right to speak.