In Newsletter 38, we first described the case of the chained woman in details, and we mentioned how netizens showed up in town. They wrote in red ink on their car: “Mr. Dong forced a mentally ill woman to have 8 children to get government subsidy.”
Police showed up and forced them to wash off. The netizens took video of the part of the process and post it on social media.
Later, police showed up in their hotel room, and demanded them to take off their social media posts because this case is a national secret. Again this was video taped and put on social media.
Now we know who are the netizens: two women, with internet names Wuyi and Quanmei.
Later on, they complained that the hotel stopped giving them room to sleep so they had to sleep in their car, in the cold winter.
They tried to visit the chained woman in the hospital, but they were stopped. The flower bouquet they bought was accepted, and people spotted it in the CCTV footage of the chained woman in the hospital.
On Feb 11th, one of their cell phones was robbed and they went to the police station to report, and then they were detained. On Feb 18th, Wuyi posted on her Weibo that she was out. Her experience gave us a glimpse of Chinese police system.
DW Chinese has a report on their story here.
Wuyi’s detailed and vivid description of her experience has been screenshoted and circulated on Twitter. Her Weibo account is still here, but most people, including herself, suspect that the account will not exist for long.
Here is one of her latest Weibo posts:
(rough translation)
#Jiangsu province established investigation team for the woman who has 8 children in Fengxian#, #Government announcement on the situation of the woman with 8 children#, #when will the woman with 8 children who endured that hardship for 24 years got the truth out#, #sisters are here#, #women power#
At the end of the last year my driver license was about to expire and I went to the hospital for medical exam, the doctor asked me for my height, I said 153 (cm). He took a glance at me and said: no way, you are 150 at most. Then he wrote 150 on my file. I was very mad and thought about changing the number by myself. Then, I shrug it off, since height won’t be on my driver’s license.
The night I was arrested, they measured me, and put 153.6!!
I am so glad, I said I was 153. I want to show this to the doctor. I am a woman of 153.
This experience is probably not strange to many Chinese women. Men write over you and belittle you. Until you stand up firm and fight for women’s rights.
Since Wuyi came back to Weibo, she wrote more and more. She announced that she will write a book.
Quanmei, on the other hand, was silenced, she only messages about family and video games. At some point, Weibo silenced her, and she argued and succeeded to have her account back. Quanmei’s weibo avatar photo looks like this:
Her mouth has been shut. Silent Hill movie fans will recognize the poster.
According to Wuyi, Quanmei was very sharp and brave. On the 16th, the police told her that Quanmei was already let go. That was fine, Wuyi said, it was good news. Wuyi said: “Meimei, go ahead bravely.” (this is from the lyric of the theme song in the movie Red Sorghum).
It seems that Wuyi and Quanmei did not know each other personally, they just get together via social media for this case.
Wuyi said that even when she was detained, she told the police she will tell the public everything once she is out. So, she is not silent. Her courage to speak out is very impressive.
At the same time, scholars in China are being told by their institutes to stop talking about the case of the chained woman, according to tweets by a young and well respected scholar.
If you want to read her description of her ordeal, here are a few twitter thread with screenshots of the Weibo post:
On the 19th, she posted a long Weibo post describing the treatment in the detention cell, screenshots can be found here.
She said there were 18 women in her cell, some of them are in the age of 50-60 range. Inmates with red hats were placed to manage others. They were very serious about hygiene and the floor was kept super clean.
However, there are very restricted times for peeing and pooing, and the detainees had to queue at those time spots to use the toilet.
When she had the urge to poo, she asked the permission and was denied. After several attempts, during lunch time, she decided to release herself any way. She said, it felt so good when she did it.
She was ordered to clean up, and she did. But on second thought, she decided she should have refused.
Later when she needed to pee, she was denied permission again, so she just peed in the room. The red hat was very mad at her and ordered her to clean up. This time, she refused. She said, “You can not order me to murder someone and then make me clean up the crime scene.”
She became famous after the two battles and was allowed to go pee and poo whenever she needed.
During her interrogations, the police humiliated her for being so uncivil as a woman, she responded: “Do you think that after putting on the uniforms, reading some books, handing out handcuffs, wearing a red hat, you can control the most basic physiological functions of another human being?”
She said after her clash with the leader of red hats, she became the target of everyone in the cell. Even a 68 year old woman who was the quietest inmate in the cell started reporting on her unruly behaviour. “I became the source of livelihood in the cell, everyone is showing the vigor of youthfulness.”
In this Weibo post, she vividly described how an inmate initiated an education:
The toilet in the jail has two holes, so two women get to use it at the same time. Once a 60 year old woman was next to me when I was peeing. She said to me: “Girl, we as female comrades, we need to fight for our dignity. “
My eyes were shining, my blood was flowing up, I never thought I would meet someone who shared the same road!
Then she said: “Don’t let them look down on us. Others can hold their pee, so can we. “
The little flame in my heart went dead. Immediately I responded: “Shut up. What I have done will scare you to death.”
On Feb 21st, she described what she had been through with the police.
Long story short, when Quanmei and her went to the police station to report the robbery of the cell phone, she saw the robber there. Then she was lured to a police office and 4-5 men grabbed her cell phone and controlled her and put a computer laptop bag over her head and face. Her first fear was that they were planning to sell her so she decided to cooperate with them. The robber was called in to search her, she recognized the robber by the voice.
Then she was put in a car and driven to a new location. When her head was uncovered, she observed that there were 13 men and 3 women in the room, and now she was in the police station of a different county.
In a separate post, she mentioned that she was often interrogated 4-6 hours a day, by many police men at the same time. After the first interrogation, she started asking questions back at the police: why was she being investigated by a third authority? She said, it is like a Chinese did something in the USA and the French police is investigating her.
The police said that they had “designated jurisdiction”. She asked to see the document, they could not show her. And none of the policemen could answer her basic questions, such as: what stage was she in? Is she being detained or summoned? She asked, “How can you demand me cooperating with you when you did not show any documents, ID, police recording?” She even learned to refuse to sign any written documents, because “I doubt the legality of the third county that had no jurisdiction over me.”
She said that, like many ordinary Chinese citizens, she used to trust the police. When she told her Weibo followers that she was going to the police station for her robbed cell phone, some people warned her. But she treated it as a joke. How can she not trust the police? Maybe there are bad apples here and there, but overall, she believed the police as a whole are good.
But so often, in her recounts of what happened, she thought those were not police but mafia. There was nothing to hold them accountable. She was often in anguish and extreme fear.
She said now she realized that she suffers from severe trauma because of this experience. No doctor or hospital or friends can cure it for her. Only when the police who violated her basic rights get the punishment they deserve, her anger and trauma can be cured.
When men on Weibo told Wuyi that if she were a man, she would get beaten up, she posted photo of the bruise she suffered from beating:
People are saying that because I am a woman they won’t beat me up? If I were a man they will beat me for sure? They say because there was monitoring in the interrogation, we should have confidence in the police? And they say that the police was being nice to me?
Take a good look at the bruises, it has been 6 days. There are more on my head, my neck, my face, you can’t see.
The one who beat me is the most handsome man there, he did not wear uniform, did not show his ID, I don’t know who he was. But he beat me up in front of the monitoring camera and all the policemen.
The reason seems to be:
1 - Jealousy, according to her Weibo post:
When they interrogated me, many policemen were curious about my personal information, especially my work, and kept asking my salary. After a few back and forth, I got fed up, and gave them a rough number. They went silent. For a long time.
2 - She insulted their masculinity by saying “people with harsh words has a soft dick”.
Many people scolded her for being naive and believing in the government and police. She said she was born after 1990, her generation is more confident in China than older generations. I have to confess, some times courage needs a bit ignorance. I know too much to be brave like her, for example.
As of now, she has not finished her story yet, I will update you in the future newsletter.
Meanwhile, the police are busy.
First, under the COVID prevention cover, they completely blocked the roads to the village of the chained woman. Some journalist tried to get to the village, and he posted the video of being blocked at checkpoint outside the village, twitter has the video. Despite the journalist having all required documents to travel, the guards demanded someone from the village to come pick him up, otherwise the team are not allowed to proceed.
Second, they are busy silencing other women. Ma Banyan, a woman who was once trafficked and sold at age 13 and escaped from the horrible experience many years ago, wrote about her experience on Weibo again recently because of the story of the chained woman. Her experience had been reported by news media many years ago. She has remarried and divorced and is now a single mother with a daughter who is autistic. A few days ago, she was summoned by the police, and many people voiced their anger. Finally, she said that the police gave up and cancelled the meeting.
Third, in Shanghai, some girl was giving out little printed messages to people on the street asking them to pay attention to the story of the chained woman.
Eventually, Shanghai police got to her and “educated” her.
This is from social media, there is no way to verify. But many people say this is how police in China works. If you try to self organize yourself, for any reason, they will get to you in no time and stop you. But they can’t find those lost girls/women and return them to their homes.
Meanwhile, ordinary people have not given up, some people tried to talk to subway passengers about the case, some people tried to airdrop files in public space. The police will be busy for a while.
A digress from today’s topic. I recommend the latest episode of Sinica podcast: “What China is reading and why it matters: A conversation with author Megan Walsh”.
The second half of the interview is very interesting to me:
29:05 – China’s ginormous and mostly terrible internet fiction industry
39:19 – What makes Chinese science fiction Chinese?
The Sinica podcast is a weekly discussion of current affairs in China hosted by Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn. Both hosts are very familiar with China.