THE SAFECRACKER

A week after the lunar new year in 1991, I accompanied a lawyer friend to a jail in Chongqing and visited the famous robber Cui Zhixiong. The date set for his execution had been postponed for forty-five days. According to him, “I got lucky and picked up another Chinese New Year for free.”

Cui was thirty-nine years old, with heavy brows and big round eyes. He was quite strong. Using a Chinese cliché, I will describe him as having a tiger's back and a bear's waist. Even in the cold winter he was wearing only a shirt and summer pants. He was heavily shackled, but didn't look at all frazzled and weary like other death row inmates I had met.

After my interview, I set aside the tapes and notes. I revisited our conversation in 1998, when he had long been turned into ashes.

LIAO YIWU: How did you end up here?

CUI ZHIXIONG: I have committed the worst crime under heaven. I have cracked many safes and stolen millions of yuan. I'm waiting to be executed. This is the second time I've been locked up in a prison. Three years ago, I got busted for the first time and was locked up at a detention center on Gele Mountain. That was an old-style prison built by the Nationalists in the 1940s. Even after fifty-some years, the structure was still solid. The walls were built with steel-reinforced concrete, and there were four watchtowers, one at each corner. The daily activities of prisoners were confined to a rectangular courtyard, which was surrounded by a two-story building. The back of the prison bordered on a deep cliff.

To get to the prison, a car had to climb a long circuitous mountain road. After you passed the entrance, you found yourself in a small courtyard. Outsiders were allowed to come in only after going through a thorough body search. On the ground floor, there was an interrogation room, a kitchen, a public bathhouse, a storage room, and a latrine. The second floor housed all the prison cells—sixteen altogether, including one for women. A circular corridor, which cut through the prison wards, was so dark that lightbulbs had to be turned on during the daytime. My prison cell had a window in the ceiling. If I jumped high enough, I could touch the window bars. When I did a chin-up and hung on to the window bars, I could see in the distance a hill covered with pine trees.

LIAO: How did you get so familiar with the local geography?

CUI: I am a born thief. I can remember the details of any locale after one visit. Besides, I was locked up inside that detention center for over two months. I knew every piece of brick and stone. The first day I entered the detention center, I began to work on a plan to escape. I was told that nobody had ever managed to escape from that prison. Only a fool would believe that. Even stones have cracks. I had broken into so many safes and frequented so many forbidden areas. Nobody had stopped me. I was quite confident that I could find a way out.

During the first month, I had to go through interrogation every day. I didn't have time to focus on any escape plan. Later on, I began to cooperate with my interrogators. I would confess a little here and a little there. The interrogators became very happy. Sometimes, when I offered them some secrets of safecracking, they couldn't digest them all. They would spend a couple of days researching. As a result, I was able to take a break.

LIAO: Under normal circumstances, a detainee has to go through all sorts of “procedures” to have his attitude changed. Did they ever beat you up?

CUI: You are right. A new prisoner would have to go through various tortures designed by the guards and his fellow inmates to break him. I lucked out. Since the prosecutor needed me to help out with some of his other cases, he personally brought me to see the head of the detention center and told him to take good care of me. So I was spared the “procedures.” Anyway, after the pace of my interrogation slowed down, I had time to think about how to escape. First, I had to find opportunities when I could be left alone. When many people huddle together, even a magician can't make himself disappear in front of them. Prisoners did everything together. Apart from three meals, every inmate was allowed to go out for one fifteen-minute break in the morning and one in the afternoon. When the inmates stepped out into the courtyard, the guards would watch everyone from inside the towers perched on top of the four corners of the wall. One way to avoid attention from the guards was to hide inside the latrine. The latrine, which was opposite the public bathhouse, was dimly lit. Its stinky smell was overwhelming. Inside, there was a row of holes on the ground so people could squat on them to take care of their business. Those holes were connected to a huge human-waste pond at the back of the latrine. The stinky latrine was the perfect place for a loner like me.

LIAO: No other prisoner used the latrine at break time?

CUI: There was a big wooden shit bucket inside each cell. People normally did their business in there. During our breaks, two inmates were responsible for carrying the buckets out, dumping the contents, and washing them. Therefore, when everyone rushed into the courtyard, people in charge of the buckets would try to finish their tasks as soon as possible so they could go breathe some fresh air or stealthily swap some petty goods with others. So I could squat inside the latrine alone for over ten minutes without arousing any suspicion.

It took me two trips to the latrine to finally figure out an action plan. The first time I was in there, I noticed a tiny ventilation window. From there, I could see a wall right in front of me. There was no way I could get out that way. Then, I found out about the human-waste pond behind the latrine. I began to wonder whether the pond was built inside the jail or outside. It couldn't have been inside because I had never seen prison staff clean out the pond. But, if the pond was outside, was it an open one or was it covered like a manhole with a lid on it? How big and heavy could the lid be?

One day, as I was squatting inside the latrine, I vaguely heard noises coming from outside the prison. I held my breath and pushed my ear against the wall. It sounded like someone was scooping out the human waste. The person might have been a local peasant because I could hear a horse-drawn cart. It was obvious that it was an open shit pond outside the prison wall. At that moment, all my blood rushed to my head. My brain was buzzing. I had a plan in place.

The next step was to calculate the route and the speed of my escape. My daily breaks were about fifteen minutes each. It usually took five minutes for inmates from six cells to empty the wooden shit buckets in the latrine. That would give me ten minutes to go inside the latrine and complete phase one of the plan. At the end of the break, there would be a roll call. If they found someone missing, guards would check the courtyard and cells and then form a search team. That would probably give me nine to ten minutes to carry out phase two of the plan—running away. Then the guards would usually spend time dividing the team into several smaller groups so they could search separately. That would probably add two additional minutes. In other words, during the escape and chasing process, I would have twelve minutes to run away from the guards.

LIAO: Wow, it was like in a thriller movie.

CUI: The stuff in a movie is nothing compared to my adventure. When they sent me to the detention center a couple of months before, it took the police car twenty minutes to get from the bottom of the mountain to the top. If my escape was successful, I could run down the mountain in a straight line in roughly the same amount of time. I had rehearsed this escape episode in my mind over ten times.

Things worked out really smoothly. I remember clearly that it was on May 6, 1988, three days before my thirty-sixth birthday. That afternoon, I wrapped in a small plastic bag a vest, a pair of shorts and shoes, as well as a small towel. I tied the bag around my waist and put on a large uniform. After a guard blew the whistle for afternoon break, I joined the crowd in the hallway. Two minutes later, I was inside the courtyard. I held myself against a wall and glanced up at the guards inside the watchtowers. They were chatting. I then quickly crept into the latrine and almost bumped into two inmates walking out with a bucket. I deliberately made a lot of noise unbuckling my pants and they didn't even look back. I squatted over the last hole from the door. I could hear a guy come in and take a piss at the urinals near the latrine entrance. There was no time to waste. I took off my uniform and carefully slid my body down into the hole. I couldn't look down because the stinky smell went directly into my nose, bringing tears to my face. The squatting hole was pretty small. I had to let my legs down first, and then squeeze my body down slowly, with two hands firmly clinging to the edge. Then I slowly lowered my upper body and then my head down. I found myself dangling in the air. I didn't realize the hole was so deep. I clenched my teeth and counted one, two, and three. Then I let go with both hands. The next thing I knew, I had plunged into the shit hole like a heavy bomb.

My heart beat so fast. It was going to explode. My basic instinct to survive overcame everything. I ducked my head down inside the shit and swam forward. I could feel a rat jumping over my back. Time seemed to have frozen. Goddammit, it seemed forever. I began to tremble involuntarily. I didn't dare to open my eyes. I could hardly move because the human waste was too thick. I just splashed forward little by little. I felt I was drowning. Soon, I touched some barbed wire. I raised my head and opened my eyes. I was outside! I was about five meters away from the edge of the pond. A barbwire, connecting with the prison walls on both ends, ran through the middle of the pond. I reached my hands down and tried to see how I could get through. It turned out that the wire didn't reach all way down to the bottom. I dove headfirst into the shit and swam under the wire. By the time I got out, I had two big deep scratches on my back and legs. Since I had pretty strong wrists and arms, I grabbed the edge and managed to drag my body out. I thought I had stayed in the shit pond forever. Actually, the whole operation took less than six or seven minutes because I could hear the prisoners inside were still on break.

I quickly stripped, opened up the plastic bag, wiped myself with that towel, and then changed to my vest, shorts, and shoes. Apart from the stinky smell on my body, I looked like a jogger. I dashed down the mountain on a small wooded path. My legs moved like they were equipped with wings. I jumped over dead trees and big rocks. I think I must have broken the world distance running record. I fell and rolled down a sloping mountain path several times. I got up and moved on. I ran into five or six tourists coming down from the mountain. I smelled so bad. They all covered their noses and ran away from me. All that time, I thought I heard the sirens of police cars. It turned out I was just hallucinating.

Next to the Martyrs' Cemetery at the foot of the mountain was a foreign languages college. I ran right onto the campus and passed through the students' playground. Since I was only wearing a vest and shorts and had muscled arms and legs, people thought I was a professional athlete. Nobody detected anything suspicious. I snuck into a dorm building. It was empty because students were either in class or outside. I cleaned myself in the public shower room, and snatched some clothes that were hung out to dry outside a dorm window. After I left the university, I realized that I was in a place called Shapingba. I knew that there was a large hospital nearby. I stopped a taxi and jumped in. After he drove for about a hundred meters, I could hear the sound of sirens. The search team had already arrived. About two hundred meters away, I noticed traffic police stopping cars to check passengers inside. I immediately beckoned the driver to stop. I said apologetically, Sorry, sir. I forgot to bring my wallet. He turned his head back and said: Do you want me to take you back? Before he even finished his sentence, I had already jumped out of the car. I ran in the direction of the hospital. After I walked in, I roamed around the patient ward and saw a morgue behind the labs. I lifted a latch on one of the back windows and climbed in. I looked around and found that the room was about twenty meters long and thirty meters wide. There were six stone platforms for corpses, and three were occupied. A couple of bodies were stacked inside a fridge with glass doors. Since I had no safe place to go, I simply lay down on a stone platform and covered myself up with a blue plastic sheet.

It was pretty hot in May, but after lying down on a slab of stone for a couple of hours, the dampness began to seep through my bones. The morgue was dimly lit. The stinky smell of the bodies floated in the air. All my dead neighbors in that room seemed to have been killed in traffic accidents. I could see pools of blood on the slabs. I waited for the sky to turn dark. Anxious as I was, time seemed to move very slowly. A breeze came and the door kept swinging back and forth. I was shivering with fear. If anyone came in, I would have been finished. If that person dared to remove the sheet on top of me, I would thrust out my claws and choke him to death.

LIAO: How long did you stay inside the morgue?

CUI: It felt like eternity. I started by counting my heartbeat. When my heart beat fast, I considered three as one second. When it slowed down, I counted one beat as a second. Later on, I counted myself into a sleep. I was awakened by some noises in the adjacent room. It was the sound of chopsticks banging on tin bowls. Apparently, it was dinnertime for the guard. The thought of dinner stimulated my stomach, which began to have terrible spasms. It hurt so much that I wanted to get up and move a little bit to distract myself from the pain. But I controlled my urges and held myself still a little longer. The guard spent the next two hours eating and drinking tea. Before he went to bed, I could hear him humming a tune from a traditional Sichuan opera. Strangely enough, I can now remember the tune and the words very clearly.

Things began to quiet down after the guard went to sleep. So I got up. My body was almost frozen stiff. I left the morgue. As I was passing by the hospital cafeteria, I noticed it was open for night-shift workers. Then, two nurses walked out, chatting and laughing. I hid behind a small grove of shrubs. As they passed by, I picked up a small piece of stone on the ground and threw it at one of them. It hit her right on the wrist. “Who is it?” She was startled, and dropped her food to the ground.

The two women screamed and ran back into the cafeteria for help. I ran away as fast as I could, and went back to the morgue. I stayed there for a little longer until it was quiet on all fronts. When I came out again, I accidentally came across half a bottle of water on the side of the road. I picked it up and dumped the water into my mouth. It felt really good. I then came to the place where the two nurses dropped their food. I cupped the food up and swallowed it. My stomach suddenly felt a surge of stabbing pain. I squatted down and rested for a few minutes. I then walked stealthily into the patient wards. I checked each floor for food. When I came to the fifth floor, I saw the doctor's office was open. Nobody was inside. I walked in, quickly changed into a white gown I found in the closet, put on a surgical mask, and picked up a stethoscope from the desk. Then I visited a maternity ward, pretending I was a doctor on call. I ended up with quite a few treats: I had stolen over a thousand yuan from various patients and managed to get some cakes and fruit.

After I came out of the hospital, I walked into a military medical academy next door. I stole a set of military uniforms that were hanging outside a dorm building. By that time, it was almost dawn. A big shuttle bus was parked right in front of the building. I found a piece of metal string, bent it, slid it in to open the lock, and got inside. I made myself comfortable on the last row of seats. Exhausted as I was, I soon dozed off. Then I felt someone tugging at my clothes and pushing me to a corner seat. I woke up and realized that the sun was already up, and the bus was filled with students in military uniforms. A guy sitting next to me asked: Which class are you in? I couldn't answer him, but randomly pointed to a building outside. He said: You work at the computer lab? I nodded.

From the conversations I overheard on the bus, I realized that it was Sunday. The bus carried the students, including me, all the way downtown. The trip went well, without any glitches. For the first time in a long while, I saw groups of pretty girls on the street. I tasted freedom.

LIAO: You were even bold enough to sleep on a military bus. Weren't you afraid of getting caught?

CUI: I couldn't go back to the hospital, and it was not safe to loiter on the street. Walking around inside the military medical academy at night was even riskier. The shuttle bus was the only place to go.

LIAO: What happened afterward?

CUI: They never caught me. I was a free man again, wandering all over the country, stealing and breaking into safes. I had stolen so much money that I didn't know what to do with it. I decided to settle down and live as a recluse. I purchased a couple of houses in Beihai. But I never felt safe. I wasn't at all excited about starting another business because I hated to associate myself with businessmen. They are boring people. Moreover, I had just reached the peak in my profession. If you wanted me to change jobs, I just couldn't get myself to become enthused about the idea. So, I just idled around. When I had nothing to do, my mind began to go crazy. I dreamed about prisons and policemen every night.

LIAO: Were you ever married before?

CUI: I had a girlfriend. She was a big fan of the Taiwanese pop singer Tong Ange. I loved his songs too. I wanted to marry her but couldn't. You don't have to tell your girlfriend about your profession, but you need to share everything with your wife. That's the Chinese tradition, isn't it?

LIAO: How did you get caught this time?

CUI: Two years had passed since I escaped. I thought the coast was clear. I returned to Chongqing. One day, I made a bet with a couple of old buddies, saying that I could easily break into a new type of high-tech safe at a large company. There I went. I walked right through the main entrance. I broke into the treasurer's office. Within ten minutes, I located the safe and cut off the office alarm system. I stuck a razor-thin knife into a small crack, and with the sound of a click, I cut off the alarm on the safe. No shit, was that what they called the new advanced laser protection technology? Breaking that damn thing was the easiest job I had ever done. I was a little carried away by this initial success and began to let down my guard. I leaned against the safe, chewing bubble gum. I even blew a big bubble. After I opened the safe door, I found there were about 500,000 yuan [US$60,300] in there, plus some bundles of newly minted hundred-yuan bills. On the spur of the moment, I used my cigarette lighter and began to burn those hundred-yuan bills one by one. Then, the police arrived before I even finished with one bundle.

When I was arrested, I felt as if my heart had finally dropped to the ground after hanging on a high cliff for a long, long time. I felt my mind could finally rest. I stood up, stretched my hands out, and asked the police to handcuff me. Then, after they shackled me, I said calmly: Let's go.

LIAO: Now that you are on death row, how do you feel?

CUI: I think a lot about my escape three years before. It was too miraculous. However, nobody can escape his fate. While I was on the run, my body was set free, but my mind wasn't. I owe society too much. I never used the stolen cash to help those who really needed it. So many poor children can't afford to go to school, so many unemployed workers have nothing to support the family . . . What's the difference between those corrupt officials and me? There's none. OK, so much for the story. You are an intellectual and you understand that: whatever you do, you need passion and motivation. I have lost my passion and motivation to live. I'm ready to exit this world.