19

“How did you organize the underground church training center?” the interrogator asked. The room had a desk, a few stools, and no windows. It had been days since the police had taken me away from our apartment and dragged me to a car waiting on campus. For hours, I had watched from the backseat as they carried boxes of our belongings into a truck. I noticed a wedding photo fall on the ground into a puddle. An officer stepped on it and stuck it back in the box.

I looked away. I knew the contents of those boxes were merely “things,” cheap mementos of past events, and it was the events themselves that were important—but the photos, love letters, and posters were tokens that caused us to pause, remember, and smile. As I sat there watching those items taken, combed over for evidence, and destroyed, it felt so personally insulting, like they were denigrating enormous portions of our life together.

When I arrived at the prison, I resolved not to give them the names of my other Christian friends.

“Who was involved?” he asked, leaning across the table. He waited for only a second before he yelled, “Who provided the teachers?”

I sat up straight on my stool, jarred by the volume of his questioning and the spittle that landed on my face. My head pounded. What did they do with Heidi? Did they find the little address book? Are my friends being detained because of me?

Suddenly, a thud on the side of my head caused me to wince.

“Who are your foreign connections?” he snarled. “Now do you hear me?”

“You have to obey the law,” I said, with as much authority in my voice as I could fake. “I have a law degree from the People’s University, and I know there are laws that govern how prisoners are treated.”

The guard who’d whacked me massaged his knuckles, and another pulled him aside. “Don’t hit him. He’s a lecturer at the Communist Party School, an intellectual. And put that away.” He pointed to the electric shock baton the guard was holding, a commonly used torture device that had a voltage as high as 300,000 volts. “He knows the law. If he gets out of here, he might know some important people who can discipline us. Plus, it looks like he’s been preparing for this moment for a long time.”

Secretly, I was gratified I was holding up well under the questioning. I felt God’s presence surround me in the interrogation room, and I found some degree of peace.

“Oh, the law?” My interrogator threw his head back and laughed. “If you cared about the law so much, why did you create an illegal Christian training center?”

“Doesn’t the constitution say Chinese citizens have freedom of religious belief in Article 36?” I said. “I’m a Chinese citizen!”

“You need to read the Constitution carefully,” the interrogator said. “It doesn’t say ‘religious freedom,’ as you claim. It says ‘freedom of religious belief.’ If you’d simply believed and kept those beliefs to yourself, you’d be home with your wife today.”

“But doesn’t the universal declaration of human rights in Article 18 give me protection?” I asked, realizing there was no use seeking to iron out our different interpretations of the Chinese constitution.

“You’re employed by the Communist Party School,” he scolded. “You know you aren’t an ordinary citizen and should conduct yourself more properly. Why do you insist on talking about this Jesus?”

“The Lord died for me and saved me from despair,” I said simply. “I wanted the others to know about God too, so I—”

The interrogator slammed his fist onto the table. “Nobody will utter the word ‘God’ in this room!”

As I sat there, deprived of sleep and water, the temptation for sarcasm was too great. After all, I was already in prison. So I said, in a very serious tone, “Oh no. You just now mentioned the forbidden word!”

All of the guards whipped around to look at my interrogator. They apparently weren’t used to jokes, because my flippant answer incensed him.

“Enough!” he yelled, baring his teeth. “Do you think you’re impressing us with your stubbornness?” He walked around the table and sat down beside me on a stool. His mouth got so close to the side of my face that I felt his breath in my ear. It was hot, a strange sensation because the room was so cold. “Well, your wife is much more stubborn than you. She hasn’t said a word . . . yet.”

I swallowed hard. My fears had been confirmed. Heidi had been arrested. She’ll be okay, I thought. After all, she’s prepared. In fact, both of us had been trained on how to survive an interrogation. Jonathan Chao had taught us from a handbook based on interviews with hundreds of tortured Christians. Heidi and I knew how best to resist coercive techniques: we needed to come to terms with our imprisonment, to appear submissive, and to remain silent. But I could tell my refusal to answer questions was wearing thin.

“We need the names of your accomplices,” he said. “Do you know Jonathan Chao?”

“No.”

“Answer us honestly!”

“I only obey God.”

“You don’t obey the Bible?”

I paused, and then answered hesitantly. “I try.”

“All of it? Even Romans 13?” I nodded, a little shocked that this man could name a book of the Bible. “Because there’s one verse in there which might apply to this case. It says, ‘Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established.’”

I didn’t move.

“Are you deaf? We’re God’s servants, according to your own Scriptures,” he said. “We’re hired by God.”

He got up from his stool and began to pace back and forth in the small room. “So according to the Holy Bible, we have authority over you, so you need to obey us.”

He paused a moment, then swung back to face me. “So now tell us who helped you set up the school. Was it Jonathan Chao?”

Is he telling me the truth, God? Should I obey him? I prayed. Though I knew it wasn’t the Lord’s will that I endanger His church, I also knew He didn’t approve of deception. Should I make up stories, or would that cause more harm to my fellow believers? Had Heidi been able to keep the book safe, or were my Christian friends already on their way to the station?

“No,” I lied. I’d been interrogated for days and—at the time—it felt like the best course of action.

“You apparently don’t realize that we’ve been following you for quite some time,” the interrogator interrupted. “I know you aren’t telling the truth.”

My shoulders slumped and I put my head in my hands. He was right about my deception, and I felt so guilty that I wanted to hide my face. However, once I was in that slight position of repose, I felt I could shut my eyes and rest forever. The palm of my hand was as comfortable as any feather pillow, and the arms of sleep wrapped around me like a blanket. The harsh light of the room dimmed and I felt a tingly sensation all over my body. Suddenly I felt warmth, joy even, then—

Thwack!

My interrogator stood before me and I felt a stinging sensation on the side of my face.

“Wake up!” he said. “Bad Christians like you don’t deserve to nap. You think because we’ve been in here for three days that I’ll tire of questioning you. But that’s where you’re wrong. I get to leave this room and rest in my big, comfortable bed, and another person is ready to question you. We could do this all week. I’m going to ask you this again. Do you know Jonathan Chao?”

“I do not!” I exclaimed.

My interrogator—with a rather unnecessary dramatic flourish—then placed a single photo on the table in front of me. It was of me, Jonathan Chao, and the illegal Bible printer, Zhuohua Cai.

“Don’t you?”

When I realized an agent had been following me with a camera, I relented. They knew. I knew.

“Okay,” I said. “I do know Jonathan.”

It almost hurt my mouth to say my mentor’s name. I respected him more than anyone, and had benefitted so much from our fellowship. However, as an American citizen, he’d offered himself up as a possible way to get out of interrogation. I recalled his suggestion, when I had shared my fears about prison with him, that I use him as a way to deflect attention.

The interrogator’s eyes lit up as he slid a piece of paper and a pen across the table. “Tell me what you know about the notorious Mister Chao.”

My hands were shaking with guilt when I took the pen. However, I simply turned this confession into a mission statement. I explained Jonathan’s vision for China, which included the “evangelization” of China, the “Christianization” of Chinese culture, and “kingdomization” of the Chinese church. In English these all end in “ization,” but in Chinese they ended in “hua.” Using several pages, I elaborated on what Jonathan called the “three huas.”

“Basically, Jonathan’s plan is to share the gospel to as many as possible in China and to shape the Chinese culture into Christ-like culture,” I wrote. It was hard to write coherently when the lines on the paper kept moving. Sleep deprivation was supposed to make me more suggestible and less resistant to questioning, but it also made my vision blurry. My speech was slurred. My head was pounding. At first, I tried to remember everything about Jonathan’s ministry without compromising the secret details of operations. Plus, I wanted to defend his name. “Jonathan loves China more than anyone else. He’s not anti-China. He’s an American citizen. Why does he come here to sacrifice so much? Every time I met with him he was tired. He wore himself out trying to help China.” By the end of the tenth page, I had trouble keeping my pen on the paper.

When the interrogator came back into my room, he looked like a dog anticipating a meaty treat. But when he was finished reading the papers, he slammed them on the desk and yelled, “This is what you give me? The three huas? Jonathan Chao is not a friend of China. You’re trying to lure me with this so-called gospel. But you can’t spread that venom here.”

He knocked on the door and a guard appeared. “Take him away!”

Finally, my interrogation stopped after three days and nights.

It felt good to stretch my legs and to actually be moving, even if I was moving toward prison. Had I said the correct things? Had I compromised Jonathan? Were they torturing Heidi? The guard escorted me from the interrogation center, a building adjacent to the prison, to the first gate of the compound, and tossed clothes at me. Apparently, the interrogators tried to get you to talk, whereas the guards made sure you didn’t. In fact, no one was allowed to talk in the prison compound, so I silently unfolded the uniform—a long-sleeved blue shirt and black trousers, with no belt. After I put on the clothes, the guard walked over to me and pointed to my face. I didn’t understand until he reached up and yanked my glasses off. Suicide prevention, I thought. No one was allowed to have anything that could be used to kill oneself. I tried not to panic as my eyes adjusted to the room without the aid of my glasses. Severely nearsighted, I could only see things that were close to me, whereas distant objects were blurry.

Without a word, he moved me from the room and down the dark corridor. I’d never been more fatigued, and every motion was an act of will. Left foot, right foot, left, right.

Suddenly, I felt a sharp kick to my back, and I fell to the floor. For the next few minutes, the guard beat me because he’d apparently motioned for me to move over to another room to get fingerprinted. Since I couldn’t see his gestures, he used his feet to “speak” to me. He grabbed me by my shirt to lift me off the ground, and then kicked me all the way down the hall until I made it to the correct location to get my fingerprints taken. I limped into the room as quickly as I could.

After I was fingerprinted, we walked down the corridor and stopped at the west prison cell, in section one, room four. From that moment forward, I was no longer Xiqiu Fu. My new name was Xi Yao Si, which meant “west side, section 1, room 4.” The iron door slammed shut behind me. My new home was about two hundred square feet and had a toilet and a sink in the corner of the cell, behind a glass wall. I instantly shuddered at the thought of going to the bathroom in plain sight. There was a long limestone bench along one of the walls. Some of the men there stood, others sat on the floor. But one—and only one—was reclined on the bench. When I walked in, they all turned to stare.

“What have you done to land here?” the guy on the bench said, after getting up and walking slowly over to me. He had a thick neck and dark hair. His bushy eyebrows covered dark, tiny eyes with glances as lethal as bullets. Everyone had beards of varying lengths, and I could tell how long someone had been in the prison by the length of their facial hair. I began to open my mouth, but the man covered it with his hand. It was wet and smelled of mildew.

“Not so fast,” he said. “You’re not allowed to talk.” After a moment, he removed his hand from my face and I realized I’d been holding my breath. He walked around the men sitting on the floor like a king walking among his peasants—if that king was missing some pretty prominent teeth and had forearms the size of tree trunks.

“They call me Da Ge,” he said, which is Chinese for “big brother,” or “head of the cell.” “Since there are only a privileged few who can talk around here, I’ll tell you what you must be wondering. They charged me with corruption, but I am innocent.”

Actually, Da Ge was wrong. I was wondering if he was going to beat me. I nodded, and no one else said a word—not to me and not to each other. I noticed the bench was Big Brother’s domain, so I tried to find a small patch of space on the wet floor. After three days without sleep, I figured I could doze even if I had to stand. Near the back of the room, close to the toilet, was about three feet of space. I crouched down, and just as I was about to lay my head on the wet tile floor, Big Brother motioned to the concrete bed, and said, “Sleep here.”

It’s hard to imagine a concrete bed was a place of honor, but everything is relative. In prison, the concrete bed—I later learned—was the most coveted position. Though I wasn’t sure why I was being treated so nicely, I didn’t have time to figure out the social strata of the cell. Instead, I laid down and finally—mercifully—succumbed to sleep.

I’m not sure how long I was out. It couldn’t have been very long, but my slumber was deep and troubled. I dreamt of Heidi, of prison, and of a man screaming in horror. It seemed distant and tortured and I wanted nothing more than to awaken myself from it. However, when I opened my eyes I realized it was no dream.

A drug dealer named Little Tiger was holding a new inmate on the floor by his throat. “Hey boys, want to see if our new friend uses drugs?” The other prisoners cheered like they were at a sporting event. The inmate was scrawny, no match for Little Tiger, who knew kung fu. He immobilized him by holding his head to the floor while other men tore his clothes off him. Another prisoner emerged with a bucket of freezing cold water—and then another, and another. It was winter in Beijing, and the water from the sink was intolerably cold. As the naked man writhed in pain, apparently from drug withdrawal, they proceeded to pour bucket after bucket of water over him.

The other men laughed hysterically as he shrieked.

“Are you okay?” I asked, leaning down to him. Why would freezing water cause so much agony? I wondered. Though cold water over one’s naked body would be terrible, unpleasant, and humiliating, he was screaming like he was being tortured. “How do you feel?”

“Please just kill me!”

“We’ve got another druggie,” Little Tiger exclaimed. The jail erupted into cheers. I soon learned certain drugs, like heroin, make users much more sensitive to cold and pain. Big Brother could tell by their eyes whether new prisoners were users. If he suspected it, he’d have them stripped and pour freezing water over their naked bodies. This wasn’t because Big Brother was offended by drug use, but because the freezing water—plus the withdrawal symptoms—provided some entertainment.

“Why don’t you tell us a story,” he asked, kicking him in the side to get his attention. “The new guys are supposed to entertain us.”

“What kind of stories?” he moaned, gasping for air. “I don’t know any.”

“I was hoping you’d say that,” he said as he drew back his foot and kicked him in his ribs. He kicked him again and again, until the man, now listless from the pain, relented. “I’ll do what you want!” In his agony, he was forced to tell a pornographic story, while the other prisoners sat around and whooped and yelled. I don’t know if the man actually had a girlfriend or if it was all made up for the sake of the other prisoners. But even in his pain, he was able to tell some disgusting details about his sexual escapades.

After the drug addict had listlessly regaled everyone with stories, another prisoner jumped on him and began beating him mercilessly. I watched in horror as the others jumped in, making an uneven fight almost homicidal. By the time it was over, the new prisoner was left bleeding in a heap. Later, after he could collect himself, he dragged himself through the cell with a broken arm and possibly even a broken leg.

I couldn’t believe it. I’d only been in prison a few more hours than this guy. Why did they almost kill him, but not lay a finger on me? Was I imagining it, or did the other prisoners move away from me and almost seem afraid?

The second night of my imprisonment, I was on “suicide watch” with another prisoner. Our job was to stay awake all night to make sure no one woke up and tried to kill themselves. During my shift, I turned to the other prisoner and whispered.

“Why does no one talk to me?”

Before answering, he looked around the cell to make sure no one saw us. “No one talks except Big Brother,” he whispered.

“But people don’t even look at me.”

“You didn’t come here to make friends, did you?” he hissed, turning his back to me.

Though he wasn’t very forthcoming, I knew I wasn’t imagining it. As I sat there in the darkness, I was overcome with sorrow and grief. I couldn’t imagine what Heidi was going through. Had she suffered a worse fate than I had so far? Did the other women inmates attack her? Did the guards use the electric shock baton on her? I knew from other imprisoned Christians that sometimes the guards used the baton on the women in ways that made it impossible for them to have children. Had Heidi been raped?

How long would I live in this place? Ten years? Twenty? They’d charged me with “illegal religious activities,” and they only knew a fraction of it. In addition to the illegal training center, we’d also printed thousands of Bibles without permission, had an entire underground training network, and had facilitated the smuggling of religious materials. If they connected the dots, I could be locked away forever. I sighed heavily, my mind in turmoil.

My thoughts were interrupted when I felt a hand on my arm.

“I’ll tell you the truth,” the other prisoner said, in the smallest voice possible. “Before you arrived, the guards warned us about you.”

I almost laughed. I was an intellectual, a bookworm who couldn’t see without my glasses. “Why would corrupted officials, drug dealers, and murderers stay away from me?”

“They said you carried some sort of poisonous message that could harm us if we spoke to you,” he said.

“Oh . . .” I said. “Yes, I’m a Christian.”

“A what?”

“You know, a follower of Jesus.”

“Well, I’ve never heard of that,” he said. “But we were warned not to talk to you.”

“Do you want me to explain?” I asked, motioning to the sleeping prisoners. “We’ve got nothing but time.”

“No,” he snapped. That was the last word he said for the rest of the night. However, as I sat there in the darkness, I was filled with gratitude. God had prevented me from receiving the “new prisoner treatment,” and I’d survived the first two days of my prison theology class.

Though I knew God was with me, my prison life took on a dreary pattern as the days passed. In the mornings, the guards brought us two meals. Breakfast was one long piece of cornbread. The first time I bit into my piece, worms were burrowed into the bread. I immediately spit it out in disgust, but tried to put a spiritual spin on it.

“I’m fasting,” I explained. But Big Brother, who was a strange combination of cop, dad, and room monitor, reported me to a guard.

“Xi Yao Si, there is no God here,” the guard said through the iron door. “If you don’t eat, you’ll be fed through tubes in your nose.” Force-feeding, I learned, was a torture method the guards used on prisoners who staged hunger strikes to protest their imprisonment.

And so, I took the wormy cornbread and pretended to eat the parts I couldn’t choke down. Every day after breakfast, we were told to sit on the floor in rows. We had to keep our necks, backs, and legs completely straight. We couldn’t look to the left or the right, and had to stare straight ahead without moving at all. We sat like statues every day for ten hours. After sitting there for so long, we got blisters on our thighs and buttocks. The pain of sitting there was unbearable, especially after the blisters burst. The skin around my bottom festered with sores and my skin constantly fell off. If anyone moved, the guards beat us.

We sat motionless every day on the perpetually wet floor. (It was wet because the only way to take a shower was to dump a bucket of freezing water over one’s head.) The prison cell had no windows, but there was a very tiny hole in the high ceiling. That was the only “clock” I could use to calculate the time of day, as a tiny beam of sunshine moved through the dark cell. It first appeared at noon, and the pinhole of light would creep across the wall for hours until it was time for our second meal of the day. Those were the longest hours.

The second meal was comprised of rancid steamed bread, which was raw cornbread with moldy vegetables swimming in hot water. Once in a while, there’d be fat floating on the top. Once, when I first saw that substance, I hungrily went for it in my bowl. It at least resembled nutrition.

“Stop!” another prisoner said, in a rare word to me. “That fatty material has been floating in the kitchen for months. Plus, that part goes to Big Brother.” Apparently he had dibs on all the “good” parts of the meals.

One day, a guard came into our cell and said to me, “Someone deposited money on your behalf.”

I was absolutely shocked. Apparently, a friend had been searching for us ever since we were taken away, going from prison to prison. His name was David Li, and he was a convert who had grown up in Beijing and was therefore familiar with all of the places where we could’ve been held. When he finally found our prison, David deposited money into an account designated for me. This allowed me to buy overpriced items from the guards. I bought a cup of Ramen noodles, which I made with the freezing water from the sink. Though the hard noodles barely softened in the water, it was the most scrumptious meal I’d ever consumed. Of course, I only ate what was left after sharing with Big Brother, who was always allowed to eat whatever he wanted first.

I tried to keep track of the days. One day I realized that it was the anniversary of my wedding to Heidi.

“Little Tiger,” I whispered to one of the more notorious inmates. He was a drug dealer able to bribe the prosecutor and police officers to smuggle in goodies. “My wife’s in prison on the women’s side and today’s our anniversary. Could you help me get a present for her?” Though it sounded improbable, I wanted to try to pass a gift along. Maybe I could convince a guard to hand it off to her, or perhaps a fellow prisoner could help me smuggle it to her cell.

“What do you want?” he asked. “Cocaine? Cigarettes? Heroin?”

“Can you get candy?” I asked, feeling a little ridiculous. Then, thinking “candy” might be some sort of euphemism for an illegal substance, I added, “Like the sugary kind?”

By midmorning I had two hard, heart-shaped pieces of candy, which I hid in my hand the whole day. I pressed my face to the bars at the top of the door, hoping a prisoner or guard would pass by so I could ask him to pass it to Heidi. I waited and waited, straining to hear any footsteps in the corridor, but no one came. Much to my dismay, the last hours of my anniversary elapsed, and I reluctantly laid down for sleep.

“If you see anyone walk by,” I told the suicide watch team, “grab them for me.” But the next morning I woke up with the candy melted to the palm of my hand.

One day, a bribed guard brought Little Tiger a pair of shoes. A few minutes later, I saw the notorious drug dealer, who made the cell miserable for so many people, weeping in the corner. His wife apparently had hidden a loving note in the shoe. Very discreetly, I went over to him, and he actually cried on my shoulder. In fact, all of the inmates gradually softened toward me. Sometimes I was assigned the duty of cleaning the toilet with another prisoner, which was a welcome break from the monotony of prison life. We only had paper to use to clean the toilet, which meant the commode was never clean. Little Tiger sometimes made prisoners clean the toilet with their bare hands. He also sometimes stuck their faces in the toilet and made them drink the water.

The toilet, for me, was a way to share the gospel. One by one, I made some very close confidants in the cell. Some poured out their hearts to me, confessing mistresses, misdeeds, and any number of crimes, and I—in turn—told them about the saving grace of Jesus. Eventually, I’d earned the trust and respect of everyone in the cell, and I became somewhat of a “counselor” to everyone.

“Xi Yao Si!” The shout yanked me from sleep. A hand grabbed me by the collar and jerked me up. Was it finally happening? Was I finally going to receive the beating I’d feared? When I opened my eyes, however, it wasn’t a fellow prisoner. Instead it was the prison guard, dragging me out of the cell and into the chief security guard office.

“You’re sharing superstitious messages with the prisoners!” an interrogator shouted at me. “You’re not only destabilizing this prison, you’re destabilizing our Chinese culture!”

“No.” I held up my hands to explain. “Christians actually help society by stabilizing individuals and families. In fact, we have a saying, ‘One more Christian, one less criminal. One more church, one less prison.’”

“If you’re so against prison, why do you spend so much time here?” he snarled.

“If anything,” I added, “we’re true patriots.”

At this, the head security agent stood up, furious, “You are a true patriot? Communists are true patriots. And this prison is the holy ground of the Communist Party,” he growled. “You cannot speak of the gospel here!”

When I went back to the cell, I knew someone had ratted me out. I wasn’t eating much food, I couldn’t see very well, and my head throbbed from my blurry vision. I slept very little, I lived in fear of getting beat up, and I witnessed terrible acts of cruelty and torture.

However, there was one aspect of prison that was somewhat appealing: I had absolutely nothing to do. Before I was arrested, my life had become so busy—so amazingly busy—that I used to joke that the only way I’d get a chance to rest was to get arrested. One day, I was looking at the dot of the sunbeam. It was on the twenty-seventh stone to the left of the door, which meant, by my calculations, it was three o’clock. We were sitting in silence, and my lower back was throbbing. In spite of the pain, I felt so thankful to God that I wanted to sing. I cleared my throat and began singing a song from my underground house church days.

“Give thanks with a grateful heart,” I mumbled, causing everyone to—at least momentarily—break form and look at me. Nothing ever happened out of the ordinary during those ten-hour stretches. The most excitement we ever saw was when someone readjusted, or scratched their nose, or sneezed, and got severely beaten if the guard happened to be walking by. However, the guard didn’t seem to be near, and so I added the next few lines. “Give thanks to the Holy One, give thanks, because He’s given Jesus Christ, His Son.”

Though everyone immediately went back into form, I could tell the atmosphere was electrified by my defiance. I don’t remember anyone ever speaking during those torturously long ten-hour sessions, and I certainly never heard anyone sing. Since the guard didn’t come, however, I kept singing.

“And now let the weak say, ‘I am strong,’ let the poor say ‘I am rich,’ because of what the Lord has done for us . . . give thanks.”

When I finished my song, I looked at the gigantic iron gate and waited for a guard to come swooping in with his electric baton. I’m not sure if he was on a break or just not at his station, but since I hadn’t been punished yet, I started my song again.

“Give thanks . . .” To my surprise, another voice joined in with me. I couldn’t see who it was, but the sound emanated at first from a few rows behind me. Then, another voice started singing from my left. We sang “Give Thanks” two or three times. It was an amazing thing because when we started the fourth repetition, every man in the entire cell was singing. Much to our delight, one of the drug dealers knew how to harmonize! I was amazed when we heard the cells on both sides of us also singing to God. I had to believe some of the inmates were sincerely thanking God, while others were singing as an act of rebellion. In fact, most had never even heard of the God to whom they sang. Whatever the motivation, the prison that day was turned into one huge worship center, and it split me wide open.

“Xi Yao Si!” I heard the next morning, then felt the now-familiar sensation of being jerked from sleep and dragged to the chief security guard office.

“What did we tell you about sharing the gospel?” the irate head security guard yelled.

“You said not to speak a word of it,” I said.

“And yet you led the whole prison in your superstitious songs?”

“Well, I didn’t speak a word of it,” I said. “I sang it!” After another stern warning, they tossed me back into the cell. This time, I was more like a conquering hero instead of a reprimanded prisoner. Everyone seemed to respect me. That day, when we were made to sit like statues in our uncomfortable positions, I knew I’d get beaten if I sang out again. Instead, I simply hummed the tune to “Give Thanks.” Once again, the other men joined in with my humming. Pretty soon, the prison was a gigantic beehive of praise.

With every passing day, I grew closer to my fellow inmates. Little Tiger, Big Brother, and another drug dealer all came to me for advice, and I shared with them the meaning of the song we were singing. There was something transformative about befriending these particular men. In the past, as a student and an intellectual, I had never considered the plight of the prisoner. But being with the same thirty people, in the same two hundred square feet, did something to me.

One day, as our evening slop was being delivered, a guard came to the gate, pointed at me, and said, “It’s time to go.”

I’d been praying that if I were going to be in prison for my entire life, I’d be transferred to a “reeducation through labor” camp. In China, these camps produced any of a number of products, including steel pipes, shoes, toys, chemicals, and clothing for export. Prisoners mined minerals, grew cotton, made tea, and farmed—sometimes twenty hours a day. Many people died from the exhausting labor, but I thought it would be preferable to only a pinprick of sun for the rest of my life.

When they came to get me that day, I thought I was headed to do some sort of repetitive labor, like packaging ten thousand chopsticks per day. However, the guard looked at me, and said, “Come on. You’re being released.”

I’d been in prison for two months.

The other inmates, some who’d been in jail for years, looked at me and smiled. It felt wrong to leave them, but I couldn’t wait to go outside and breathe air that didn’t smell of thirty dirty men, eat food without worms, and lay down on—I quivered at the thought of it—a pillow.

“Wait,” Big Brother said in a softer voice than I’d ever heard him use. “Let me give you the phone number of my family so you can tell them hello for me.” Little Tiger added, “Yes, and please call my family. They’ll visit you or treat you to a meal.”

I took their information and promised to follow up, but smiled at the thought of welcoming my fellow prisoners’ families to my home. I wondered if they’d bring cocaine with them if they visited and what Heidi would say.

Heidi.

Would she be okay? Had she been tortured? Would she have scars? Did she survive?

Then, I said goodbye to my fellow prisoners—my friends—and walked out of my prison cell, fighting the temptation to run.