THE ILLEGAL BORDER CROSSER

Unlike thousands of Chinese who hire smugglers to help them escape to the West, the forty-four-year-old Li Yifeng takes a different route. In the past several years, he has made several failed attempts to sneak across the border on his own, first to Myanmar and then to Hong Kong. He said he was a born border crosser.

Our interview took place recently at a teahouse near the Fu River in Mianyang city, Sichuan. Li had just been released from a detention center in the southern city of Shenzhen.

LIAO YIWU: Where did you get this adventurous spirit?

LI YIFENG: I inherited the adventurous spirit from my father. My father was born in the late 1940s. He grew up in a small river town in the eastern part of Sichuan. As a kid, he used to sit alone by the side of the river and watch boats come and go. My mother told me that he would constantly ask himself questions such as: What's it like to be at the other end of the river? What's it like at the other end of the earth?

My father did very well in school and went to college. After graduation, he was assigned a job at the provincial cultural department. That was the place where educated folks worked. But when those educated folks got together, they began to talk about strange and subversive ideas, such as democracy or escaping to a foreign land. No wonder Chairman Mao never trusted intellectuals and initiated one campaign after another to purge them from the Communist ranks. Anyhow, the idea of traveling to foreign countries stayed with my father. Since Chinese were not allowed to move freely at that time, he began to explore the possibilities of illegal border crossing. His first experience was in 1962, when my mother was still pregnant with me. He left for the northwestern province of Xinjiang, home to the Uyghur and Kazakh ethnic groups. You probably would say that people were desperate to leave China in 1962 because of the famine. I don't think my father did it solely for that reason; he did it to satisfy his curiosity. After he arrived in Xinjiang, he picked up some odd jobs and waited for his opportunity. Eventually he moved to a small town which bordered the then Soviet Union, and started his cross-border adventure there. But luck wasn't on his side. He was caught. When the Chinese border police interrogated him, he pretended to be deaf and mute. The police mistakenly thought he was a member of the ethnic Kazakhs. They didn't shoot him for fear of exacerbating ethnic tensions. Instead, they detained him for several months. Upon his release, he moved back to Sichuan.

He then stayed with my mom for a few weeks until he became restless again. So one day he just disappeared. After he left, my mom moved in with her parents. Later on, my mom received a letter from him, saying that he was heading south to Shenzhen. In those days, Shenzhen was only a small fishing village bordering Hong Kong. Since the land border was heavily guarded, a local guide told him to sneak across via water. So my dad hid in the tall grass near the beach for a whole day. When night fell, he came out of the hiding place, jumped into the water and swam as fast as he could to the free world of Hong Kong. That crazy old man! After he had swum in the water for over a hundred meters, the guards detected him with the patrol lights. They began shooting at him. He got so scared he made his way back to the beach, where a group of border guards were waiting for him. They beat him and tied him up with a rope. Then he was arrested and sentenced to twenty years in jail.

In the Mao era, China was isolated from the rest of the world. Sneaking out to a foreign country was considered a cardinal sin, a crime so serious most ordinary people would not even dare think about it. My dad was quite unusual.

LIAO: What were the charges against him?

LI: They charged him with the crimes of betraying the motherland and engaging in counterrevolutionary activities. At the time of his arrest, I was still in my mother's womb. She carried me to visit my dad in prison and brought divorce papers for him to sign. Sadly, that was the kind of family I was born into. Do you remember an American movie called Paris, Texas? It tells the story of a guy who was unable to remember his past. He decided to find Paris, a city in the state of Texas, where his parents had supposedly met and made love. Since he was probably conceived during that encounter, the man was under the illusion that locating Paris, Texas, would bring back the memories of his past. To him, the city symbolized the perfect place where good things happened. So he abandoned his family and wandered around the country in search of that city. His journey was a precondition, a basic instinct and desire born from his blood. My father had such desires. So do I. The difference is that he paid a much heftier price. I'm lucky because things have changed. Nowadays, there are so many illegal border crossers. The government has problems stemming the trend. Penalties against us are not as harsh.

LIAO: The motives you just listed aren't too convincing. As far as I know, most Chinese attempt to leave China for economic reasons. They want to go to countries like America to make money. A few of them do it for political reasons. I don't know anyone who escapes China out of the basic instinct of a wanderer. Do you realize you are betraying your homeland?

LI: I always carry memories of my homeland in a bag: a couple of Chinese books, including a collection of Chinese poems, a Chinese dictionary, and pictures of some beautiful Chinese women. I understand the fact that if you have money, you can emigrate or travel to a foreign country via proper legal channels. But, sadly, I don't have money. Even if I did, I wouldn't want to go through various complicated channels or fill out all sorts of forms. I want to go wherever I want, and whenever I want. Writer Ai Wu's Journey to the South serves as my textbook. In the book, he describes how he impulsively left China in the 1940s and journeyed to Myanmar. He didn't tell anyone or go through any authorities. He just went like that. In my view, Ai Wu is the Jack Kerouac of China.

LIAO: Are you saying that you went to Myanmar to follow the steps of Ai Wu?

LI: Damn right. I picked Myanmar because of that book by Ai Wu. Since Myanmar is a Buddhist country, I figured that people would be nicer than the Chinese. Most important, going to Myanmar is not that difficult. If you follow the China–Myanmar highway, which starts in a small town called Ruli in the southwestern province of Yunnan, you can easily reach the border town of Mangshi. So, on that particular trip, there were three of us: me posing as a journalist, another guy claiming to be an official from Wulong County, and the third one, a former monk. So we put our money together and decided to go as a group. Through the former monk, we found a one-armed guide from Myanmar. His name was Yeshan. He was a monk. His job was to help those who wanted to enter Myanmar for a fee. At over 1.8 meters, he stood tall among us, and his yellow kasaya glimmered in the hot sun. We followed him for three days and covered over a hundred kilometers of mountain road. Since we could only walk at night, we were exhausted.

LIAO: When did this happen?

LI: That was in the summer of 1989.

LIAO: That was right after the government crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in Beijing. Many student leaders were on the run. You didn't do it for political reasons, did you?

LI: Not me. I'm not sure about the other two. But I doubt it. I was planning to find a job in Myanmar's capital city of Yangon and then look for some business opportunities there. If that didn't work out, my plan B was to join the triad in the Golden Triangle area. I wouldn't have minded smuggling opium. The profit was huge. So I was really motivated. The first part of the trip went smoothly. We didn't encounter any soldiers on the way. Then, on the morning of the fourth day, Yeshan patted me on my shoulder and said in his broken Chinese: You already inside Myanmar now. My job done. Goodbye. We were stunned. You can't leave us like this, screamed the “county official” who reacted faster than the others. He grabbed the monk's sleeve and said: All we see is this mountain. Heaven knows if this is Myanmar or not.

The “official” was right. It was so quiet. We were standing on the edge of a horseshoe-shaped ridge. We could vaguely see a river in the distance through the waist-deep bushes and grass. There was no way to tell whether we had entered Myanmar or not.

The three of us grabbed Yeshan and begged him not to leave us there. When the pleading didn't work, I took out a pocketknife to threaten him. Yeshan became very angry with us. He swung that arm of his at me and pushed me to the ground. The knife flew right out of my hand. That guy knew martial arts and none of us was his match. After he kicked our butts, Yeshan tossed the water bottles and the raw rice to us, pointed at a river down the mountain, and said in that broken Chinese again, Follow river and you no get lost. Make sure stay away from the Maoist guerrillas.

With those words, Yeshan walked away in big strides, his kasaya flying in the morning breeze like a sail. A couple of minutes later, he disappeared in the bushes. Things became so quiet. We got up and brushed the dirt from our pants. The “official” recommended that we go down the mountain at night, but both the former monk and I protested. Since we had already seen some rice paddies and houses in the distance, I figured that we were far away from the border and should be safe from the Chinese border police. There was really no need to do the night walk again.

After debating back and forth, I won. The three of us decided to walk on. We would go down the mountain at twenty meters apart. In this way, if one got into trouble, the others would have time to escape. I volunteered to go at the front. At the beginning, I could hear the footsteps of my friends behind me. Gradually, I could only hear the sound of my own footsteps. So I turned around and called out softly: Hey, hey, are you there? There was no answer. I then crouched down and walked back a little bit, hoping to find my fellow team members. I looked around and couldn't see anybody. Soon, exhaustion started to catch up with me. It was still early in the morning and not too hot. I lay down in the bushes. At first, I tried to stay awake. But soon I was sound asleep. At about noontime, I was awakened by the ants, which were huge in Myanmar. I jumped up and was sweating all over. The ants stuck to my neck like a bracelet. I smashed them with my palms, while continuing my way down. I was hoping to find a local who could help me out.

LIAO: Do you know the local language? How would you communicate with the locals if you ran into one?

LI: People living in the border areas can normally speak a little Chinese because there were lots of cross-border trading activities going on. Also, in the late 1960s, during the Cultural Revolution, many Red Guards crossed the border to support the rebel forces in Myanmar, with the intent of exporting Mao's ideas and engaging in a worldwide Communist revolution. In other words, the locals were used to the presence of Chinese. I was told that locals wouldn't feel alarmed and call the border police if they saw a Chinese. Since the Chinese currency was accepted in the area, one could easily move around without problems.

LIAO: Sounds like you had done some thorough research before the trip. Didn't you tell me that you took these risky adventures simply because you preferred the lifestyle of a wanderer? But now you say you snuck across to be an opium smuggler.

LI: Well, I think it's a combination of both. On the other hand, what's wrong with leaving China for economic reasons? If a large number left China now, the Chinese population would be reduced and the government wouldn't have to shoulder a heavy burden of feeding that many people. If I were to make a policy recommendation to the central government, I would suggest we cut a swath of land through Mongolia and Russia, and build a highway directly to Europe. After the highway is completed, there is no need to advertise it. People would leave the country in droves.

LIAO: OK, OK, stop your grand ideas for a moment. Where were we just now?

LI: We were talking about walking in a jungle in Myanmar. Damn it, it was so scary because I couldn't find a regular mountain path. So I crawled and stumbled around in the bushes. I then checked my watch and realized that six hours had already passed. If things had gone right, I should have been close to the foot of the mountain. But I looked around and couldn't see anything, not even the Myanmar River, which I was supposed to follow. I fumbled forward and found a hidden path among the thick bushes. I was overjoyed. So I took the path and kept walking. A few minutes later, I noticed that the surroundings looked very familiar. I soon realized that I had somehow walked a circle and came to the spot where I had started six hours earlier.

As I was stuck there in the middle of the jungle, can you guess what I was thinking? The jungle reminded me of an old Chinese movie, Bells Ringing Inside the Mountain. The movie was about how the Chinese army fought gangsters and robbers in that region. I wish I could meet some gangsters on horses. I couldn't see shit. Looking back, it was kind of strange for me to be thinking of an old movie that I had seen twenty years before. Oh well. I sat down and pondered my next move. Then I heard a deep human voice: “Freeze.” The sound sent cold shudders down my spine. My hair stood on end.

LIAO: Was it in Chinese?

LI: Yes, it was in standard Mandarin. I felt my head exploding. My poor legs suddenly lost control and flopped. I knelt on the ground. My body was trembling. About five minutes had passed, and I still hadn't seen anybody coming to get me. So I slowly raised my head and tried to see what was going on. Then, I heard the same voice again: Raise your hands above your shoulders. Bend your head. Toss out your weapons.

LIAO: You ran into the border police.

LI: In a way, they acted like the border police, except their uniforms looked kind of shabby. Four guys stepped out from behind the trees. But don't laugh when I tell you this—I was so scared that I had peed in my pants. For the next several hours, my pants reeked strongly of urine. My captors covered my eyes with a black scarf, tied both of my hands in the front, and then dragged me along with a rope. One guy pushed a gun against my waist. I don't know how far or how long I walked. When they finally removed the black scarf from my eyes, I found myself inside a mountain cave and surrounded by a group of men dressed in the Chinese military uniforms of the seventies. They stripped me and pushed me to the side of a table. A kerosene lamp was hanging from the ceiling, and you could hardly see anything beyond the interrogator who was sitting opposite me at the table. Everything was pitch-dark, very mysterious. Gradually, my eyes began to adjust to the darkness. The interrogator asked me: Your name? Age? Occupation? What are you doing here? Are you here to smuggle goods or for political reasons? How many partners do you have on this trip? I answered his questions one by one.

LIAO: Were you captured by the Chinese border police?

LI: No. They were called the People's Army, a guerrilla group affiliated with the Myanmar Communist Party. That group was very powerful in the 1960s and '70s. I heard they were divided into several military regions, with over ten thousand troops. The group occupied a large area in the China-Myanmar border region. The People's Army is in decline now because the world has changed. The fate of the Khmer Rouge in the neighboring area had had a devastating impact on the Communist forces in Myanmar.

LIAO: You got caught by the People's Army? You poor thing!

LI: I had strayed and ended up in the guerrilla territories without even knowing it. Damn, such bad luck. The strangest thing was that the bearded interrogator was from my hometown, the city of Chongqing. Remember what I told you about the Red Guards early in the conversation? That guy was a former Red Guard who had been sent down to work on a collective farm in Yunnan Province. In 1969, he escaped and crossed the border to Myanmar and joined the guerrilla forces. When he realized that he and I grew up in the same city, he began to loosen up and chat with me. He wanted to know about the changes happening in Chongqing. He told me that he had been away for over twenty years, but still missed his hometown. I secretly felt relieved at this unexpected turn of events and started to shoot the breeze with him. I told him about China's economic reforms, the students' democracy movement, and the popularity of cars. I said: Nobody believes in Communism anymore. Everyone talks about money, money, and money. We both talked in Sichuan dialect, swapping stories and jokes about Chongqing. Sometimes, we laughed so hard that tears came down. Other soldiers in the cave looked at us, puzzled and confused. Then my interrogator ordered his soldiers to prepare dinner for us—four dishes and a jug of liquor. I soon became tipsy. The interrogator reminisced about his younger days in China, about his passion for the Communistic ideals, and about his goal of spreading Communism around the world. He told me that the majority of his former comrades had been killed in guerrilla wars against the Myanmar government. I was truly touched by his stories and asked if he was planning to return home someday. He answered: Everyone, including you, is running away from home. What's the point of going back? To a certain degree, I said he and I shared something in common. We both were idealists, and were pursuing adventure in a foreign country. He strongly disagreed: Your ideals are different from mine. You are doing it for yourself, but I'm pursuing a goal to help mankind. My comrades and I are the only true Chinese Communists who are shedding blood in a foreign land, with the hope of establishing another Communist society. You probably call us rare specimens, but we are fighting for a noble cause.

As our conversation became more and more intimate, I began to broach the subject of having him release me. He sighed: We are fellow city men. Under normal circumstances, I would let you pass. Unfortunately, it's too late. My commander has been informed of your arrest. He has notified the Chinese border police. His words jolted me wide awake. Like a snake falling into an icy river, I was shaking all over, struggling for my life.

I slumped to the ground and knelt in front of him: I beg you to have mercy on me. If you can't set me free, why don't you shoot me now? The government will do the same if you send me home.

The interrogator pulled me up from the ground, and said: Cheer up, buddy! If they find out that you don't have other political motives for crossing the border, you probably will get two years in jail. To tell you the truth, I'm now the head of the regiment here. I have to set a good example in carrying out orders from above. Otherwise, I would lose my credibility among my soldiers.

LIAO: With words like that, I don't think you can argue much.

LI: Damn it. It was like a bad dream. After I woke up, I ended up in jail for two years. Look at my face now and you will notice that one side is more out of shape than the other. My chin is a little tilted. Those are souvenirs from my various border-crossing adventures. I got smacked and beaten up so many times. The pain and the excitement made me feel alive. Once, I was tied by a long rope to the back of a small tractor. My captors dragged me for many kilometers on a small mountain path. My clothes were shredded into strips, like a mop. While I was being pulled forward by the tractor, I thought of an American movie, in which the black slaves were tied to a wooden pole, waiting to be sold to another white owner.

The pursuit of freedom is the hardest thing in this world. In China, if you are dying of hunger, nobody gives a damn. But when you try to move to a new place to find food for yourself and look for a change of lifestyle, someone will immediately pounce and arrest you. In places such as Europe, the U.S., and Australia, people claim they have democracy and freedom. But the governments there will not grant entry to you if you don't have money or if you don't qualify as a political refugee. No matter how many times you tell them that you love democracy and freedom, they still don't give a damn. It's so damn hypocritical.

LIAO: Personally, I think Myanmar is a much worse country than China. Even if you had succeeded in crossing over there and had reached Yangon, you would have faced poverty just like you do here. It could be worse, don't you think?

LI: I have never been successful in getting over there. How would I know which is worse? A poet friend of mine once took the same path as I did. He got caught inside Myanmar because a local resident reported on him. He ended up in a Myanmar jail. Believe it or not, he was locked up in the same cell with a former leader of the Myanmar Communist Party. Within a year, he learned to speak English and Burmese, and obtained quite a lot of secrets of the Myanmar Communist Party. Those secrets were quite useless though.

Anyhow, he became friends with that Communist leader. Then he was forgotten. The government never put him on trial and they just left him in jail forever. One day, he began to scream nonstop. Thank heavens he did that. Otherwise, he could be rotting in there. He cursed and screamed in Chinese, English, and Burmese. That screaming really changed his fate. Later on, both he and the Communist leader were released. The Communist guy helped him get a visa. He was exported to Europe as a laborer. The last thing I heard was that he became a resident of Denmark. He is the luckiest border crosser I have ever heard of.

LIAO: His story is like a chapter in the Arabian Nights.

LI: My own story is like a chapter from the Arabian Nightmares. But let me tell you, during peacetime, sneaking across the border is the most adventurous and stimulating thing to do.

LIAO: Does it mean you are addicted to border crossing?

LI: I have done it four or five times. The most dramatic experience was the one I just told you. All the others were pretty ordinary and they all ended in failure. Penalty for border crossing has been reduced a lot in recent years. As long as you don't mess around with officials during interrogation, they will normally force you to pay a fine. That's it. Since I didn't have money to pay a fine, they would detain me for several months and then release me.

There is one more trip that's worth mentioning. It was in 1997. Since Hong Kong was about to be returned to China, I assumed that the Hong Kong–China border wouldn't be as tightly patrolled as before. I paid some money to buy a fake ID, and went to Shenzhen, like my dad did. Instead of swimming across, I decided to check out the land route. I took a stroll on the famous commercial boulevard that divides Hong Kong and mainland China. I looked at the Hong Kong side. The tall buildings and busy shopping areas were so mesmerizing, drawing me like a huge magnet. Like a complete idiot, I began to walk toward the barbed wire that was put up in the middle of the street to separate Hong Kong from the mainland. Two guards spotted me right away. They moved toward me with guns pointing. Without further thinking, I tossed my bag across to the other side of the street. The bag contained my fake ID and wallet. I thought the other side was Hong Kong territory and the mainland guard wouldn't dare to cross over to pick it up. They came over and one pointed his gun at me, ordering me to stand still. Then the other guard walked over to the Hong Kong side through a small entrance, and picked up my bag as evidence of my crime.

LIAO: At least your bag managed to cross the border.

LI: I told the guards: Hong Kong will be returned to China soon. It should be easier for Chinese to travel to Hong Kong. Why are you in such a rush to get me? They slapped me and told me to shut up. I was locked up in a detention center for two months. Luckily, they didn't find out about my real identity. Otherwise, they could have sentenced me for fabricating an ID card.

LIAO: You have just been released from a detention center in Shenzhen. Was it for another illegal border-crossing?

LI: Yes. I did odd jobs in Shenzhen for several years and then tried to enter Hong Kong on a train not long ago. I was caught because of my fake passport.

LIAO: You are hopeless. It must be in your genes.