Pod Save the World - Dissident at the Doorstep Episode 3: A Dissident Is Born

Episode Date: January 20, 2024

Guangcheng is kidnapped by Chinese authorities and thrown in jail. By keeping him under lock and key, the government hopes to take away his power. But his imprisonment transforms him into a cause and a symbol of dissent in China and across the world. Then after years of detention, Guangcheng decides to try to make an escape. But how and who can he turn to?

If you like dissident at the doorstep and want ad-free episodes and exclusive content from the show, join Friends of the Pod, Crooked's new subscription community, at crooked.com slash friends. When we last left Guangcheng, it was September of 2005, and he was kidnapped in plain sight in Beijing. He was driven back to Shandong and held under house arrest for a few months, then taken away by security forces, again. For 89 days, even his family did not know where he was. Authorities kept him at various black jail sites, first at a hotel and then a police training facility. In June of 2006, Guangcheng was formally transferred to Yenan Detention Center. The jail cell was tiny, he recalls, about four and a half meters long, less than three meters wide. Detainees took turns.

sleeping because there wasn't enough space for everyone to lie down at the same time. Six other detainees were assigned to watch him 24 hours a day, taking shifts. They would not speak to him. At the detention center, basically all of them were ordered to not tell me anything. Otherwise, they would be given additional sentences. Who wants a longer sentence when they're in prison? So no one dared to say much to me. usually not even a word.

But months into his time at the detention center, he says someone dared to tell him about the notice. It was posted on the wall just two meters outside their window. The notice was the regulations of the People's Republic of China on detention, and it stated that those who had one of the following conditions should not be detained. First, blind people, and second, pregnant people. So this was very, very ridiculous. It was like a scene out of a Kafka story.

Guangcheng made sure to commit to memory the details of his surroundings, feeling everything down to the pipes and screws in the bathroom. If there might be a chance later to testify against his jailers for holding him illegally, he wanted to have some proof that he had been there. He had not even been charged with a crime yet. But soon the official charges came, and the absurdity continued, obstructing traffic and destroying public property. The Chinese state routinely uses charges of public disturbance to imprison activists and silence dissent.

The most famous was chinging zichi, picking quarrels and provoking trouble. He was found guilty and sentenced to four years and three months in prison, and it would be even longer than that, before he saw freedom. But in another way, his detention ended up having the opposite effect. His imprisonment would transform him into a cause and a symbol, one that would reach more people within China and internationally than his activism ever did. And after so many years of detention, Guangcheng would decide to do something so daring that the whole world would have to pay attention.

I'm Alison Klayman. I'm Yang Yang Cheng, and this is episode three of dissident at the doorstep. After his initial conviction, Guangcheng appealed the verdict and was granted a retrial. Teng Biao, his friend and fellow legal activist from the one-child case, wanted to represent Guangcheng as his lawyer. The judges didn't care about law, the legal arguments or the evidence. He didn't commit that crime. They just wrote the verdict as they were constructed by the party.

But Teng Biao was briefly detained to keep him from attending the trial. When he was released, he came to the courthouse anyway. It was already too late. Guangcheng had lost his appeal and was being taken back to prison. Before the guards took Guangcheng away, Guangcheng's brother tried to let him. hold his daughter, who was only a few months old at the time. I was handcuffed, and the daughter was trying to drag me away.

He pushed me hard. My daughter was stared and started crying. Teng Biao stepped forward. Teng Biao came over and handed me a bouquet. It's made from leaves of a phatong, that's a sycamore tree. 22 leaves, tied up with a string. He handed it to me and said, your daughter made this for you.

So I took it. Right then, they took me into the van to head back to the detention center. I remember Ten Biao saying to me at the time that true justice was on my side and everyone was supporting me. And I remember telling him, don't worry, my brother.

I said that I won't break or fall. I will only get stronger. Teng Biao was used to seeing his friends locked up. I was very sad, but not very surprised because so many humanized defenders and dissidents were convicted and detained and tortured. But Cheng Wang Cheng is kind of special because he's a blind. And we know it's very, very painful to be a bland and extreme. and extremely painful to live in a prison for more than four years. As the guards escorted Guangcheng back to the detention center,

he says one of them ordered him to throw away his bouquet of sycamore leaves. He refused. I tied it up with a thread and honed it on the curtain next to where I slept. I kept it with me even at the same. after my transfer to prison, from Yinan Detention Center to Lingyi Detention Center, and then from Lingi Detention Center to prison. I kept that bouquet with me all this time. During those years in prison, Guangcheng became one of many legal and human rights activists

who were tried and sentenced as punishment for their work. The Chinese government hoped to stop their activities and scare others from trying them as well. Being thrown in jail meant Guangcheng was added to this list. list of people who might be name-checked in the background context paragraph of news articles about Chinese government repression of critics or in reports by human rights organizations. Guangcheng's name first appeared in the Human Rights Watch World Report the same year he got sentenced. From then on, he became a common reference in Human Rights Watch's communications. All to say that during his years in prison, Guangcheng was gone, but not forgotten.

at least by people who were paying attention to these sorts of things. Half a year into his sentence, Guangchang obtained a shortwave radio. Through it, he learned that local authorities had restricted his wife and children from leaving their home. When they tried to visit Guangchang in prison, they were harassed and beaten. When you hear this on the radio, you can feel the rage raising inside. You are so angry at you. you could kill someone.

That kind of anger can really wait you up in the middle of the night. But Guangcheng had to pretend that he did not know. So I had to do everything I could to manage my emotions. At least I could not lose my temper and let the CCP find more excuses to punish me. If they had taken my radio away, I would have lost my only access to the outside world. One of our producers, Boen, pointed out that if we were making a Hollywood movie, this would be the moment where the audience sees a montage of our hero getting buff in prison. Instead, Guangcheng used this time to train his mind.

In particular, he spent a lot of time reading I Ching, the Book of Change. The Ijin, the Book of Changes, was written by the book of change. by Qing Wen of the Zhou Dynasty during his seven years of imprisonment by King Wu. So at that time, I made a special effort to study the Yi Jing in depth. During our conversations, Guangcheng often dropped references to Chinese folklore and classical texts. At first, I thought he was trying to sound erudite. Maybe there is some insecurity in Guangcheng, whose formal education was hampered by his disability and rural upbringing. Yet, the more we talked, the more I felt that this was not just a performance.

Guangcheng's knowledge of traditional Chinese culture shaped his sense of self, his understanding of the world, and his role in it. At times, when I listened to Guangcheng recount his experience of fighting against injustice, it felt like he had become a character in the legendary tale of his own making. In September 2010, he finally completed his formal prison sentence. The years he spent in prison were basically the years I spent living in China. It was a heady time to be there in the years before and after China's hosting of the 2008 Summer Olympics. It was considered a coming out moment for the party to declare its might on the international stage.

I moved to China after college without a firm plan or a job, but I remember everyone giving me credit like it was a very savvy thing to do. One conversation I had with a friend of my parents felt straight out of the graduate, but instead of plastics, it was China. I think about all the developments in China and the world that Guangcheng missed out on

during that period. The Beijing Olympics, the rise of YouTube, Twitter, the iPhone, the financial crash, the election of Obama. Guangcheng would have so much to catch up on. But he quickly learned that his release would not mean freedom.

I was released in September, and in April, one of the guards slipped me a bit of information. He said, it's probably going to be worse for you to be at home than to be in prison. Yes, that's what he said. After I got back home, I learned that one week earlier, my house had been turned into a prison. The CCP had already stationed dozens of guards in our village. So the moment at our home, I was placed under an illegal house arrest. I was never free. Later, they began to install video cameras and bright lights around our house.

And the number of guards also increased. Guangcheng had been released from prison and placed right back into an extra-legal house arrest. He had no idea how long it would last. But he did know he would do everything he could. could think of to free himself. The lockdown of Dong Shigu was both high and low-tech. Surveillance cameras were installed everywhere. High-calibre mobile streetlights were placed around the village and along the roads.

The guards had special equipment to jam cell phone signals. Landlines were cut. Guards also physically kept Guangcheng and his family from leaving their home. Only Guangcheng's 76-year-old mother was allowed to leave the house. And around the village, guards and plainclothes thugs were stationed to keep anyone who tried to visit from entering. A few years earlier, an activist friend helped Guangcheng's wife Wei Jing by a small video camera. As soon as Guangcheng got home, he started learning how to use it. And he and Wei Jing began recording.

The footage opens with an eerie sight. Wei Jing holds the camera in the darkened room. She pointed out the window, where we see a tall pile of leaves a few yards away. A guard's forehead peeks above the leaves. A few seconds later, we see his eyes, watching in our direction. And then, his full face. Wei Jin is the one who sack the leaves,

trying to reclaim a bit of privacy for her family. But the guards brought ladders. Every day is like this, she says. Then Guangcheng appears. He is wearing dark sunglasses and a black jacket buttoned to the collar. Behind him we see spring festival posters. The characters read, May great fortune arrive at this house.

hold. He talks to the camera. It's been over ten weeks since I was moved from a small prison to an even larger prison. Wei Jing shows us messy piles of pumpkin, squash and cabbage on the floor. Unable to leave the house to buy groceries, the family relies on homegrown vegetables. picked up by Guangcheng's mother in their fields. Wei Jing says she does not know how long the food might last. She also says she worries for their children, Khei and Khe'sse.

If she and Guangcheng encounter some danger, she says, she hopes her friends will help care for the kids. My heart clenches as I watch these videos. The guards were not just keeping watch. They had also brutally beaten both Guangcheng and Wei Jing for minor infractions. I cannot imagine the level of fear, or the faith and fortitude it takes to make these secret recordings. Like putting a message in a bottle and throwing it out to sea.

We meet their daughter Khe's in the video. This is my daughter Kessi in this segment. In this segment, it's a Monday. All the other kids are at school, but the authorities have denied Khe's access to a normal education as punishment for her father's activism. The five-year-old can only play by herself at home. A pile of sand is her toy.

Kestis stuffs the sand into a bowl and turns it over. She proudly presents the lump of sand to her mother, as resembling a steamed bun. Mou. Manko, is it? Manko, is a big mou? Another part of the video, Guangcheng stands behind Khees.

His arms are wrapped around her shoulders. They pace across the room. Kestse starts reciting the multiplication table. 1 times 1 equals 1. 1 times 2 equals 2. 2 equals 4. I have seen this part of the video many times. I remember it, frame,

frame, the living room with a poster of fu, happiness on the wall, the sound of curses chuckle at the end, is the only time I've seen Guangcheng smile in all of the archival footage of him in China. Each time I rewatch this clip, tears well up in my eyes. I miss my family in China. I miss my father, who died when I was little. If I dig into memory's deepest soft corners and look for the last fragments of my father. The little girl I see is not much older than Khe's in the video. I was about Kersi's age when I first learned arithmetic from my father. He made up stories using characters from Chinese folklore.

If Monkey King picked four peaches and ate two, how many peaches are left? I also recited the multiplication table to him. beyond all the public attention and political hardship, beyond all the extraordinary acts of defiance against the state. Guangcheng is a father, a husband, a son. He has a family. The part of the video that takes my breath away is where Guangcheng shows the camera his sycamore leaf bouquet.

This is the one that Tang Biao handed him in court, made by his daughter. Guangcheng really did manage to protect this bouquet, for five years. The leaves are all dried and brown and curled in on themselves. It's a tangible testament to his persistence.

In the video, first he speaks directly to Teng Biao. He calls Teng Biao his brother and shows him the flowers that he saved all these years without a single leaf missing. Then he addresses the public he imagines we'll watch this video.

He says, I want to tell all of you, no matter the circumstances, there is a way. There are always more solutions than problems. Guangcheng recorded this message without knowing if he'd ever be able to smuggle the video out, let alone reach someone who could help him. One day, I was actually walking toward Capitol Hill with my staff. I think during the national press. breakfast time.

Bob Fu is the founder of a U.S.-based nonprofit called China Aid. In early 2011, he says he got a message, telling him to look at something that came into his organization via one of their secure apps. So I got this message. It was a video recorded by Guangcheng and Wei Jing from their besieged house showing the Chinese guards, these thugs, were like climbing on the top of the wall. Then then, I mean, Beijing, they were talking about the brutality, you know, inside their house, and they were beaten up.

And then I was astonished. It was just like a whole miracle. Bob later found out who got the tape out to him. It was a human rights lawyer who's still in China, so he couldn't share their name with us for safety. Bob and the folks at China Aid got busy right away. We just immediately stopped all the work. We just kind of subtitle the English and send it out.

They uploaded it to YouTube in 15-minute chunks, the maximum allowed at the time. The video offered a window into Guangcheng's experience under house arrest. It was featured on news outlets around the world. The fact that it was taped in secret and smuggled out made it an especially juicy story. I think that was the first breakthrough for the whole world knew what's going on inside the confinement, the brutality.

As punishment for the video getting out, Guangcheng was beaten unconscious and denied medical care. This time, his example, his issue. abuse was covered by the international press. On its own, the secret recording had managed to revive interest in Guangcheng long after the drama of his arrest and imprisonment had played out. But a few weeks after it was published, something happened that would keep the world's attention on the mistreatment of activists and lawyers in China. The government began detaining dozens of people in a widespread crackdown. It was right around the time of the Arab Spring protests.

and China was afraid of the possibility of a homegrown Jasmine Revolution. The crackdown made it harder for Guangcheng's lawyer friends to help him. Teng Biao was detained in a black jail for 70 days. And then, in early April, the crackdown reached its highest profile detainee, the artist Ai Wei Wei, who Colin and I were following for our documentary at the time. His disappearance into a black jail for 81 days supercharged the story. Listening back to the interviews I did about Wei Wei around that time, I can tell that I was thinking about how his detention was making a wider audience pay attention to the kind of mistreatment of activists I'd seen happen in China over my many years as a journalist.

I went on Tom Ashbrook's show on point to talk about it. He devoted a whole episode to Ai Weiwei and the crackdown. I mean, look, would we even be doing a show about people detained until it got up to his level? We certainly don't want to ignore the many others who have been picked up in this recent crackdown. We're going to hear in just a few minutes from the great Jerome Cohen, who follows Chinese law in its application and absence. Amid all this, a grassroots movement focused specifically on Guangcheng was shrouding. Across the internet, his home video had gripped the hearts of people in and out of China. Supporters began making attempts to visit Guangcheng in Dong Shigou.

Some brought food and toys for his children. They posted videos of their pilgrimages. In one video, in order to reach the village and bypass security, three men are trying to cross the Hmong River, which Guangchon often swam in as a child. One of them has stripped down to a pair of blue underpants so he can wait across. The man holding the camera says

It will be less cold once we're unsure Hurry up, this is the deepest spot In another video, a group of 29 people are trying to visit Dong Shigu Someone added background music before sharing it online It's raining and most of them are carrying umbrellas The camera catches a man outside their group He's standing alone on the grassy's trip by the side of the road watching. A voice in the video says, that's an undercover guard.

Moments later, things take a turn. People start running, shouting. Run, run, quickly, and later, stop hitting people. How can you even hit women? Do not hit people. We hear screams. A few individuals are wrestled to the ground. We do not know what happened to the people in these videos. But as far as it's been reported, none of the visits were successful. Many of the visitors were beaten. At least 13 were detained. Foreign reporters started taking a page

from these brave activists, too. This is Andrew Jacobs from the New York Times. I'm here in Shandong province attempting to visit Chen Guangcheng. He's not allowed visitors. Shady figures supposedly guard him. Last October, supporters released this video. They say it was filmed

while they tried to visit. Visit Gwale Chang in his home. Any cars coming within five kilometers of Dong Shigou village are followed. Okay, it seems if a car is following us, we've turned down this dirt road, and we're going to try to lose him. That was the New York Times, BBC, Al Jazeera, Hong Kong cable TV, and CNN. By the time Christian Bail went with CNN to Dong Shigu, you had to wonder if holding Guangcheng under house arrest was really worth all the bad press for China. It was even spoiling some more celebratory news stories of U.S.-China business cooperation. At the time, Hollywood was bullish on China.

They wanted Chinese money via audiences and investors, and every studio was racing to announce their own co-production or joint venture project. One of these projects was a slapstick comedy from the writers of The Hangover called 21-in-over. Did we just kill Chiv Chene? I am super-sight. to see Jeff Chang. Are we sure it's cool to surprise him like this? Yeah, dude, as his oldest friends on earth, we have a moral obligation to get him drunk as in a press release. The studio mentioned it was cooperating closely with the Linni municipal

committee of the CCP. An exec told deadline, Lin Yi was a, quote, amazing place. Lin Yi is also the county where Guangcheng was being held. Nanjing-based activist, He Perong, told deadline she hoped that Relativity Media, the production company, would learn more about the real Lin-I, about Chen Guangcheng, and see that what is currently happening in Dong Shagu Village is what is really amazing. When Guangcheng was first arrested, he barely made international news. Now he's being covered everywhere from the Washington Post to Hollywood Reporter. 21 and over was released in 2013 and stars Miles Teller.

The Chinese version featured extra scenes shot in Linney. This period of new attention on Guangcheng coincided with the rise of digital activism in China and around the world. It was enabled by a new type of platform, social media. Countless netizens wrote blog posts, composed voice messages, and recorded videos, expressing their admiration for the blind activist and their hopes for his release. When necessary, they found creative ways around the online sensors who did, delete posts with Guangcheng's name. An artist launched a campaign that asked people

that sent a photo of themselves wearing a pair of sunglasses or a blindfold as a gesture to Guangchang's iconic image. I recall seeing these images at the time. I just moved to the U.S. for graduate school. Each encounter with a shaded face online caused a stirring. I felt a renewed connection to my homeland and indulged in hopes for its future. Over a decade later, as I scroll through the hundreds of photos from the sunglasses portrait campaign,

it is exceedingly clear that the Guangcheng, whose likeness has gone viral, is no longer Guangcheng the person. Instead, Guangcheng has become an idea. The idea of Guangcheng embodies light and honesty, the two characters in his name, as well as the darkness and oppression his predicament invokes. In a new age of social media, his iconic image became a meme, synonymous with dissent. When netizens in and out of China put on a pair of sunglasses and snap a selfie, what they're identifying with is not so much Hu Guangcheng is or what he has done, but would they wish China and the world to be.

Your perseverance is the light of China, says one social media post from late. Many quote the famous line by the Chinese poet Gu Cheng. The darkness of the night has given me the darkness in my eyes, but I used them to seek the light. And while all this was happening, Guangcheng was plotting his escape. You might think that escaping a village under lockdown would be impossible. You might think that being blind would make such an escape even more impossible. Not Guangcheng.

In fact, since the day I came back, I had decided to escape. He says even his mother doubted her son's plans. My mother said, look, there are more than a hundred pairs of eyes watching you, and you cannot see. So how can you escape? I told her that the guards are not divine. As long as they are human, there's always a chance. Even the tighter sometimes needs a nap. For months, with help from his wife, Wei Jing,

Guangcheng meticulously observed the guards' routine. When they got bored, when they needed to stretch their legs or get something to eat, when the air inside the house

got too hot or stale for comfort. Wei Jing also helped assess the surroundings, the placement of guards and surveillance cameras, the location and height of trees, down to the details of tile placement on nearby roofs, and when the neighborhood dog might bark. This man,

There are 24 hours, eight-year-eight-a-chial two sit there and be there are 24 hours in the day, so three, eight-hour shifts. A person cannot stay still for all that time. That's unbearable. The guards had to get up,

stretch their legs, and talk to each other. Slowly, we realized that we could find some opportunities. Of course, these opportunities were fleeting. But before the actual escape, you had to let the guards get used to not seeing you for a long period of time. So then you can suddenly shift to another spot when he's not looking.

In other words, you have to make him think that you are still inside the house when in fact you had left. You have to get him used to not seeing you every day. After some practice, I found that these dogs got used to it, and ultimately, we got a chance. It was April 2012, over a year and a half into their house arrest, and they noticed their neighbor's dog had disappeared. This was a huge breakthrough.

That dog's barking was as troublesome as any human guard. Guangcheng and Wei Jing were on high alert for a chance to make moves. Then on the morning of April 22nd, I had just finished breakfast that morning. Before, we had tried many times at night. But I found that since it's very quiet at night, the guards would notice even the slightest movement. That morning, my wife was.

gave me a squeeze on the shoulder and said, Go. They rushed out of the house, and Guangcheng climbed some stairs to the top of his house's courtyard wall. Originally, the CCP had ordered someone to get lots of thorny branches from the mountains and stat them on top of the wall. But because my neighbor was greedy, he took a bit of the thorny branches every day to use his firewood.

So, without even realizing it, he had done me a favor. This next part of the story was laid out in detail in Guangcheng's memoir, the barefoot lawyer. First, he waited at the top of that wall for evening to come. When he finally jumped down eight hours later, he landed badly into a pile of rocks in the empty courtyard next door. The pain was agony. He could feel something was really wrong with his right foot.

But he decided to keep going. Guang Cheng tried to get the attention of a neighbor he trusted. He thought maybe they could drive him somewhere or call taxi. But despite being just outside their window, he couldn't figure out how to get their attention without tipping off the guards. No one was going to help him, he realized. For now, he was leaving Wei Jing and Khe Su behind two. That meant he didn't have a sighted person to rely on.

So he tracked the sounds of each person and animals. animal in earshot, mapping them onto his mental layout of the possible escape route. The night was an adrenaline-fueled mix of wading and fast judgments. His swollen foot felt like it might burst his shoe open. Sometimes he might make progress, like when he dismantled a loosely built stone wall, quietly removing each rock and placing it on the ground until he had a hole to crawl through. But then he would hear someone approaching and make a quick dismal. to go back through the wall to where he had come from in order to hide.

Finally, just before daylight, he had a chance to cross the road at the town's edge. He says he made a break for it, hunched over on all fours, head low, scuttling like an insect across the road. His heart was racing. Any sighted person could have easily seen him. Miraculously, no one did. He had made it out of the vision. He had made it out of the village. But now what? Where in China might a wanted man find safety? That's next time on Dissident at the Doorstep. Dissident at the Doorstep is an original podcast from Crooked Media. Our hosts are Alison Clayman, Colin Jones, and me, Yang Yangcheng. From Crooked Media, our executive producers are Tommy Vitor, Sarah Geismer, and Katie Long, with special thanks to

Marinoff and Alison Foszada. Our senior producers are Maria Byrne and Meg Kramer. Mora Walls is our story editor. Our producer is Wudan Yan. Our associate producers are Buen-Wan and Sydney Rap. Translation by Valerie C with additional translations by me, Yang Yang Cheng and Richard Ye. Voiceovers by Richard Ye.

Our fact-checker is Tamika Adams. Sound design and mixing by Hannes Brown. Original score by Elon E. And our podcast art is by John Lee.