TED Talks Daily - What I learned about freedom in a secret Chinese prison | Lei Cheng

Episode Date: June 3, 2025

Accused of leaking state secrets, journalist Lei Cheng was imprisoned in China for more than three years, where she was detained in tight quarters and kept under constant supervision. “Freedom is wasted on the free,” she says, recounting how she and fellow inmates found joy in the smallest of moments: the smell of rain, a poem delivered in secrecy, kindness where it seemed undeserved. She distills the unexpected lessons that confinement taught her — and challenges us to rethink what freedom really means.Want to help shape TED’s shows going forward? Fill out our survey!Become a TED Member today at ted.com/join Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey, TED Talks Daily listeners. It's Elise. Thank you for making this show part of your daily routine. We really appreciate it and we want to make it even better for you. So we put together a quick survey and we'd love to hear your thoughts. It's listener survey time. It only takes a few minutes, but it really helps us shape the show and get to know you, our listeners, so much better.

Head to the episode description to find the link to the listener survey. We would really appreciate you doing it. Thank you so much for taking the time to help the show. You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas and conversations to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hsu. For more than a decade, journalist Lei Chang built a successful career reporting on China's economic growth for outlets such as CNBC Asia and the China Global Television Network. But in 2020, her career came to a sudden halt when the Chinese government jailed her under false accusations and kept her detained for three years.

Lei took the TED stage to share lessons learned from her imprisonment, namely that only through losing freedom do we learn to truly appreciate it. We're at a pivotal moment in the housing industry. Housing in BC has seen another spike. There's missing ecosystem, there's missing financial tools. I can't think of another time where all levels of government seem to be aligned on doing something. This means embracing new technologies to reimagine how we plan, finance and execute projects. They're all looking to Canada right now asking like, what's going on? Support for the show comes from Airbnb. Last summer, my family and I had an amazing Airbnb stay while adventuring in Playa del Carmen.

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For example, let me show you how easy it is. Gemini, summarize my unread emails. Re, away next week. Jonathan confirmed with Elise Hu about rescheduling a meeting. Reminder, development committee meeting tomorrow at 12 p.m. Central time. It's super helpful for staying on top of things without feeling overwhelmed.

Or when I needed a quick dinner plan, I snapped a photo of what I had in my fridge and Gemini gave me recipe ideas. It's like having a research assistant right in my pocket. If you can think it, Gemini can help create it. Learn more about Google Pixel 9 at store.google.com. My talk is about what I didn't have for a long time. I received free accommodation from the Chinese government for over three years for so-called leaking state secrets overseas

at the worst time for Australia-China relations. And the first phase was called RSDL, Chinese spelling for hell. Then in detention, the sort that makes jail seem like Ibiza. And it was through that ordeal, call it the Wonder Diet, that I realized freedom is wasted on the free. Let me explain. When you only have a few dollars, you know how to spend it. When you win the lottery, it's easy to squander

and hard to get your priorities right. Same with freedom. You can be paralysed by choice. You can't comprehend the vastness or the preciousness. So how do you make freedom count when you're lucky enough to have it? To start, what it felt like to be not free. In RSDL, I had two guards glued to me front and side at all times. I was made to sit for 13 hours straight each day.

I had to request permission to make the smallest movement. And you know what I wanted to do the most? I wanted to run. And usually I hate running. I couldn't talk, which to me is major torture. I wanted to talk to anyone, but in real life I have sometimes worn earpods to shut people out. And I would have done anything to learn.

Except when I was outside, I wasted the chance. I was too busy. Then I moved to detention. I had three cellmates, and that already felt like freedom paradise. Nobody in the cell regrets things like money or assets, but we were kicking ourselves over the travel we didn't do, the love we didn't show, the risks we didn't take. Imprisonment is like a mini death.

It's a taste of the real thing. It hit us that one day we'll lose the chance to do everything, even the stuff we hate now. So now I do things I want immediately. Another way to value freedom is to be super aware of the forms of prison. My son asked me, if a kid goes to the same nursery, elementary, high school, is that a 13-year sentence?

It got me thinking about life as a death sentence and the prisons we put ourselves in. about life as a death sentence and the prisons we put ourselves in. Property objects can tie us down. Relationships can be shackles too. And we sometimes give up our civil liberties in exchange for a neat society. But the maximum security prison is our mind, our fears and conventions and biases. And that's why the officers in detention who are so bound by doctrine couldn't understand that we could learn with delight

and make fun behind bars. I talk about imprisonment. But in fact, everyone here, we've all had some loss of physical freedom. COVID lockdowns. We've all been sick in bed. But when we lose physical freedom, it's an opportunity to find freedom within. And that's how I could, when I was blindfolded and handcuffed, think myself to infinity through imagination, knowledge, and a BTFI serenity.

Beyond the fuck it. It means no matter how bad things get, riding out the worst part, which for me had been wanting to bash my head open against the tiles to shut off the mental anguish. It had been stripped naked in a cage. So the ultimate state of being is to be serene. But you can't get there until you've exhausted the other extreme anxiety, pain, despair. And now I'm giving a TED talk. Thank you. And when we are serene, we can choose kindness.

When those guards watched me at all times, I would still say good morning to them. I didn't hold it against them when they enforced the strict rules, because I saw that they suffered too. During the shifts, they couldn't talk, drink water, or even go to the toilet. They had to watch me shit, shower, and sleep. Later in detention, I would still show courtesy to the officers, even when they were rude. Even when they encouraged us to snitch,

I still chose to forgive my cellmates and empathise. If I become vengeful and petty, then they've taken away more from me. I was in a cell for a while with a terrible bully. She made my life hell. I was in a cell for a while with a terrible bully. She made my life hell. But once called for a midnight interrogation. She was so scared, she asked if she could hold my hand.

I hugged her and comforted her. Once you realize that pain is the ultimate commonality, you can also give kindness as the universal gift. Some of the most precious gifts I've received were in detention even though we had close to nothing. Music. A cellmate wrote a song in her head in solitary and sang it for me on my birthday. No Spotify or chat GPT or even notepad from her head to our ears. Poetry, an acrostic poem knocked via the adjacent cell's walls through an alphabetical code. It took over 400 knocks and precise counting to receive that message.

But you know what? With each knock, I could feel the power of friendship transcend those thick walls. Of course, we were punished, but it was worth it. Crafts that we made in secrecy that were destroyed once seen because it was against the rules. But the objects were nothing compared to how we felt in making and giving those gifts. So you see, there can be endless creativity even within a world of constraints. And maybe by having so much, we lose the ability to create something out of nothing. I'm not promoting detention, but like athletes training at high altitude,

setting some constraints may expand our minds. We can also expand our appreciation of life through some deprivation, because that recalibrates your Richter scale for joy. One summer night in detention, there was a blackout. The only darkness we'd experienced in all those years. The hateful fluorescent lights were off and nobody could see us on the monitors. Five minutes of joy that we talked about for months.

Then recently in my hometown of Melbourne, there was a storm blackout. And instead of smiling in the lotus position, guess what I was worried about? Food in the freezer, charging the electronics. Some other first world problems we complained about. Oh, the weather, the Vancouver rain. Well, in there, I have been in tears because I could finally smell the rain. The traffic. Well, in there, the only traffic was bumping into my cellmate along the one-metre-wide

corridor along which to walk five metres. Too many emails. I went for months without a letter. I had one phone call in all those years. Annoying kids. I used to have to imagine my kids' faces because I couldn't keep a photo of them in a cell. So you see, when our canvas is so full we look

at that little smudge and we magnify it but when our canvas was bare we could celebrate even one drop of color and that's what I hope I will continue to do, and I hope you will join me. Remind ourselves of the blindness so we can see life fully like a newborn. Thank you. That was Lei Cheng at TED 2025. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at TED.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today's show. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estifanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian

Green, Lucy Little, Alejandra Salazar, and Tonsika Sarmarnivon. It was mixed by Christopher Fazy-Bogan, additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Balarezo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening. Entirely, travel does that. It moves us not just physically, but emotionally, even spiritually. We deserve those moments. That's where Sell-Off Vacations comes in. For over 30 years they've been helping Canadians travel happy, whether it's a sun-soaked

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Reminder, development committee meeting tomorrow at 12 p.m. Central Time. It's super helpful for staying on top of things without feeling overwhelmed. Or when I needed a quick dinner plan, I snapped a photo of what I had in my fridge and Gemini gave me recipe ideas. It's like having a research assistant right in my pocket. If you can think it, Gemini can help create it. Learn more about Google Pixel 9 at spike. There's missing ecosystem. There's missing financial tools.

I can't think of another time where all levels of government seem to be aligned on doing something. This means embracing new technologies to reimagine how we plan a finance and execute projects. They're all looking to Canada right now, asking like, what's going on? We have an opportunity to lead here and I'd just love for us to be able to take it.

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